Chris Pratt, the action star, wasn’t always in great shape.

On Thursday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, the 40-year-old actor was quizzed about his “pudgy” body on Parks and Recreation. Pratt played Andy Dwyer in the hit comedy series from 2009 to 2015, before going on to appear in Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic Park. While Pratt said that he accidentally became “a little fat” during the first few seasons of the program, he later stated that he wanted to acquire more weight because he felt it would make him funnier.

‘I remember in the first couple of seasons, just unintentionally, I had gotten a little fat and I was watching the episodes and I was like, ‘Oh, God, Chris, you’ve really let yourself go.’ And then I was like, ‘but this is some of the funniest stuff you’ve ever done.”

Pratt says he approached Parks and Recreation co-creator Michael Schur and explained his desire to add another 30-40 pounds, to which Schur simply replied, “OK.”

He added: “Then it became a challenge. Everyone wanted to see how much I could eat.”

He remembered how, in the show, the characters would occasionally dine at the dinosaur-themed Jurassic Fork restaurant. Pratt went all-in on devouring the meal in one seating at the restaurant in one scene.

“They gave us dinosaur-sized portions. And so I didn’t have anything to say in the scene. So inevitably I wanted to try to get some screen time and I decided I would eat one rack of ribs per take,” Pratt explained.

“And if the camera happened to catch me, I would absolutely be inhaling ribs. I went through 12 racks of ribs, which is the equivalent of six pigs,” he said.

Pratt says he specifically wanted to make his co-star Nick Offerman laugh.

“If I can make him laugh, it tickles me to no end,” he says, imitating Offerman’s unique chuckle. “So, I knew it was making Nick laugh. I was making myself sick, but I had 12 racks of ribs, and then at lunch, because our catering company was creating the ribs, they cooked ribs. And at lunch I sat down with another four racks of ribs, right next to Nick, and ate the ribs. I got a big laugh.”

He co-starred with Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Paul Schneider, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, Rob Lowe, and Aubrey Plaza on the show.

Pratt has been in a number of action blockbusters since his days on television, most recently in “Avengers: Endgame.” In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, he stated that the third part of the “Jurassic World” trilogy will begin filming “very soon.”