November 23, 2021 • 54 mins
On this week of giving thanks, Brian brings in the actual world’s best boss for the final installment of their conversation, the incomparable and unbelievably brilliant showrunner and creator of The Office, Greg Daniels. Greg and Brian discuss the way that Steve’s dedication to improv changed the show, the awards ceremony that went horribly wrong, and what the man that every single cast and crew member is thankful for - is thankful for himself.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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(00:45):
I'm Joe Piazza, host of the podcast Under the Influence.
If you tuned into our last season, you know that
the world of mom influencers on Instagram contains multitudes. Yes,
there are pretty pictures and gorgeous kids, and yes there
is lots of money behind a lot of those pictures.
But there's also something much more dark and complicated going
(01:06):
on in the background, and that speaks to everything that
is wrong with how we treat women in the world.
On season two of Under the Influence, we're advocating for
the women who make content and the women who consume it.
We're going into some of the darkest corners of the
social media universe, and we might just have a plan
to shut it all the hell down. Listen to season
(01:27):
two of Under the Influence with Joe Piazza on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Hi. I'm Greg Daniels. I was the showrunner
of the Office. Hello, Hello everybody. Thank you for diving
(01:54):
in to another episode of The Office Deep Dive. See
what I did there. I am your host Brian baumb Gartner,
and I am so thankful that you are here. Yes,
for those of you listening in real time, it is
Thanksgiving week here in the States, and I love this
(02:15):
time of year truly. The Crisp Air my Birthday, the
Fall Leaves, my Birthday Football. It is the best, all right.
And as I mentioned last week, working on this podcast
with some of my favorite people and the whole entire
world has just been well, it's hard to put into words,
(02:40):
but it is definitely The thing that I am most
thankful for this thanksgiving my family aside, of course, but
know this my podcast, this podcast, it has truly changed
my life. And the other thing that, without question chin
(03:00):
has changed my life. Who I'm so thankful to be
talking to today is our showrunner Greg Daniels. His brilliance,
his mentorship, his general aura of greatness. I am just
so happy and feel so blessed that this man is
(03:24):
a part of my life. So I'm going to bring
you today the last part of my conversation with Greg.
As you know, he was the creator of the Office,
and he has gone on to make Parks and Wreck
and Upload and Space Force and so much more. He
also wrote the forward of our new book, Welcome to
(03:45):
dunder Mifflin, So if you get a chance, go check
that out. But it was important for me that on
this week of giving thanks, that I give thanks to
my boss of almost a decade. And while famously Michael
Scott was the world's best boss, everything he knew he
(04:10):
learned from Greg Daniels. Is that a compliment? I don't know,
but anyway, give it up for the best boss on
the entire planet the galaxy. The incomparable Greg Daniels, Bubble
(04:32):
and Squeak. I love it Bubble and Squeak on Bubble
and Squeaker Cookie every month, left over from the night before. Okay,
(04:55):
well here's kind of a fun one. So you worked with, um,
Steve Carroll, Yeah, John Krasinski, Rain Wilson, and well myself
and Um, I've heard it has been said that your
favorite actor of all time is Paul Lieberstein. Paul is
(05:16):
very good. I mean, I'm certainly not gonna say anything
negative about Paul. I don't want to rank you guys.
I don't think that's fair. But Paul is like it
didn't expect him to be so good, you know, but
he basically just filled in at the table read in
season one, and Kevin would go to the table reads
and Paul got laughs and Kevin was like, what happened
(05:37):
to that guy with the red hair? You know? Put
him in more. And that's how he got on the
show pretty much. But he always had an interesting attitude
about it. And you know, Paul is like a jazz vibraphonist.
Uh and I feel like something about that jazz timing
was in his performance and was like a little bit unusual. Yeah,
(05:58):
I know, he's great, but I don't want to say, like, uh,
anybody's better than anybody else. Why did you Why did
you choose Paul and Jen to run the show after
when when you left to go to Parks. Well, Um,
the interesting thing about making the writer's performers is that
(06:19):
that kind of bites you a little bit. Like season one,
we wrote all the scripts, we shot all the shows,
and then I went into editing and just did full
time editing. And that was great because you could be
physically presented everything. It was really fun. And that was when,
you know, Paul became a character, Mindy became a character.
(06:41):
B J was always a character, and there was no
downside to that. Season two we start and then those
guys go off to the set and I'm suddenly looking around.
I've got like half the staff, you know. I got
Mike and Jen and Lee Gene and that's it. Everybody
else is on set, you know, and then they'd show up. Obviously,
still did great stuff and wrote great episodes and everything,
(07:03):
but there were times when the room was a little
bit thin because they were acting. And Mike was a
very mature, full package, like he could produce, he could write,
and he wasn't one of the main characters. And I
also felt very much responsible to the cast and to Steve,
And if Steve was not going to go do movies
(07:24):
and bug out and was going to stick with it,
I didn't want to be the guy who was, you know,
gonna do something to detriment the show, right, So I
didn't want to. I haven't be like, oh, you can't
find me into your pall on set because they're doing
a spin off or whatever and it and I guess
Mike had worked there for four years and he was
(07:45):
going to go anyway, do you know what I mean.
