Speaker 1: My name's Rain Wilson, and I played Dwight Kurt Shrewd.
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, Welcome to the office Deep Dive. I am
Speaker 1: your host Brian baum Gartner. Today you will be listening
Speaker 1: to my conversation with Rain Wilson. Now, when we started
Speaker 1: shooting the show, um, Rain, he was the only person
Speaker 1: that I knew. I met Rain back in circa nineteen
Speaker 1: all right. I was living in Minneapolis and I went
Speaker 1: to see a production at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: Now you should know this. The Guthrie is a very,
Speaker 1: very big deal. It is the largest regional theater in
Speaker 1: the country. It puts on incredible shows, world renowned, etcetera, etcetera. Well,
Speaker 1: Rain was starring uh in a production of Philadelphia. Here
Speaker 1: I come. And I went to the show. And I
Speaker 1: have said this many times. Rain's performance in that show
Speaker 1: it was the greatest performance that I ever saw on
Speaker 1: the Guthrie stage. It was brilliant. And so the show
Speaker 1: was over and I was like, I've got to meet
Speaker 1: this guy, Rain. This guy is brilliant, and so we
Speaker 1: got introduced, we met and we became friends. And when
Speaker 1: I showed up to work on the first day of
Speaker 1: the office. There was Rain, and I could not have
Speaker 1: been more delighted to see him. He is He's a
Speaker 1: special one, that's for sure. I am so excited for
Speaker 1: you to hear this interview. You're going to hear Rain
Speaker 1: in a way you have never heard him before. I
Speaker 1: love talking to him. You are going to love. Let's
Speaker 1: sending to him. So, without further ado, here is Rain Wilson.
Speaker 1: Bubble and squeak. I love it. Bubble and squeak on,
Speaker 1: Bubble and squeaker cookie every moment, lift over from the
Speaker 1: nut before. Oh, there he is him. Buddy, Hey man,
Speaker 1: how are you? I'm good? God see you? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are you? We? Um? That felt really inappropriate? Why? Um,
Speaker 1: we have some salty nuts for you. I saw just
Speaker 1: a giant, like five pounds of salty I was requested,
Speaker 1: what salty nuts? Nothing is requested? What does that mean?
Speaker 1: I don't know? Um, all right, let's do this. Let's
Speaker 1: do it. I'm all yours for two hours. Really so exciting?
Speaker 1: Are you excited? No? Why not? It's fun to see me.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to see you. Yes, that's that's what. That's
Speaker 1: that's where would Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna talk about a
Speaker 1: lot of things. I also am excited about talking about
Speaker 1: the office in terms of like some stuff that you
Speaker 1: don't normally here. Yeah, like the the longer, more detailed
Speaker 1: stories of some of the intricacies of how stuff was
Speaker 1: arrived at and some of the choices that were made
Speaker 1: along the way and stuff like. Well, that's what my
Speaker 1: goal is with you, because you're a thoughtful person. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to do that. You're not gonna get that
Speaker 1: from Creed. No, I know. Well I think we've scheduled
Speaker 1: him for twenty two minutes. Okay, so that's fine. Um No,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I'm excited to talk to you. What. So
Speaker 1: we're starting, we're rolling. Yeah, we're just we're just chatting. Good.
Speaker 1: What were you doing before the office? Um? Before the Office? Well,
Speaker 1: going way way back before. So I did theater for
Speaker 1: about ten years in New York before I did any
Speaker 1: TV or film, so early was a theater actor. Some
Speaker 1: A lot of people ask like, how were you an
Speaker 1: improv or were you and stand up or something like that,
Speaker 1: But I didn't do anything. I'm similar to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: theater theater person that kind of found that we were
Speaker 1: well suited to kind of comic character guys. Despite our
Speaker 1: ravishingly good looks. So yeah, So I came out to
Speaker 1: l A and and then started doing commercial auditions and
Speaker 1: voiceover auditions and little guest spots on TV shows. I
Speaker 1: was unlike Charmed and yeah and C S I and
Speaker 1: I did c S I. You did see s I too?
