Nick Offerman almost turned down starring role in The Last Of Us

This article contains spoilers for episode three of The Last Of Us.

Nick Offerman is the man of the hour after episode three of The Last Of Us successfully shattered all of our hearts into a million pieces.

In the hit HBO series, Nick plays Bill, a survivalist who winds up in a relationship with a man named Frank (Murray Bartlett), sparking the most devastating, poignant hour of television ever.

But Nick couldn't have predicted the reaction he's been getting for his performance - because he actually came very close to turning the role down.

The actor told Jimmy Kimmel Live that it was actually his wife Megan Mullally who convinced him to take the part.

"I mean, when I got the script, Craig Mazin wrote the script who did Chernobyl among other things - that guy seems to know what he's doing," Nick said.

"He sent me the script. And I didn't have time on the calendar to say yes to this job.

"And my incredible goddess of a wife read it and she said, 'You're going to Calgary, buddy. Have fun. You have to do this'."

Nick described his wife as his 'curator', joking that she also 'chose every garment that I'm wearing tonight'.

Discussing the huge reaction to the episode, Nick said: "The episode began airing on Sunday. We had 6.4 million viewers.

HBO/Sky

"And HBO – it's not TV – they are so not f**king around that they send me on the Jimmy Kimmel Show on Wednesday to cull the stragglers.

"The 17 of you that haven't seen it yet, you're in for a treat," he joked.

If by 'treat' he means tear-fest, then Nick Offerman is dead right.

All viewers have collectively agreed that this episode was probably the saddest episode of television ever.

One tweeted: “The third episode of The Last Of Us was potentially the saddest episode of anything I have ever watched in my life.”

Another said: “The Last of Us was just about the saddest thing I’ve ever seen and I think it’ll haunt me forever.”

In the episode, which is so upsetting it's being compared to Pixar's Up, Bill turns his neighbourhood into a sort of safe haven against the infected, complete with booby traps, CCTV, and a whole lot of weapons.

When Frank falls into one of Bill's traps, it isn't long before the two hit it off and fall in love. The couple form a close bond, and viewers get to see them live out the pandemic in each other's company.

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Everything is beautiful for a few years, until Frank suddenly develops a degenerative neuromuscular disorder.

Rather than letting himself decay, Frank decides that this is the end for him, and Bill decides that means it's the end for him too.

So the pair lace a bottle of wine with a deadly amount of unspecified white powder before getting into bed and dying in each other's arms.

Heart. Breaking.