It's not like he was gonna put the rest of
his career working there. He was pretty icious and headed places.
So I felt like he would be a good choice
to do it because I could set it up with
him and then he could run it and I could
still see the office room. So and we had different ideas,
(08:06):
like the parks is the idea of okay, it's mockumentary.
Instead of being about business in the private sector, it's
about the public sector. But at the same time, I
had an idea that I thought was good, which was
all right, workplace is a good genre of TV. Comedy,
(08:27):
but an even bigger genre is family show. What about
a mockumentary about a family show? And I had a
plan after Mike was going to spin off and do Parks.
I was going to do a show with Jen and
we were going to do the family sitcom one and
we had worked it out ed Helms was gonna maybe
(08:50):
be the lead with Catherine Tate as his wife, and
they were, and it was going to be the mocumentary
looking at a cul de sac, some kind of suburban
cul de sac. And then Modern Family came out and
you know, was huge hit. That kind of put the
end to that plan, right. Mike Sure said about being
(09:10):
asked to go and develop Parks and Wreck, they basically
said that it feels like m Mozart told me he
wants to design a piano with me. It's not Steinway,
Moats are boats are designing a piano. Let's are very
incompetent piano maker, but still somebody who probably should follow.
(09:32):
But yeah, that's cool, that's nice. Yeah, it was. It
was certainly fun to do Parks. I mean we you know,
we're so close to the office that we thought Parks
was just completely different. I mean, like we didn't see
it as having any bearing at all on the office,
Like we got a female and it's a completely you know,
(09:53):
different world and everything. And of course, in the same
way like it took season one too be able to
get free of the English show, you know, like season
one Parks was too close probably still and I think
we figured that out. We didn't have a pilot because
Ben was now running NBC and Ben hooked us straight
(10:15):
to series for Parks, and so by the time we
looked at the footage of the pilot, we already shooting
episode three or something from Parks. But we kind of
steered it around. Part of it was I remember thinking, like, Okay,
it's not all about a crazy central character. It's more
(10:36):
like thirty Rock maybe, where the central character is surrounded
by crazy and like when we kind of made that adjustment,
it seemed to work better. But but Amy's like very
different from Steve. She's a different type of performer and
what way, well, like I don't think she can hide
her intelligence. Like one of to me, one of Steve's
(10:59):
um real gifts is you can stare at his face
and he's doing something really stupid and you can't tell
that he is aware that is stupid, you know what
I mean. He completely hides his intelligence, and Amy probably
could if she wanted to, but chooses not to, and
(11:20):
she just she doesn't hide it. And I think maybe
it's also being a woman, you know what I mean.
It's like it means something different to hide your intelligence.
It's more retro and you know, uncool, probably to hide
your intelligence as a woman. So it didn't fit great
to have her play naive. She had to be a
little smarter. What do you think was the bigger loss,
(11:44):
Michael or Steve? Huh wow? Oh yeah, well, um, I
do think that when we said goodbye to Steve, it
became really clear how much the crew loved him, and
the stories from different crew members was really sweet. I
(12:08):
mean I remember like when forty year old Virgin was
still in theaters and he was the biggest movie star
in the country, and we were shooting I think the Dundee's,
and um, we were in a parking lot like of
a defunct Black Angus. It's two or three in the morning,
(12:28):
and his entire role is to drive the car away
from Jenna after saying his line. And he's doing it
at three in the morning. Take after take after take
to support her in that scene where so many people
would have been like, yeah, yeah, put the photo double in. Goodbye,
And I'm doing a show with him now. I'm doing
(12:49):
Space Force with him now, and he's number one on
the call sheet. Same deal. We just had our rat party.
The crew came up to me. They were all like,
it starts at the top. The vibe on the set
is so beautiful and everybody, you know, such a great
feeling and and everything. But you know, one of the
things that I got out of working with Steve was
(13:09):
like I didn't really have an improv background, you know
what I mean. Like I had come from Sketch Comedy
and then Simpson's. And when we started working together, he
told me about this book Truth and Comedy, which is
kind of like the bible of the Chicago improv world.
And I found that to be really the key to
(13:29):
kind of how he worked, and it saved us a
bunch of times. When one of my favorite memories of
Steve as a producer or as a you know, not
as an actor, is we were doing Dundee's and the
problem was we went to a Black Angus and then
we went to to Chili's restaurant, and we didn't actually
(13:51):
get any money for it. You know, it's not like
what they paid us a lot of money to use Chili's.
What they did was they sent us their branded decorations
for set deck. So we say, yeah, we've got the
menus and we got some signs and stuff. Anyway, so
we're there. We're at this defunct black Angus for three
days shooting with all the chili stuff, and like on
(14:11):
day two, the Chili's lawyers call and they go, oh, hey,
we just looked at the script, the part where Pam
is so drunk she throws up. That's not gonna work
for us. We're being sued for overserving patrons and we can't.