Speaker 1: Or you I was a furry you're a guy who
Speaker 1: gets sexualification out of wearing a big furry suit. I
Speaker 1: was creepy guy in Supermarket. I'm not getting creepy guy
Speaker 1: in Supermarket. I think I was dog. I think literally
Speaker 1: that perfect. I think that was my role that was perfect. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I did a lot of that stuff and some pilots,
Speaker 1: and I did some decent movie roles here and there,
Speaker 1: and um, what happened for me that really led to
Speaker 1: the office is a lot of people think I kind
Speaker 1: of waltzt into Dwight. But the big role that put
Speaker 1: me on the map was in six ft Under. So
Speaker 1: after a lot of slogging around the casting people Libby Goldstein, um,
Speaker 1: they brought me in multiple times to six ft Under,
Speaker 1: and finally I got the role of Arthur and I
Speaker 1: did ended up doing thirteen episodes on that right when
Speaker 1: HBO was heating up, and that was kind of revolutionizing
Speaker 1: what we think of as television. You know, Sopranos the
Speaker 1: Wire were on at the same time. It was Entourage
Speaker 1: and a lot of really amazing shows, including six ft
Speaker 1: Under and Uh. All of a sudden, I popped onto
Speaker 1: people's radar. Um. It was really incredible how that happened,
Speaker 1: because that was one of those shows that everyone in
Speaker 1: l A watches. There are the shows that people watch
Speaker 1: all across the country. They watch n c I, s
Speaker 1: l A or something like that, and it's fifty million
Speaker 1: people will watch it, but no one in l A
Speaker 1: who are like taste makers watch it. So this six
Speaker 1: ft Under was one of those kind of shows, and
Speaker 1: that's what put me on the map. And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I was in kind of pretty high demand
Speaker 1: for movies and stuff. I know, you want a SAG
Speaker 1: Award for that, the Ensemble Ensemble SAG Award. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: might be the only person who has been part of
Speaker 1: winning an Ensemble SAG Award for both drama and comedy
Speaker 1: because I did it for six ft Under and then
Speaker 1: twice we won I think twice we won UH for
Speaker 1: the Office and now so so you're in high demand, yeah,
Speaker 1: and were you aware of the British version of The Office?
Speaker 1: I was. I was so my friend Sam Catlin, he
Speaker 1: had heard about it, and he had seen a couple
Speaker 1: episodes and somehow gotten some like British DVD or something
Speaker 1: like that and had like even like an English DVD
Speaker 1: player or something somehow had advanced copies, and like, you've
Speaker 1: got to see it. Groundbreaking, amazing, And so we went
Speaker 1: over like on a special occasional We've got to watch
Speaker 1: The Office, and we were blown away. So I was
Speaker 1: really truly one of the first people to see it
Speaker 1: in the United States. It might have been one of
Speaker 1: the first couple of thousand people to see it in
Speaker 1: the United States, and just we loved it. And then
Speaker 1: he would get his hands on a couple more episodes
Speaker 1: and we'd go back and have dinner and watched like
Speaker 1: two or three more episodes. So I loved it. And
Speaker 1: what happened was I got cast in a pilot with
Speaker 1: Janine Garoffalo for ABC. Mark Marrin was in it and
Speaker 1: Bob oden Kirk was in it. And this was this
Speaker 1: infamous pilot that we did the table read and they
Speaker 1: pulled the plug after the table read. So they had
Speaker 1: sets built, we had locations, we had cast, we had
Speaker 1: plane tickets. We were flying out the next day, literally
Speaker 1: the next morning after the table read, start shooting and
Speaker 1: uh did the table read? It went terribly, but I
Speaker 1: guess what, I still got paid. And that was the
Speaker 1: same pilot season as The Office, kind of the Office
Speaker 1: didn't really follow a pilot season when it was first casting, right,
Speaker 1: So what happened was Vernon Sanders, who's one of the
Speaker 1: executives and executives right, And I ran into him in
Speaker 1: the parking lot on the way to this infamous table read,
Speaker 1: and He's like, hey, we got good news and I
Speaker 1: was like, what's that is? Like, we got the rights
Speaker 1: to make the American version of the Office. And I
Speaker 1: was like, outside, I was like, oh great, And inside
Speaker 1: I was like, motherfucker, goddamn it, that's fucking sucked. Because
Speaker 1: I love the British Office so much. I didn't have
Speaker 1: an idea of like even what the American Office would be,
Speaker 1: or what role I would play or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But I was just like inside, I was just kicking myself.
