It's true, "Parks and Recreation" fans -- Mark Brendanawicz is not long for Pawnee.
A report earlier today hinted that Paul Schneider, who plays Pawnee city planner Mark, would be leaving the NBC comedy, recently renewed for a third season.
"Parks" co-creator and executive producer Mike Schur confirmed the news exclusively for Show Tracker, explained what will happen to Mark's character (on the positive side: Schneider may not be gone for good), and revealed more details about the incoming stories for Adam Scott and Rob Lowe.
We're upset. What happened?
Mike Schur: Well, the fact that you are upset is in part at least why this is happening. Let me start from the beginning. The God's honest absolute truth is this character, Mark, is at least partially based on a real guy that [co-creator and executive producer Greg Daniels] and I met while we were doing research. His career had a very interesting trajectory, which is he worked for the government for a long time as a city planner and he got so fed up with the lifestyle and the red tape and the bureaucracy, that he ... moved into the private sector. Then he got so fed up and tired of how gross corporations are that he moved back to the government. He oscillated back and forth multiple times.
When we first cast Paul, we told him that the idea would be Mark would leave and then ideally he would come back in a different capacity working for a different company. And then he would leave again and come back, and so on... It's not something you usually do on TV shows but we thought it was a good way to illustrate both the positive and negative aspects of working for a government. It was one of the first things we talked about with him.
What happened was in the wake of "Bright Star" [a film in which Schneider co-starred] and winning a lot of awards, Paul now has this film career that is just taking off in a big way. [Show Tracker notes Schneider's major credits include "Lars and the Real Girl" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford."] And the movie opportunities he's getting are incredibly cool interesting movies, not the summer blockbuster movies that can be scheduled around TV actors when they need to be.
So, in the end, it was a combination of us always knowing that the character would always leave some day, the timing of this movie, and then sort of feeling like, well, the way the character's gone...we were all on the same page here and we decided to write the character out.
But the goal and the aim is to have him come back as soon as his schedule permits and as soon as the arcs we're writing call for it. We very much want him back and he has told us he very much wants to come back in the future. It really is one of those mutually beneficial situations. And we're hoping we can have him back in Season 3.
What will happen to Mark between now and the end of the season?
He's going to remain in the world of the show in a way that not only allows but hopefully demands that he'll reenter it. He's not going to be killed in some weird accident.
Maybe an obvious question, but where does that leave Ann and Mark's relationship? Post-Valentine's Day, things seem to be up in the air between them...
Mark's relationship with Ann comes to a crossroads toward the end of the year. It's something we're building toward. Most of the beats in that story haven't aired yet, ironically, because we let Rashida Jones (Ann) out of two episodes because she was shooting a David Fincher movie. Two episodes from now begins that arc.
When the Adam Scott news broke, some begun speculating that he might be a replacement for Paul -- true?
He's really not. The story that Adam Scott and Rob Lowe are coming in for ... they're not new city planners sitting across the hall. It's not like the government is firing Mark and replacing him with Adam's character. Adam is from a different world. It's not the same thing.
Variety said Adam would be a love interest for Leslie...
It's not wrong. But it's funny to say he's a love interest for Amy's character when he hasn't shot a scene yet. It's kind of silly. It's not right or wrong, if that makes any sense?
Adam's character is entering the world, he's about Amy's age, he's a man and he's single? I think that's where that came from? Look, no one ever conceived April and Andy would be romantically involved until we shot this one episode and said, "Hey, they have chemistry!" So we taste it, that's more the way we do things here. We like to get actors we think are good and just throw them into a big stew and mix it up and see what happens.
Can you tease anything else about Rob Lowe? We heard he's in for two episodes this season, and six more -- at least -- next season. He's been tweeting his excitement all day.
That's correct. He was super funny in the table read. He and Adam both were fantastic. It was very exciting. He and Adam come in as part of a team sent in from a distant land to try to help the town of Pawnee through a rough patch. There are all these stories in the news now like Kansas City is closing half of their public schools now, and, I don't know if this actually happened, but the entire state of Idaho was threatening to shut down the Parks department...and Idaho is essentially just one large park. Most cities and towns in the country right now are going through these rough patches involving plummeting tax revenue and layoffs. So we're doing a torn-from-the-headlines thing about Pawnee and Adam and Rob's characters come in to help them fix their budget problems.
OK, sounds good. We're still kind of bummed about Paul leaving though...
We really like him as an actor and as a human being, so we're hoping that it all works out and he can come back. We hope that he won't just do award-winning movie after award-winning movie...
-- Denise Martin
Photo: Paul Schneider (Christina House / For The Times); Amy Poehler and Paul Schneider (Gina Ferazzi / For the Times)
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The NBC comedy series ''Parks and Recreation'' will experience a shake-up in its cast as Paul Schneider, a regular cast member with the critically acclaimed series, will depart at the end of this season.

Officials with the show have also announced this month that Rob Lowe will make an extended guest appearance on the series, and Adam Scott will join as a regular cast member.

Michael Schur, who co-created ''Parks and Recreation'' along with ''The Office'' creator Greg Daniels, said Schneider is expected to make guest appearances in the third season.

Schneider plays Mark Brendanawicz, a jaded city planner who started in the first season as a love interest for the show's protagonist Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), the deputy director of a small town Indiana town. Currently, Schneider's character is dating Rashida Jones's character, Ann Perkins.

Schneider is leaving the show to focus on his movie career, following the success of such independent films as ''Bright Star''. Schur added when the character was originally conceived, it was anticipated he would appear infrequently in ''Parks and Recreation'', switching between his city planner job and work in the private sector.

"It's not something you usually do on TV shows but we thought it was a good way to illustrate both the positive and negative aspects of working for a government," Schur told the ''Los Angeles Times''. "It was one of the first things we talked about with him."

Schur added, "He's going to remain in the world of the show in a way that not only allows but hopefully demands that he'll reenter it. He's not going to be killed in some weird accident."

Rob Lowe is to make a string of guest appearances in ''Parks and Recreation'', starting in May with the final two episodes of the current season.
Lowe and Scott are expected to join the show in May, during the final two episodes of the season. Schur has indicated they will both play characters coming in from outside Pawnee to help the town deal with budget problems.

Lowe, fresh off his departure from the ABC drama series ''Brothers & Sisters'', will continue a string of guest appearances into the third season. 

Adam Scott would leave his regular role on the Starz comedy series ''Party Down'' to join the permanent cast of ''Parks and Recreation''.

"Adam is one of the funniest and most versatile performers around," Schur told ''Variety'' magazine. "When we designed the character he is going to play, we used him as the dream scenario of who we could get."

''Parks and Recreation'' received mixed to negative reviews during its first season, with detractors claiming it was too similar to ''The Office'', and that Leslie Knope too closely resembled that show's protagonist Michael Scott), played by Steve Carell.

But The second season, despite lagging in the Nielsen ratings, has been a critical success, with several commentators declaring it a major improvement over the first season and one of the best comedies currently on television.