Uh that's a bad look, so you can't do that.
(14:32):
And I was like cocky at this point. I was like, yeah,
well we're shot two thirds of our shoot, you know.
And I turned to the Universal executives and I was like, well,
check the contract with the Chilis because obviously, you know,
they don't have editorial control. And they're like, uh, there's
no contract. There's no written contract. We just thought we'd
(14:52):
say fifty dollars of set deck, and we just did
it on a handshake. So then we were like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait,
what do we do? What do we do? And they
were like, well, you don't have to take that note,
but in that case, you can't show any of the
branded set decoration that we sent you, which meant that
we would have had to shoot go back to the
beginning and not used the two days that we already shot,
(15:14):
which we couldn't afford, right because it was hundreds of
thousands of dollars. So I was like getting ill in
the corner, freaking out, and Steve notices and it's like,
what's up? And I told him the situation and the
thing that was so cool to me was this improv thing,
like he had utter faith always that he would his
creativity would never flag, that he would be able to
find an answer when it was necessary, Like that's what
(15:37):
all that improv training was. And I completely shot down.
I was like going to blow my brains out, and
he was like okay, all right, well all right, and
then he came up with this notion of the manager
being interviewed and saying that Pam had a lifetime band
from Chili's and it solved everything. And I really was like,
huh that's a different way to live than I'm used to.
(15:58):
You know, the overthing here doesn't doesn't do that right.
I had all my plans had just been thrown for
a loop, and uh so I feel like I try
to take that away. I think it's like a little
bit of a religion for him to be an improv guy.
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you and start exploring. I discovered the fourth dot Org
brought to you by the United States Fourth Service and
the AD Council. What do you remember about because you
(19:21):
obviously you came back for Goodbye Michael? Um? How did
you feel writing him off? I mean, did you did
you feel like the show was going to should go
on past him? Um? Yeah, I did, because you know,
part of the painful part of my job is as
(19:43):
the showrunner, you're not done when the rap right. You've
got to go edit all of the things. So, like
at least the third maybe more of my job was
sitting with the editors cutting the show down and it
then it made a huge difference in our show because
our rough cuts were thirty eight minutes long and we
had to get down to only one oh three or whatever.
So um, that's an enormous amount to throw out, and
(20:06):
it was very painful because we could get the show
down to twenty six minutes or something with with just
cutting the fat, but then after that you got to
cut the muscle. You know, there's good scenes that are
not going to be broadcast. And you know, once we
got five or six years into the show, the full
ensemble was really working and capable of doing really good stuff.
(20:30):
And so the best argument to me to continue was
it would let all these people who didn't have as
much screen time have more screen time. And Steve didn't
obviously didn't want us to shut down, so I kind
of felt like it was it was good that we
would do. Okay, Now, the difficulty is that people are
(20:53):
not created to be leads, and you know, all that
stuff that I was saying in the beginning of positioning
Steve in season two and finding you know, ways that
he uh has good intentions and is more of a
lead and everything, Like I knew the Dwight had been
(21:13):
created to be the foil to these people and was
a charactery creation to begin with. Andy Bernard was created
to be the Stanford version of Dwight. You know, in
season three, like, uh, you know, Jim shows up in
Stanford and he's got this weirdo who's like a preppy weirdo,
(21:36):
like a different type of weirdo, and um and well,
and also he was an idiot, like unlike Dwight, who
you know, Dwight was an idiot in his own way,
but I mean, like sorry bad at his job, Like
he had been positioned as being not good at his job.
He was very good at his job. He punched holes
(21:56):
in walls, you know, he wouldn't needed a lot of
It's the same kind of moving the character over that
we did in season two, and I believe Paul was
doing that with Andy, but it was different because we
were Everybody was paying close attention to the show at
that point, so there was definitely a lot of Like
there was a lot of for some reason. The thing
(22:16):
with the Office is like people get super into it obviously,
which is great, but then there's then there's so much
attention and worry about changing it or touching it or
you know, don't touch my my beloved thing. Right, So
in the same way there was all this negative attention
about adapting the British show. I think that there was
a lot of you know, worry about making any changes
(22:39):
to it, right. Well, but I think you you think
of the office right as this place of stasis, right,
and we're all there in one room, and there's the
whole bullpen and everybody's there all the time, and it's
all the same. But I think one of the special
things that you did was you created sort of a
kinetic energy by change, by constantly changing it and not
(23:02):
keeping it the same. Bringing in the Stanford branch and
Ed and Rashida, or Jenna leaving and going to art
school or so much of that was being driven by
Pam and Jim and the romantic storyline and the way
those two characters were set up. They were soulmates. And
what I didn't want to do was, like so many shows,
(23:27):
they come together, they break apart, they come together, they
break apart. You know, it didn't seem real. I felt like,
when they finally get together, they're gonna be together. I
don't see anything breaking them up. So then the question was, well,
how do you spin this out for a certain number
of years? Right? So, um, you know, so a lot
of it was what are the obstacles? And we you know,
(23:48):
when I was trying to figure out what came next
in the show. I didn't have an entire season broken.