Speaker 1: And then the plug gets pulled on that and then
Speaker 1: I called my people and I'm like, hey, I hear
Speaker 1: about this office, and they're like, yeah, well it was
Speaker 1: a few months to go on that. So fortunately that
Speaker 1: the space was opened and the door was opened. The
Speaker 1: universe works in mysterious ways, Brian, That's right, it does,
Speaker 1: and so you eventually get a call to go in
Speaker 1: and meet correct. I was the first audition for the office.
Speaker 1: I have in my office at home, framed the audition
Speaker 1: sheet of Alison Jones the first day of the auditions
Speaker 1: for the office, and I was number one on that list.
Speaker 1: So other people on the list, or Jenna Fisher, you
Speaker 1: can find. It's on my Instagram somewhere. It might even
Speaker 1: be in my book in the in the photos included
Speaker 1: in my books, you guys can find it. But uh,
Speaker 1: I think Adam Scott audition. I think there were, um,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of great talent that auditions. My
Speaker 1: story about that I'll share with you really quick was
Speaker 1: when Steve left, Alison Jones came to me. He had
Speaker 1: a little party, a little reception. She came and she goes,
Speaker 1: I was looking for stuff for Steve that I thought
Speaker 1: it might be cool. She probably gave that to you,
Speaker 1: Like when she was searching around and she hands me
Speaker 1: a sheet and it says Kevin and it says Brian Baumgartner,
Speaker 1: Eric stone Street and Jorge Garcia. No kidding. So that
Speaker 1: was like the final three. But oh fantastic. So you
Speaker 1: and Helo. Eric stone Street is way richer than you.
Speaker 1: He is now he sorry shoot sorry. So yeah, So
Speaker 1: on that first audition, I auditioned for both Michael and Dwight,
Speaker 1: and my Michael was just terrible. It was just simply
Speaker 1: a Ricky Gervais impersonation. And I knew that I had
Speaker 1: more of an affinity for the Dwight role. Uh, And
Speaker 1: I knew that I could really deliver on that. I
Speaker 1: just felt it in my bones. I'm like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is me, this is that is exactly my kind of weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that I mean, you're but you were so different
Speaker 1: also than Gareth in the British version. I mean he
Speaker 1: was much yeah weasily and and Dwight way more authoritarian
Speaker 1: and trying to derive power, whereas Gareth seemed more backstabby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're different in a lot of ways and similar in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. And it was this incredible luxury
Speaker 1: to go, Okay, here's Mackenzie Crook, brilliant actor, really strange
Speaker 1: looking dude, and he killed as Gareth and was so interesting,
Speaker 1: and I get to steal all of his best stuff,
Speaker 1: and then there's maybe stuff that I can add that's
Speaker 1: more of my own, so it's win win all around.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that Dwight is most known
Speaker 1: for is saying absolutely ludicrous, preposterous stuff with a total
Speaker 1: straight face and a dead pan, without any knowledge that
Speaker 1: what he's saying is ridiculous. And really, Mackenzie did that
Speaker 1: so be to flee, and I I really just frankly
Speaker 1: stole that from him. Another thing I stole from him
Speaker 1: was the haircut um. I read an interview with him
Speaker 1: where he said he went to like just a local
Speaker 1: barber shop out in like Slough or some you know,
Speaker 1: suburb of London, and he kind of got the haircut
Speaker 1: that would be the least flattering for his head and
Speaker 1: the most ridiculous haircut. And I read that I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to do that. So I spent time in
Speaker 1: the mirror figuring out what the haircut that is going
Speaker 1: to make me look the most ridiculous. I have a
Speaker 1: huge forehead and I was like, I'm going to frame
Speaker 1: my forehead perfectly with these little draperies of hair that
Speaker 1: will highlight the enormity of my carapace. Is that a word?
Speaker 1: I think it is a word. I think these guys
Speaker 1: aren't even listening. Um and then like really short on
Speaker 1: the sides, and then intense, and then it evolved over time.
Speaker 1: But interesting now, so we're not going to talk too
Speaker 1: much more about the audition process. But at what point
Speaker 1: did you meet John and Jenna and Steve in the
Speaker 1: callback sessions? Yeah? So the callback sessions were months later,
Speaker 1: mostly for for those listeners who don't know the way
Speaker 1: pilot season used to work, at least less and less so.
Speaker 1: But all the scripts would start getting released in December January,
Speaker 1: and then all the auditions where this is called pilot
Speaker 1: season January February. They'd shoot in like March, early April.
