Nick Offerman once spent a night high in jail after being mistaken for a robber

Nick Offerman on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' (Randy Holmes/Disney via CNN Newsource)

Nick Offerman’s parents may not want to read this story.

During a guest appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to promote his new film “Civil War,” Offerman told a story from years ago he said his parents didn’t know.

“Some friends and I, we can say this now in California, we were smoking marijuana out behind a community theatre late one night,” he said. “And some flashlights came along the creek where we were hanging out, and we realized it was police. So we began to tiptoe away, and they gave chase, and we wisely ran.”

According to Offerman, the police gave chase and caught up to him and his friends.

“It turned out that a restaurant had been robbed of a bunch of cash up the creek,” he said. “And they naturally saw these kids running, and we spent the whole night in jail. And the thing is, we were just these innocent, dumb theatre kids, and we were saying, ‘No, we were just out there smoking and talking, officer.’”

The police eventually believed them, he said, even though the crew ended up spending the night in jail.

It all ended on a funny note, however.

“As the sun was coming up, we walked out, and on the front lawn of this sheriff’s station, my friend Greg, who had the one-hitter, the pot-smoking paraphernalia, we said, ‘It’s a bummer you had to throw that in the creek when they were chasing us,’” Offerman said. “He reached into his crotch and pulled it out and was like, ‘You think I’m gonna throw this thing away?’ So we smoked marijuana first thing in the morning in Urbana in front of the sheriff’s station.”

The “Parks & Recreation” star got high with a little help from his friends.

It wasn’t the only time he went to jail, he shared.

Offerman said he and a friend used to shoplift as a joke and he got caught stuffing eight Ronnie Millsap cassettes down his pants. He ended up in jail then too, but was bailed out by his friend just in time to make it to the first play he was ever cast in.