I would be able to have about a half a
season arct out. And the thought with Pam and Jim was, okay,
you know, season one, she's obviously with Roy. Well, actually,
(24:09):
season one, the only kind of thing was he was
obviously pining, and then he starts dating first girl, right right,
So season two she's with Roy and he's getting closer
and closer to confessing his feelings and he rolls the dice.
And you always feel like when you're watching a TV show,
you you're worry about the yank, you know, that's what
(24:30):
we call it in the writer's room, where the jeopardy
of the episode is something you don't really believe because
it would change the show. You know, like you don't
really believe like Rain is going to go work for Staples.
Why it's going to leave the show. It's like, no,
he's too important to the show. You're not gonna set
him the Staples. So we set up the situation where
Jim was like, well, maybe I should take that job
(24:51):
in Stanford, and um, we were like, is that a yank?
I don't know. We're worried, is that a yank? And
then we were like, let's let's put him in Stanford,
you know, let's really make it happen, and that'll give
us a whole new lease on the Jim Pam thing
because it's a new obstacle, and that cooled it off
a lot. And then by the time he finally came back,
(25:13):
he had Karen and that gave us another thing. And
then around the like beach games area, the obstacle was Okay,
the obstacle is now Pam. It's in Pam's court. She
wants to be with Jim, but she's too timid, and
so then she walks on the fire and we were
like kind of got past that obstacle, and then eventually
was like, well, I can't see any more obstacles. Gotta
(25:35):
get it together and get them together sooner, like slightly
sooner than the audience thinks, so that you could preserve
you know, a surprise to it. Uh yeah. So by
that drove an awful lot of the changes and bringing
people in and everything. Another thing that was super unique
about what you did, and I remember you talking about
(25:55):
it when it was going on, but that you wanted
the episode it's to air roughly when they were happening, right,
So it's obvious every network show once Christmas around Christmas
time or whatever, but that it was happening sort of
within the calendar year, and that you chose to keep
the form and the format of each episode is one day.
It takes place over one day, and in the summer,
(26:18):
the camera crew goes on their holiday and their vacation
and they're not there, so we don't see it as
opposed to Ross and Rachel kissing and then four months
passing and the next moment is the same moment that
we left with, because the audience now has to work
and find out what happened, what happened? Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, No,
(26:40):
I think that that was um, you know that that
works well. Uh. I mean obviously Friends did good too,
oh I know, But that was a conscious decision for
you that it was important that it seemed real. And
again also like if you're going to try and stay
in the pace, you got to catch up over the
summer somehow. I mean, we did it with weight loss,
(27:01):
we we did a different type thing, yes, but m yeah,
I don't know. I mean it helped with the storytelling
to jump a little bit, because the other thing is like,
with the Office being so realistic, sometimes it is hard
to do a restart or to jump and you sometimes
you have to shoot down ideas because you're like, well,
how did they get there from yesterday? So sometimes a
(27:24):
little uh time jump is really good for that, right,
why did you come back? Well, two questions and two
questions one. Um, the Office has a beginning, a middle,
and an end, and it was my belief that you
(27:44):
knew fairly early what that end was going to be. Well,
it did shift though, because like my idea for the
end in the beginning was like around season two, I
had this idea that you know, I was a big fan.
First of all, I love documentaries and I was a
big fan of seven Up. If you remember that one,
well seven Up changes every seven years, it was fourteen
(28:07):
up Up. And what it is is they are following
a group of British seven year olds. This is guy
Michael Appted and and he's been doing it. They just
did like sixty up or something. That's that's how old
the segmentary is. They're following these guys for every stage
of their life. And um, I think that is like
(28:28):
a reality show thing too of like, oh, it's Survivor
Survivors over and let's get them together on a stage
and see what happened. And I thought, well, this is cool, right,
we could get them together on a stage and you
think that it didn't work out for certain things that
you want, but the documentary is still filming. Things are
(28:50):
going to happen backstage at the wrap up. That was
kind of my notion was that I would provide an
unhappy ending for Jim and Pam in the last episode
that looked like the series, and then I would do
the wrap up and I'd have a happy ending at
the wrap up something like that. Anyway, this is the
obviously five seven years out, so this is just a thought.