Speaker 1: Decisions would be made in late April or May about
Speaker 1: staffing up for the summer and if something was going
Speaker 1: to be on the air in September. So it so
Speaker 1: always a very narrow kind of window. It's like this,
Speaker 1: this is how this nine month window worked. So the
Speaker 1: office was outside of those bounds a little bit. I
Speaker 1: think my first audition was like in September October, and
Speaker 1: then the callback was like December, and then we shot
Speaker 1: in like February or something like that. So I had
Speaker 1: to wait months after that first audition, and they had
Speaker 1: a callback situation where they brought everyone and their mother
Speaker 1: and anyone they were considering for the role over a weekend,
Speaker 1: and Greg was incredibly thorough and I spent maybe I
Speaker 1: spent seven or eight hours on one of the first
Speaker 1: day there, and I met Jenna, I met John um
Speaker 1: Steve was shooting some other stuff, but he had a
Speaker 1: little bit of time, and we improvised together and did
Speaker 1: a couple of scenes together. We were given scene, oh here,
Speaker 1: tried this scene, tried this scene, not much time to prepare,
Speaker 1: stuff we've never seen, and just like just just shoot it,
Speaker 1: you know, and then we'd improvise, you know, like Jim
Speaker 1: brings Dwight a glass of water, and it's like just
Speaker 1: improvised Jim bringing you a glass of water, and Dwight
Speaker 1: as immediately distrustful, like as he poisoned it or something
Speaker 1: like that. And and that was not really my gig.
Speaker 1: I didn't do, you know, upright citizens Brigade or Groundlings.
Speaker 1: I wasn't really an improv guy. But I'm good at
Speaker 1: improving kind of in character. In fact, later after I
Speaker 1: was cast, Greg came to me and we had a
Speaker 1: coffee and he gave me kind of a little bit
Speaker 1: of a warning talk, and it kind of scared me. Essentially,
Speaker 1: he said, in a very diplomatic way, you improvised better
Speaker 1: than you act when you're on the script. And I
Speaker 1: was like why, He's like, yeah, more, it's more natural.
Speaker 1: It's more when you're doing scripted stuff, it feels a
Speaker 1: little heavy and a little forced. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: and this was before we were going to shoot the pilot.
Speaker 1: So I begged my manager. I was like, I want
Speaker 1: to see the audition tapes. I want to see my
Speaker 1: audition tapes. And sure enough, he was right, because somehow,
Speaker 1: when I improvised, it was just a little looser. It's
Speaker 1: a little more off the cough. It was a little weirder.
Speaker 1: When I was doing scripted stuff. It's I don't want
Speaker 1: to say it sounded like a theater actor or something
Speaker 1: like that, but it sounded a little more scripted. It
Speaker 1: didn't have that kind of documentary feel that the office
Speaker 1: had to have. And it was a really great learning experience, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I need to just kind of let the script, let
Speaker 1: the script go, improvise around the script, let it be
Speaker 1: much lighter. That is fascinating. I did not know that story,
Speaker 1: but it kept me up at night. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, what does that mean? I improvised a good
Speaker 1: improviser and a terrible, terrible regular actor. So I want
Speaker 1: to talk about, Um, you creating the character of Dwight,
Speaker 1: how you went about that? Like what elements you chose
Speaker 1: that that you brought into Dwight? How did you approach that?
Speaker 1: So um, I always say that in terms of like
Speaker 1: when people ask me about playing Dwight, I always say
Speaker 1: that I think my goal was to make Dwight very specific,
Speaker 1: you know, having you know, Dwight have a pager, stand
Speaker 1: a certain way, like drive a certain way, sitting in
Speaker 1: his chair a certain way, have certain attitudes about certain
Speaker 1: things that are very specified because no one had done
Speaker 1: like combination muscle car nerd. You know, when you think
Speaker 1: about it, there's a lot of disparate elements that go
Speaker 1: into the creation of Dwight, like heavy metal muscle car
Speaker 1: rarely equals Battlestar Galactica fan, And I do think this
Speaker 1: is true. As an actor, the more specific you make
Speaker 1: your character. That made him more human and then more relatable.
Speaker 1: Um so muscle car nerd um heavy metal, you know, amish.
