“Seriously, if you hear him, you’ll say, ‘Ah, that’s Perd,’” Jay Jackson tells EW.

Parks and Rec actor reveals real reporter who inspired fan-favorite character Perd Hapley

"Seriously, if you hear him, you'll say, 'Ah, that's Perd,'" Jay Jackson tells EW.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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December 24, 2025 3:00 p.m. ET

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Jay Jackson as Perd Hapley on 'Parks and Recreation'. Credit: Ben Cohen/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

- Jay Jackson, who played the beloved side character Perd Hapley on *Parks and Recreation*, tells EW about the real local journalist he based the character on.

- Jackson also worked for over 20 years as a broadcast journalist before segueing into entertainment. On *Parks*, he found himself channeling NBC Los Angeles reporter Furnell Chatman.

- "He had a unique clip in the way he would do the news," Jackson recalls, describing Perd's voice as "a mix of this serious voice, which was my reporter voice, and this local news guy, Furnell Chatman."

There's tough competition for the title of *Parks and Recreation*'s most beloved recurring character. From Paul Rudd's dopey politician Bobby Newport to Mo Collins' brazen talk show host Joan Callamezzo, the NBC sitcom remains an absolute tower of guest talent. But it'd be tough to find a die-hard *Parks *fan who wouldn't submit Jay Jackson's Perd Hapley as their No. 1 pick.

In a new interview with **, Jackson looks back on his iconic turn as the daffy, pun-inclined straight-man reporter Perd Hapley, who uttered some of the series' most memorable one-liners. As the host of such fictional in-universe programs as *Ya Heard? With Perd! *and *The Perdples Court*, Hapley often found himself at the scene of the *Parks* cast's crimes, though he often confused matters more than clarified them.

Reflecting on how he turned over 20 years of experience as a real broadcast journalist into the utterly unique Perd, Jackson says, "I think it was a combination of people not sure of what the next year would be. So a lot of people were just kind of going for it."

Jackson says that it was Alex Hardcastle, the director of his first episode, season 2's "Practice Date," who encouraged him to "'try it this way, try it that way.' So it started straight as a reporter. But then it started to develop into kind of the goofy Perd Hapley character that we know and love today." As he finessed the finer details of the characterization, a real-life model began to come into focus.

Jay Jackson and Amy Poehler on 'Parks and Recreation'.

"[Hardcastle] he would say, 'Okay, go over the top with it.' So I started to go over the top with it, and it reminded me of a reporter in Los Angeles. He had a unique clip in the way he would do the news," Jackson recalls.

"His name was Furnell Chatman. He had this very strange way of doing the news. 'I'm Furnell Chatman, and this is NBC News!'" Jackson announces with a powerful, perfectly enunciated blast. "He would do it like that, so I would kind of channel what he was doing, and it ended up, 'I'm Perd Hapley, and welcome to *Ya Heard? With Perd!*' So we would channel this guy, and that ended up being Perd Hapley. It was a mix of this serious voice, which was my reporter voice, and this local news guy, Furnell Chatman."

Jackson describes Chatman as "a popular anchor at the time, an African American gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair. But he had the most unusual talking pattern. Seriously, if you hear him, you'll say, 'Ah, that's Perd.'"

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Now 78, Chatman was a pioneering force in local, ground-level broadcast new for over four decades and in three different cities. He made history in 1972 by becoming Louisiana's first Black broadcast journalist, eventually anchoring the noon news on WVUE-TV in New Orleans.

After a stint at WKYC in Cleveland, Chatman moved to Los Angeles, where he became a mainstay of NBC's Channel 4 news team.

"I had the first on-camera interview with Rodney King after the LAPD brutality case, and also with O.J. Simpson after he was acquitted," Chatman recalled after his 2009 retirement. "But helping people, that's what it is really about. I hope I've shown some care for people."**

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Jackson also began his career as a reporter, working for newspapers and TV stations across Southern California for decades, as he previously told EW in 2014. He eventually landed at KCAL9 News in L.A. on what he now calls the "death and destruction beat."

"If I was at a scene, that meant somebody was dead, and they were dead in a violent way. It was either murder or it was arson or a terrible DUI crash, something like that. That's the kind of reporter I was in Los Angeles, so I wasn't into Hollywood at all," Jackson says.

Now Jackson has made a name for himself and secured an in-demand second career as a fictional reporter on series like *Parks and Rec*, *Scandal*, *The Mentalist*, and *The Closer*, and films like *Fast Five *and *Battleship*. But it's Perd Hapley lines that fans shout out at him wherever he goes.

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