So then the idea of a wedding also was a
(29:12):
good one because it attracts people back. So I mean,
I think the idea was, let's jump a year, you know,
like if you jump a year, you can really find
out what happened to everybody in more of a rappie
up way. And then we're like, well, let's do both,
you know what I mean. And it made sense kind
of like the if I was the documentary crew and
I knew Dwight was getting married. That's when I would
do my reunion show because everybody's coming in for the wedding,
(29:35):
because otherwise I don't think I can get everybody, like
I can't get Toby to come back from wherever he
was Poland Yeah, and were you were you ready for
the show to end that season nine? I mean, for
for me personally, this was the most wonderful, you know,
experience in all aspects. It was like creatively super interesting,
(30:01):
It was successful. It had a great story in the
sense that it didn't look like it was going to
be successful and then it turned out to be successful,
which is obviously the best kind of story. And also
it was me being kind of daring a little bit,
like to take on doing the remake was a little
(30:24):
bit fraught with danger, so I did something a little bold,
you know. And it was also like there hadn't been
shows like this really, so it was a little bit
artistically bold. I don't know. It was a great story, obviously,
and I really loved the whole experience, and everybody was
so much of family by the time, and part of
it was the fact we were in this weird little
(30:44):
lot all by ourselves and we had every meal together,
you know, and it wasn't that show busy. So it
was a tremendous, tremendously wonderful experience. So when definitely what
I knew was I wanted to be there to do
it at the end. And I also realized how much
(31:05):
more pleasurable it is to be the show runner than
to be an executive producer who gives notes that sometimes
they're taken and sometimes you know, it's not as much fun,
uh of an experience, And there is something very personal
about the show. I mean, part of it is the
whole docu thing, the realism and the people and the
(31:26):
truth and beauty and all that kind of stuff like
that was everything I felt was important about writing for TV,
and it all was able to happen in that show.
So after the show was over, I was pretty spent,
do you know what I mean? I was like, well,
I did it. You know, I'm done. I don't know
if I need anything else, you know, And so yeah,
(31:48):
so it kind of felt like, when you're gonna get
this opportunity, let's see what a great ending is, you know.
So I guess maybe I like the idea of of that.
I do think it plays well, now when you look
at Netflix, like, I think the fact that it has
an ending is a positive totally. I think people like
it that has an ending, and then you can start
up up again if you want it. Did you know
(32:20):
that on the day doctor King was shot, the all
black security detail normally assigned to him was called off.
They're the ones who would not allow him to stay
at any hotel with balconies. That security union was reassigned.
I was a man there in And did you know
(32:45):
that on the day doctor King was shot, two black
firemen stationed across the street and one black police detective
who was surveiling King. We're all taken off the job.
What was the emergency that caused? Usually moved as she
did you ever asked all about? And this is the
(33:09):
MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now listen on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts. And we're live here outside the Perez
family home, just waiting for the and there they go,
almost on time. This morning. Mom is coming out the
front door, strong with a double arm kid carry looks
(33:31):
like Dad has the bags. Daughter is bringing up the rear. Oh,
but the diaper bag wasn't closed, Diapers and toys are everywhere. Oh,
but mom has just nailed the perfect car seat buckle
for the toddler. And now the eldest daughter, who looks
to be about nine or ten, has secured herself in
the booster seat. Dad zips the bag closed and they're off. Ah,
(33:55):
but looks like Mom doesn't realize her coffee cup is
still on the roof of the car and there it goes. Ah.
That's a shame that mug was a fan favorite. Don't
sweat the small stuff, just nail the big stuff, like
making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right
seat for their agent's eyes. Learn more at NHTSA dot
gov slash the Right Seat visits h s A dot
(34:15):
gov slash the Right Seat. Brought to you by Mizza
and the Ad Council from Cavalry Audio, the studio that
brought you The Devil Within and The Shadow Girls, comes
a new true crime podcast, The Pink Moon Murders. The
local sheriff believes there may be more than one killery.
It's been four days since those bodies were found and
(34:38):
there's no arrest. As it this morning, they were afraid
it's face it out in that area. What if they
come back or whatever. It scared me to death. Like
it scared me, I was very very intimidating to live here.
Crazy to think you go to sleep one night, maybe
snuggling with your loved one, and never wake up, or
maybe you wake up in a struggle for your life,
which you lose. Joint host David Radiman as he explores
(34:59):
one fateful when evil descended upon small town, Ohio killed
eight members of an Ohio family in a pre planned execution.
The family was targeted, most of them targeted while they
were sleeping. The Pink Moon Murders is available on February
twenty second, and you can follow The Pink Moon Murders
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. Last year, The Office was the
(35:33):
number one show on Netflix, streamed over fifty two billion minutes.
Why do you think that it has endured? Mhmm, Well,
I mean we did put a lot of good work
into it, you know. I think there was a lot
of talented people assembled for that show. It was kind
(35:55):
of a dream team. And I think that the approach
that we took to value character, comedy and behavior as
opposed to jokes. Like jokes kind of don't last that long,
but you fall in love with the characters and you
you always have something to see, like and the stuff.
The work that you guys did also gave so much
(36:19):
rewatchability to it, you know, because there you could follow
the story, but you guys were constantly acting in all moments,
Like you can watch the entire show looking at one
character and it's interesting because they're doing their thing, they're
being in character, and they're working the way and being
funny in the background. I think the layers maybe help
(36:42):
the rewatching. And I think that the voice of the
show is a very humanistic voice too, you know, if
there's a message or something that that was maybe in
the finale, just about the importance of just decency and
ordinary lives are worthy of, you know, being on TV.