Speaker 1: Of course, Greg Daniels always said that the beat farmer
Speaker 1: thing was his grandparents. I think we're beat literally beat
Speaker 1: farmers in Poland and they grew beats. Um, I think
Speaker 1: like before the Holocaust, and uh so he put that
Speaker 1: in from that. I did not know that. So the
Speaker 1: beat farm was from yes. And then the glasses, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I really do think that Dwight has
Speaker 1: influenced popular culture because now all the hipsters were the
Speaker 1: Dwight classes. You were the first hipster. Yeah, I really was.
Speaker 1: I was like the hipster nerd who took those glasses.
Speaker 1: And and now everyone who goes to Intelligencia Coffee and
Speaker 1: silver Lake or Brooklyn or wearing those same glasses. Um.
Speaker 1: Free commercial for Intelligencia Coffee. Thank you, I'll take my
Speaker 1: gift card please. Um. Was there anything for you as
Speaker 1: a theater actor like myself, It's a loaded question. Was
Speaker 1: there anything physically, any physical manifestation of Dwight within Rain.
Speaker 1: That's a great question, and yes there was. And I've
Speaker 1: never really talked about this before, but I went to
Speaker 1: theater school. I was an n y U grad program,
Speaker 1: did a lot of like clowning, and did a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of physical work and physical theater. You
Speaker 1: were involved in physical theater in Minneapolis, And I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to sound pretentious at all, like mr Theater, but
Speaker 1: when you get that kind of training, a lot of
Speaker 1: it is physical, Like how do you find a character
Speaker 1: in your body? You know, that's part of clown work
Speaker 1: as well. But there were certain elements of Dwight that
Speaker 1: if I needed to kind of get into character, I
Speaker 1: could just put my attention, put my focus in certain
Speaker 1: parts of my body, and I would immediately be Dwight,
Speaker 1: like a really like a straight neck, you know, and
Speaker 1: uh kind of hips forward and kind of thinking about
Speaker 1: like like big hips Like I don't know if you
Speaker 1: noticed that Dwight always stands too close to people. If
Speaker 1: someone's sitting down and he's standing next to him, like
Speaker 1: his hips are like really like big next to their
Speaker 1: face kind of and there's kind of a ramrod neck,
Speaker 1: a little bit of a swagger and the shoulders thrown back.
Speaker 1: Those were some of the elements of Dwight that if
Speaker 1: I was ever feeling like do I really have him
Speaker 1: early on. You know, after you do two seasons, you
Speaker 1: can just do the character in your sleep. But but
Speaker 1: early on, there were some of those physical choices that
Speaker 1: really were like clown kind of choices that I could
Speaker 1: go to to just help me get into the world.
Speaker 1: What about you for Kevin? Did you have something for
Speaker 1: Kevin too? I mean too that I can articulate. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there were more. For me, it was my jaw.
Speaker 1: I knew there was a specific place that I could
Speaker 1: put my jaw that was him. And also I imagined
Speaker 1: him for the jaw thing. You had a weird mouth.
Speaker 1: You would make like a little mouth like this, so
Speaker 1: it's like a little jutting it for your lips should
Speaker 1: be a little a little like pursed, Yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 1: also I had the ideas as he moved through the space.
Speaker 1: There were two things. One is he wasn't aware of
Speaker 1: his size within the space right, which to me was
Speaker 1: always hilarious when I would come against Angela right because
Speaker 1: I just wouldn't see her there and knock her around.
Speaker 1: And the other was that there was something about my
Speaker 1: torso that it doesn't move agilely from side to side.
Speaker 1: It's all sort of just all connected down at my
Speaker 1: hips and that there's yeah, yeah, yeah, so the whole
Speaker 1: body turns at the same whole and maybe even shuffle
Speaker 1: my feet to turn to one. Um, hold on one second,
Speaker 1: that is not your ine, that is water speak for yourself.
Speaker 1: Of Um, why do people love Dwight? Well, we talked
Speaker 1: earlier about the specificity of Dwight, and I think that
Speaker 1: how his glasses are and how his beeper is, and
Speaker 1: that the certain colors that he wears in the car
Speaker 1: he drives, and how he sees the world. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, the thing I hate the most about comedy,
Speaker 1: and I have been known to tiptoe into this land,
Speaker 1: but the thing I hate them most about it is
Speaker 1: that when someone knows that they're being funny. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the I think keys to the comedy the
Speaker 1: Office is that none of the characters thought of themselves
Speaker 1: as being funny. I think the documentary element helped with
Speaker 1: that tremendously, And I tried to play Dwight as outrageously
Speaker 1: as possible and as grounded and realistic as possible at
Speaker 1: the same time. So look at any scene and what's happening,
Speaker 1: as matter how ridiculous it is you can always tell
Speaker 1: there's a child, there's a big hid in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he could do just preposterous things, but I always tried
Speaker 1: to motivate them internally with some internal drive, like this
Speaker 1: is how Dwight saw the world, This is how you
Speaker 1: always knew how Dwight felt. I guess that would be
Speaker 1: my number one answer is like you can always tell
Speaker 1: what Dwight is feeling and what he's going through on
Speaker 1: the inside. And he thinks he's hiding, you know, people think, oh,
Speaker 1: is he you know, is he is he on the spectrum?
