The Playboy Interview: John Krasinski

In the fall of 2003, 23-year-old John Krasinski called his mother back home in Newton, Massachusetts and told her he was sticking to their deal: He was quitting. Upon graduating from Brown University with a degree in English, he set off for New York City to be an actor. His parents had been supportive. They always were to their three boys, of whom John was the youngest (and, at six-foot-three, the shortest). He’d already lived in New York a few summers earlier when he interned for Late Night With Conan O’Brien. But if he didn’t have some decent prospects after three years, his mom had said, he should rethink things. Well, almost three years had passed, and what did Krasinski have to show for it? An off-off-Broadway play, a walk-on part on an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, a failed TV pilot. Sure, he’d done a commercial for DeWalt power tools with NASCAR driver Matt Kenseth, but he still had to wait tables, one of the thousands of anonymous actors hustling to survive the slaughterhouse of small-town dreams that is Manhattan. Nope, he told his mom, he was done. “At least ride out the year,” she said. Three weeks later, Krasinski got a call to audition for another TV pilot: a remake of a pseudo-documentary British comedy series.