(37:04):
I don't know. That's all good stuff. Yeah, it's it's
occurring to me truly, And I think about who the
show appeals to now, and it's so often it's young
people and even younger and people who are potentially marginalized
(37:25):
or they don't quite fit in this awkward teenage years
or high school college, and the show appreciates people of
all shapes and sizes, and but it does it in
a funny way which young people like too. Yeah you know, Yeah,
(37:46):
everybody gets to the pluses and minuses. It's not like
anybody's excluded. It's a pretty inclusive show, yeah, which I
think is great. And uh, the other thing about kids, like,
I didn't understand why it would be heel to kids
because a lot of people were like, well, you know,
it's the workplace, right, what do kids know about the workplace?
(38:07):
But it's actually really similar to the experience of being
a kid in school, because you know your teacher is
your boss, and you're sitting at your little desk next
to somebody else, so you may or may not like
you know, and you're compelled to listen to whatever boring
crap you know it's coming down down from above. So
(38:27):
I think they relate to it from that standpoint. I
also think, I wonder what you think that. I think
the show is subversive in a way. It's looking at
issues or race or the brilliant gay witch hunt episode
that you wrote, and it's looking at things in a
subversive way, which I feel like the older you get
(38:51):
is less appealing, But that sort of young idea of
doing something a little bit under the radar and that
it's um cool. I don't know, it's tough. You know,
it's hard to talk about what you're doing. I think
that there's something um that always makes me worried when
you talk about comedy or whatever, if at some point
(39:14):
you start to be like, I don't want to lose
the ability to do it. I don't want to talk
about it too much. YEA interesting. Yeah, there's that parable
of the centipede. I think it is where they have
hundreds of legs and when the centipede tried to think
about how it was that his legs all worked properly,
they all got taggled up, but he couldn't he couldn't walk.
(39:36):
I don't know, what do you think the legacy if
the office is well. I do think that it did.
Like that thing that I was saying about, maybe if
we go to NBC will change the boat of comedy.
I think it did. You know, it seems like a
lot of the shows that came after are, if not
completely doc you definitely have that style. And the people
(40:01):
went on to do a lot of great things, and
I loved it all this new people like the show
so much. We used to have a lot of visitors
from different make a Wish type things, and I always
thought that was indicative of something, you know what I mean,
Like people with all these health problems would get so
(40:22):
much solace out of the show. And I always was
proud of that. But I didn't really know what what
what what it was, But it seems like it's a
It was a valuable thing to have made. We did
a good job making it. People like it and it
provides something good for them. I was at a children's
(40:43):
hospital last year and um, we were going room to
room and one of the administrators would go to the
next room and make sure that the kid was able
to be seen and we could still kind of go
on our little tour. And she came back and she said,
so he doesn't know that you're coming. And I turned
the corner and I walk into his room and he's
(41:06):
got tubes everywhere and he's watching the Office It's TV.
And it like took my breath away. That's something that
we've created. It can really mean something to people and
give them comfort or a laugh in a moment that
they have a difficult time. That's something valuable. Yeah, I definitely,
(41:30):
I definitely agree with that. That is nice. I mean,
you guys in the cast feel it more than I
do because I walk around and doesn't come up all
the time, but like if I walk around with Paul,
it comes up all the time. Like like I was
just walking down the street with Paul the other day
and I hear the squeal of you know, breaks and
(41:51):
somebody you know just turned his car around and did
a you turn because he saw Paul out of the
corner of his eye and you know, jumped out to
tell him how much the show meant to him and everything.
It's it's it's crazy. It is way bigger now than
it was when it was on Thursday. Interesting, I knew
(42:11):
it was big now, but I didn't know it was
felt bigger. But you know, like sometimes I feel almost
bad that you guys are walking around and unable to
escape it for the slightest second, you know. I mean,
I'd never have wanted to be an actor, so maybe
this is just maybe it's fun, but it's a heavy.
(42:35):
It's a heavy thing in a way, right, because's like,
oh yeah, yeah, it's very very constant, and and it's
television and it's special, and they're watching it as they
lay in bed or there in their box or shorts
or you know, there and their underwear, and they're watching
you and they think they know you. You're intimate with them.
And I wonder also, like to what extent um, you know,
(42:58):
the changes in the TV business have changed things, because
like it doesn't seem like there will be a lot
of two episode shows made in the future, and the
amount and that stuff, the sausage thing that I was
talking about before, Like when I turn on the show,
there's bits and jokes and like, like there's so many
(43:21):
with two episodes, plus all the subplots and all the
like cold opens and the little side. There's really a
lot of ideas packed into that, you know, into the
show and all the stuff happening in the background and performances. Yeah, right,
I think it's it's worth me saying to you the
degree to what I mean, you are a director, You're
(43:44):
an actor, Fern, you played Fern in the office. You're
fantastic performance um. But you the degree to which you
made decisions from the beginning and are so purposeful in
terms of actors is amazing. The idea that you wanted
(44:04):
reality and that behavior was so important for you on
this show its actors. It's really good for actors. Well
thanks for saying that. Yeah, no, I um, I do
love that part of it, and and maybe part of
it is just that it's not my part. Right If
(44:25):
I'm writing a script, it's hard to say. And now
he touched his head in a very you know, important
way or whatever, you can't really put that in the script.