Speaker 1: Does he have autism or something like that? But his
Speaker 1: heart is on his sleeve. You can always see what
Speaker 1: he's feeling, you know, is even if he's being haughty
Speaker 1: or even if he's being arrogant, like, you always see
Speaker 1: what's going on in the inside. And I think that
Speaker 1: that allowed people to relate to him. So in those
Speaker 1: moments when Dwight was sad or hurt, or or put
Speaker 1: off or disappointed, like, people really felt for him. What
Speaker 1: were your initial thoughts of the Pilot when you first
Speaker 1: saw it? Um? Are you proud of it? I thought
Speaker 1: the pilot. I think if you look at all of
Speaker 1: our episodes, the pilots one of the weakest. I think
Speaker 1: it feels a little labored. It's not as funny as
Speaker 1: when we find our own voice in a few episodes,
Speaker 1: the healthcare and basketball episodes a few ones later on. Um,
Speaker 1: I liked it a lot, but because I knew the
Speaker 1: British Office so well, I just felt like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is this is feeling a little bit like a Paler
Speaker 1: imitation of the British Office. So I wasn't the hugest fan,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I really knew the potential
Speaker 1: of the show that we had right um So going
Speaker 1: back and watching some of the stuff that I want
Speaker 1: to say too, and this story has been told before,
Speaker 1: but that first season, for you listener is out there
Speaker 1: who don't understand this, Like we did six episodes. That's
Speaker 1: never done. No one does six episodes of the first season,
Speaker 1: especially back in those days of network television. Network television
Speaker 1: only makes money when they hit syndications and they have
Speaker 1: to have over a hundred episodes and they want to
Speaker 1: shoot as many as possible. So it was really weird
Speaker 1: that they like found some money in the budget to
Speaker 1: kind of shoot six under the radar episodes of the Office.
Speaker 1: But I mean, we barely hung on for the first
Speaker 1: year and a half, and and then we were you know,
Speaker 1: a moderate hit for a while, and then we were
Speaker 1: kind of fading. You're so fired. Whoever, that was so
Speaker 1: fund I hit you with my five pounds and mixed nuts.
Speaker 1: So who would have ever thunk that fifteen years after
Speaker 1: shooting the pilot, this is when we're having this conversation.
Speaker 1: The office would be bigger than ever, two hundred episodes,
Speaker 1: you know, defining roles for for all of us. Do
Speaker 1: you remember after we shot the first six episodes of
Speaker 1: season two, you and Steve and I We're sitting in
Speaker 1: Steve's trailer and Steve said, well, at least we got
Speaker 1: to do twelve mm hmm, and we thought we were done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And wasn't the next order for like four? Two? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then there was four and then like one, like hey,
Speaker 1: we're doing four? How they ordered one more like it?
