On screen Jim Rash is the most heightened man in any room, a dean in a costume nobody asked for. On the page, with Nat Faxon, he writes small, grounded comedies about people at a low ebb. The halves rarely meet; we prefer the first.
Fi1m perspective
Dean Craig Pelton never enters a room in Community (2009) without something to wear for the occasion, and never looks at Jeff without giving himself away. Rash plays him as a man who has spent all night on the outfit and none on the announcement, and the pleasure is watching the study group refuse to react. It is the finest recurring joke on that campus. We laughed every time the door opened, and by the later seasons we laughed before it did, which is the mark of a joke that has been built properly.
Rash has described the part as being "a very heightened individual amid a more grounded circle", and that is the whole of his acting method: find the one person who is too much and commit to him. It goes back to improv at The Groundlings, and it runs through the small roles he collected before the Dean, including Mr Grayson in Sky High (2005). He also wrote an episode of Community and co-directed two, which is the first sign that the man in the polyester had other ideas.
The other ideas belong to a partnership. With Nat Faxon, another Groundlings alumnus, Rash co-wrote The Descendants (2011) with Alexander Payne, and the pair then co-wrote and co-directed The Way, Way Back (2013), a coming-of-age comedy drawn from their own adolescences, in which Rash also acts as Lewis. Their third film, Downhill (2020), reworks the Swedish film Force Majeure; the reviews were mixed, and most critics found the original the sharper of the two. The pattern across all three is the one Faxon and Rash have described themselves: flawed people in a bad patch, comedy kept on a short lead. It is almost the opposite of the Dean.
That is the puzzle with Rash. The writer wants restraint and the performer wants a costume, and we have yet to see a film in which the two are asked to work together. His scripts are careful; his acting is anything but; and we have never been sure whether he keeps them apart on purpose or has simply not been offered the chance. Miss You, Love You (2026) is his first feature directed alone, without Faxon. We would like it to let the Dean in.
Biography
Jim Rash is an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He was born on 15 July 1971 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Rash is best known for playing Dean Craig Pelton in the NBC series Community (2009–2015), in which he also wrote and directed episodes. He began his career with the Groundlings improv troupe in Los Angeles and appeared in smaller roles in films and series including Sky High (2005) and Friends (2004).
With Nat Faxon, Rash co-wrote the screenplay for The Descendants (2011), which won the Academy Award, Independent Spirit Award and Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The pair later wrote and directed the films The Way, Way Back (2013) and Downhill (2020).