So it's always really fun to see other people adding
all this creativity because you you've gotten you know, you've
gotten it too as far as you can get it,
and then you hand it over and then you just
like marveling at the people that run with it. And
(44:47):
then I guess it's sort of improv because like I
think part of the yes and spirit of improv and
the team aspect of improv is you take something and
you add to it. You don't contradict it, you kind
of elaborate on it. And like in the Halloween episode,
I had written a whole scene between Dwight and Michael.
(45:11):
I don't know if you remember this, but there's a
scene where Dwight comes in and is agitating for Michael
to get rid of Jim or somebody. Yes, he's like
he's like a sith lord and Michael's got another head
on it, and just just at the very end, it
was like no, no, no long scene. At the very end,
I had some like notion of Michael talking to his
(45:31):
head about Dwight in his presence, and they just ran
with that and we didn't end up using anything that
was written in the scene. We like started the scene
two lines after their improv began, you know, And it
was so good. It was such a joy to watch
that the run with this notion. But when like, when
you think about it, improv is this mix of writing
(45:52):
and acting, and it's more well known. I think that
actor will do that, right, They'll they'll be in the moment,
they'll be in their characters and they'll make up what
they have to say. But it's the same process mentally
that we're doing in the writer's room, you know what
I mean. We're we're thinking of what to say, and
(46:13):
then we're pretending really hard to be the actor in
the situation in order to see what comes. What's the
next line? You know, what can you think about? So
we're sort of coming at it from two two angles.
I guess what are you most thankful for. Well, I'm
really thankful obviously to have had the experience, like I
(46:35):
said after every season, because it was exactly what I
wanted from an artistic point of view, you know, just
the kind of stuff I like. And to be able
to have so many people with me on the ride
who were so much fun, and that we managed to
(46:55):
do it and still like each other is pretty cool.
I don't know, it was just the best experience. Well, Greg,
you changed my life, and you changed the lives of
every single person you invited to join you on this journey,
and we're stuck with each other. Now, that was what
(47:15):
I was going to say, were ghost Chip totally? Do
you remember going to the TV Land Awards that was?
That was so crazy? Yes, I'm not. I have an
rs v P at least for the next decade. I'm
going to stay away. But has anyone told the story
of that? No? I don't think so. Yeah, you should
tell we want this was odd. The Office was still
(47:39):
on the air and we won the award for Future
Classic Television Show and Greg, you were there with me, yes,
And they had an opening number where I think it
was Vanessa Williams. Maybe it was singing, and she was
singing a song about all the different characters on different
(48:00):
TV shows. And it started off pretty respectfully with you know,
like the guy that played Greg Brady or something. I
forget that, but she would say the person's character name
and their or their actual name, and then that person
would slide in on a hook on a hook over
(48:20):
the audio of the audience zip lining yeah and if
it started off kind of cool and people are like, okay, okay,
and then she then she stopped using the the actual
actor's names. That just said the character's names, and it
was like horse shack and he would slide in, and
then the people started banging into each other, like slabs
of beef in the slaughterhouse. And then she started, uh,
(48:43):
and then she didn't even know the character's names. It
was like the guy from the Great American Hero and
he'd slide in and bang into the other people, and
they were like on these hooks about the audience. And
I looked at you guys as you were all looking
up and like, oh go, oh yeah, well yeah, we're
we're all stuck together, and it's it's uh, we'll see
(49:06):
what what happens in the future. Brings UM, well, eventually
they'll turn on us. We can't be this successful it's popular.
Something will turn They'll be like, oh generation Z office love.
That was everybody. Yeah, um, thank you. I mean we
covered so much, you were here so long. I'm so thankful.
(49:29):
It's super fun. I just would have been you know,
even if they weren't recording, It would have been nice
to have the conversation over a coffee with you. You know,
(49:50):
I honestly couldn't think of a better man to be
stuck with. Thank you, Greg for coming on and and
for sharing so much with all of us. And I
couldn't possibly end this episode without giving thanks to you,
every single one of my listeners that has been with
(50:11):
me every step of the way on this wild ride.
I appreciate you so much, and I hope that we
have brought just a small fraction of the joy into
your lives that you've brought into ours. So please go
out there, hug your friends, hug your family, and remember
(50:32):
the lesson that Greg has burned into all of our
minds by now that each and every one of us
weird human beings, is deserving of love, and there's always
beauty in ordinary things. And since I believe we're all
(50:54):
deserving of love. I would like to remind you about
our call in episodes where I will be showing you
guys all of the love. So be sure to send
me those voice memos that you can record on the
voice memo app on your phone. Email me at the
Office deep Dive at gmail dot com with your questions, comments,
(51:18):
special requests, stories, take out orders, whatever, Leave your name,
your phone number, where you're from, and then anything else
you want to tell me. I'm so excited to hear
what you have to say. Oh and of course don't
forget to tune in next week because we have a
really fun episode coming up. I'm not gonna lie. I'm
(51:41):
going back to Scranton where it all started, and you
are coming with me. Happy Thanksgiving everyone, Yeah. The Office
(52:07):
Deep Dive is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner,
alongside our executive producer Lang Lee. Our senior producer is
Tessa Kramer. Our producers are Liz Hayes and Diego Tapia.