Speaker 1: It's like it's just like just dribs and drafts and
Speaker 1: this is just not done in that world of network television. Exactly. Yes,
Speaker 1: what I remember is six, four, two, one, seven, and
Speaker 1: then they said, okay, you can do twenty two. And
Speaker 1: then a week later we got a third season m
Speaker 1: and it was like, oh we're rolling, Yeah, we're off
Speaker 1: to the races. An NBC hung that big bulletin board
Speaker 1: up No excuse me, what's it called? A billboard word
Speaker 1: over by its offices with the Office on it, like
Speaker 1: from out of nowhere, all of a sudden, we were
Speaker 1: like their prize new show, and we were going from
Speaker 1: like almost canceled too, because the numbers just started to
Speaker 1: shoot up dramatically and the interest in the show started
Speaker 1: to shoot up dramatically. I mean there was forty year
Speaker 1: old Virgin, Yes, that certainly contributed to it. My Name
Speaker 1: is Earl. We followed My Name Is Earl, which had
Speaker 1: much stronger numbers right out of the gate and really
Speaker 1: helped us. And I talked about this in my book,
Speaker 1: But what happened around that Christmas time was that the
Speaker 1: first video iPods came out and they were preloaded with
Speaker 1: the Office Christmas episode on it. So basically all of
Speaker 1: the you talk about like influencers, like I view it
Speaker 1: as like who got video iPods for Christmas? The first
Speaker 1: year they came out, rich kids, So all the rich
Speaker 1: kids around America all of a sudden had an Office
Speaker 1: episode and it was young people with their iPods who
Speaker 1: knew how to set up an iTunes account because their
Speaker 1: parents didn't. And that was the amazing thing. And I
Speaker 1: don't think I think that blindsided everybody, including NBC, that
Speaker 1: we would be so popular with young people, right, um, iTunes,
Speaker 1: the video iPod technology. I mean the show were you
Speaker 1: on my Space very briefly, like for like two and
Speaker 1: a half months, because that was Jenna and myself and
Speaker 1: Angela and b J really used my Space in that
Speaker 1: first season season and a half when we were trying
Speaker 1: to cultivate viewers. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I hadn't thought
Speaker 1: about that. So we were the kind of the first
Speaker 1: show that went hand in hand with technology and social media. Yes,
Speaker 1: and then you became kind of king of Twitter. That
Speaker 1: was later, but yeah, two thousand nine. Early on in Twitter,
Speaker 1: I joined early because I was founding the company sol
Speaker 1: Pancake and they kind of insisted that I do it.
Speaker 1: And young people, young nerdy people that were starting out
Speaker 1: on Twitter and comedy people. Um, I was like the
Speaker 1: big cheese for the first like nine months of Twitter
Speaker 1: that were hardly any bigger celebrities than me. So I
Speaker 1: immediately like had a million followers on Twitter early on, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what um so the cold opens the show kind of
Speaker 1: started finding itself and also finding its form, right, Like
Speaker 1: having the cold opens that we're separate from the regular episodes, right,
Speaker 1: what do you feel like those allowed us to do well?
Speaker 1: I think they discovered early on. Greg is one of
Speaker 1: the people I've worked with the most who has this
Speaker 1: ability to ride this line of like real instinct, like
Speaker 1: he'll just throw something out like try this, I think
Speaker 1: that will be really funny and it's weird and it's
Speaker 1: out there and it's not related to anything, but also
Speaker 1: like really almost spocklike precision about like what works about
Speaker 1: characters and what works about storylines. And one of the
Speaker 1: things they realized early on is that like you know,
Speaker 1: Jim pranking Dwight, which the British show started obviously, but
Speaker 1: audiences loved that, so that was a really great way
Speaker 1: to have cold opens. They weren't all pranks, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them were pranks, and the audience just love them.
Speaker 1: I still to this day and people like, what's your
Speaker 1: favorite prank? When he did this prank, when he did
Speaker 1: that prank? Do you guys prank each other? I always
Speaker 1: get that, like do you prank each other back say
Speaker 1: she's like, no, we don't. It takes too much work
Speaker 1: and effort to prank someone. You have to plan it
Speaker 1: and think it through. We were just they're shooting a
Speaker 1: TV show, like you know. The only thing that I
Speaker 1: could think was and it happened like eight times. I
Speaker 1: remember there was a period probably when the computer started working,
Speaker 1: where we had we could send I M s to
Speaker 1: each other, so it would be like what are you doing,
Speaker 1: like what while someone was doing a scene like that's
Speaker 1: kind of the only like yeah, But so I think
Speaker 1: the cold opens really helped hook an audience in. Remember
Speaker 1: this was not streaming. You're gonna have a commercial between
Speaker 1: my name is Earl and then the office is going
Speaker 1: to start. You gotta hook him. You got that ninety seconds,
Speaker 1: two minutes. You want them to sit through the commercials
Speaker 1: that come right after that and stick with the show.
Speaker 1: So I think Greg was really canny about that too,
Speaker 1: kind of like we got to hook him in and
Speaker 1: those things became swiftly kind of one of the strongest
Speaker 1: aspects of the show. Well, and one of the other
Speaker 1: things that happened, which was a purely business decision, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this. This was when
Speaker 1: the DVR. You would set the DVR to record from
Speaker 1: nine to nine thirty right, and then we started showing
Speaker 1: up at eight fifty nine. So if you had not
Speaker 1: set it to start earlier, right, you would miss it.
