diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
index 69e71fa10d4..5ab1c2f7a03 100644
--- a/AUTHORS
+++ b/AUTHORS
@@ -256,6 +256,7 @@ Ondřej Súkup
 Oscar Benjamin
 Parth Patel
 Patrick Hayes
+Paul Müller
 Pauli Virtanen
 Pavel Karateev
 Paweł Adamczak
diff --git a/changelog/9871.bugfix.rst b/changelog/9871.bugfix.rst
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..ed787b3da34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelog/9871.bugfix.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Fix a bizarre (and fortunately rare) bug where the `temp_path` fixture could raise
+an internal error while attempting to get the current user's username.
diff --git a/src/_pytest/tmpdir.py b/src/_pytest/tmpdir.py
index f901fd5727c..12dc463a2a2 100644
--- a/src/_pytest/tmpdir.py
+++ b/src/_pytest/tmpdir.py
@@ -158,9 +158,10 @@ def getbasetemp(self) -> Path:
 def get_user() -> Optional[str]:
     """Return the current user name, or None if getuser() does not work
     in the current environment (see #1010)."""
-    import getpass
-
     try:
+        # In some exotic environments, getpass may not be importable.
+        import getpass
+
         return getpass.getuser()
     except (ImportError, KeyError):
         return None