Speaker 1: So you would need to tune in earlier, which means
Speaker 1: if you were watching another channel, you'd have to turn
Speaker 1: over to NBC before nine o'clock. And that changed the
Speaker 1: whole ratings things, and then the supersized episodes and all
Speaker 1: of those things. I I you know, speaking of the
Speaker 1: length of the episodes, we did a lot of episodes
Speaker 1: that were double episodes, and we did a lot of
Speaker 1: episodes that were just longer episodes. Yes, but I always
Speaker 1: felt and I wonder if Greg would do this at
Speaker 1: some point in time. I don't know if there's some
Speaker 1: vault that has all of the office material. Is that
Speaker 1: the first not the first cut, but the rough cut
Speaker 1: that would get passed around for like notes that was
Speaker 1: too long. The six minute cuts of episodes were always
Speaker 1: way better, and I wonder if they'll ever be. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think there would be a really smart money making
Speaker 1: scheme is to re release kind of directors cuts of
Speaker 1: all the episodes and let them be to nine minutes long.
Speaker 1: But it was always just such a pain to like
Speaker 1: cut them down from like that twenty five minutes sweet
Speaker 1: Spot to that twenty one minute forty twond mark that
Speaker 1: they would have to be to air with the commercials.
Speaker 1: Was there any story or anything that got cut out
Speaker 1: that you specifically remember regretting. I have one that I
Speaker 1: yelled at the editors about. I think there was a
Speaker 1: lot more with me and Ellie doing death RACKI early
Speaker 1: on for Game of Thrones, that was they cut that
Speaker 1: almost down to almost nothing, and I remember being pistols
Speaker 1: like that was so funny, and they're like, we gotta
Speaker 1: lose stuff, Sorry, we gotta cut stuff. And because it
Speaker 1: was like the C story, so they're always going to
Speaker 1: cut the C story. The A story is always going
Speaker 1: to be like Michael and jan and something, and then
Speaker 1: B stories like Dwight and Jim battling, and then the
Speaker 1: C story is going to be like some smaller thing.
Speaker 1: And sometimes Dwight is in the A story, but a
Speaker 1: lot of times he's in the C story, and that's
Speaker 1: always the one that gets kind of cut to the bone, right,
Speaker 1: What was your one? Mine was um baby shower and
Speaker 1: Jan is having the baby, and um, Kevin asks her
Speaker 1: where she got her sperm donated from, and Jan says,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a very very exclusive place. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: know it. And Kevin says, the one behind the eye
Speaker 1: hop and they'll look on Steve's face and her face,
Speaker 1: and the idea that Jan's baby might have made was
Speaker 1: just pure. And they were like, yeah, we're not doing
Speaker 1: anything with that or like what if that. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's just so funny. All right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna stop there for now. I'm so sorry we have
Speaker 1: to stop right in the middle. That's what he said.
Speaker 1: I guess, uh, don't freak out because you are going
Speaker 1: to hear even more from Rain in a future episode.
Speaker 1: But I just I had to leave you with that thought,
Speaker 1: the idea that Kevin and may have been the father
Speaker 1: of Jan's baby. In fact, I'm quite convinced that he
Speaker 1: was that that that Kevin was the father of Astrid,
Speaker 1: and he would have loved the name and giggled at it.
Speaker 1: So think about that before we're back. Anyway, Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. You guys are the best. I am so
Speaker 1: excited to have you with me. On this journey and
Speaker 1: we'll see you next week for another episode of the
Speaker 1: Office Deep Dive. The Office Deep Dive is hosted and
Speaker 1: executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Langley.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Tessa Kramer, Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Emily Carr, and our assistant editor is Diego Tapia. My
Speaker 1: main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme
Speaker 1: song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton,
Speaker 1: and the so it is mixed by seth Olandsky. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to the amazing production crew who recorded these interviews
Speaker 1: with us Joanna Sakalowski, Julia Smith, Benny Spiwack Russell with Jaya,
Speaker 1: Margaret Borchard, Christian Bonaventura, Matthew Rosenfield, Alex Mobison, Lucy Savage,
Speaker 1: Judson Pickwork, Jack Walden, Jonathan Mayer, Andrew Stephen, David Lincoln,
Speaker 1: and said A Lee