My main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our
theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend
Creed Bratton, and the episode was mixed by seth Olandski.
(52:31):
Would you say your name and your role on the Office? Okay, um,
my name is Greg Daniels and I was the adapter
and showrunner for most of the Office. How about that?
I mean that is such a long identifier that will
(52:51):
never play that. I'm Fred, I'm ver Hi, I'm Greg Daniels.
I was the showrunner of the Office. Well done, Thank you,
my friend. Now you're directing me. Oh yes, shoes on
the other foot. Oh my gosh. Did you know that
on the day Dr King was shot, the all black
(53:13):
security detail normally assigned to him was called off. They're
the ones who would not allow him to stay at
any hotel with balconies. Did you ever asked what this
was all about? This is the MLK tapes. The first
episodes are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app,
(53:36):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Halbern,
host of Deep Cover. Our new season is about a
lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago. He bribed judges
and even helped a hit man walk free, until one
day when he started talking with the FBI and promised
that he could take the mob down I've spent the
(53:58):
past year trying to figure route, why he flipped and
what he was really after. Listen to deep Cover on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. I'm Paris Hilton and this is Trapped
in Treatment, a weekly podcast of shocking survivor experiences and
stories from an industry plagued by controversy. With my host
(54:21):
Caroline Cole and Rebecca Mellinger, we will uncover the truth
of one team treatment facility each season. First up, Provo
Canyon School. This one is personal. Listen to Trapped in
Treatment on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
We've all felt left out, and for people who moved
to this country, that feeling last more than a moment.
We can change that. Learn how it belonging begins with
us dot org. Brought to you by the AD Council.
Give us the over attention. We need everything you've got fast.
Waiting on Reparations would beat the illes podcast. Tune in
every Thursday politics and wordplay. We fight for the people
(00:24):
because they got us in the worst way, from the
Hill Cooper, the Bomb Bay to Kanya, from the left
enclave to what the neo kanz. Every Thursday heading conversation
and to break us off with some break because we're
waiting the reparations. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on I
Heart Radio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
(00:45):
I'm Joe Piazza, host of the podcast Under the Influence.
If you tuned into our last season, you know that
the world of mom influencers on Instagram contains multitudes. Yes,
there are pretty pictures and gorgeous kids, and yes there
is lots of money behind a lot of those pictures.
But there's also something much more dark and complicated going
(01:06):
on in the background, and that speaks to everything that
is wrong with how we treat women in the world.
On season two of Under the Influence, we're advocating for
the women who make content and the women who consume it.
We're going into some of the darkest corners of the
social media universe, and we might just have a plan
to shut it all the hell down. Listen to season
(01:27):
two of Under the Influence with Joe Piazza on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Hi. I'm Greg Daniels. I was the showrunner
of the Office. Hello, Hello everybody. Thank you for diving
(01:54):
in to another episode of The Office Deep Dive. See
what I did there. I am your host Brian baumb Gartner,
and I am so thankful that you are here. Yes,
for those of you listening in real time, it is
Thanksgiving week here in the States, and I love this
(02:15):
time of year truly. The Crisp Air my Birthday, the
Fall Leaves, my Birthday Football. It is the best, all right.
And as I mentioned last week, working on this podcast
with some of my favorite people and the whole entire
world has just been well, it's hard to put into words,
(02:40):
but it is definitely The thing that I am most
thankful for this thanksgiving my family aside, of course, but
know this my podcast, this podcast, it has truly changed
my life. And the other thing that, without question chin
(03:00):
has changed my life. Who I'm so thankful to be
talking to today is our showrunner Greg Daniels. His brilliance,
his mentorship, his general aura of greatness. I am just
so happy and feel so blessed that this man is
(03:24):
a part of my life. So I'm going to bring
you today the last part of my conversation with Greg.
As you know, he was the creator of the Office,
and he has gone on to make Parks and Wreck
and Upload and Space Force and so much more. He
also wrote the forward of our new book, Welcome to
(03:45):
dunder Mifflin, So if you get a chance, go check
that out. But it was important for me that on
this week of giving thanks, that I give thanks to
my boss of almost a decade. And while famously Michael
Scott was the world's best boss, everything he knew he
(04:10):
learned from Greg Daniels. Is that a compliment? I don't know,
but anyway, give it up for the best boss on
the entire planet the galaxy. The incomparable Greg Daniels, Bubble
(04:32):
and Squeak. I love it Bubble and Squeak on Bubble
and Squeaker Cookie every month, left over from the night before. Okay,
(04:55):
well here's kind of a fun one. So you worked with, um,
Steve Carroll, Yeah, John Krasinski, Rain Wilson, and well myself
and Um, I've heard it has been said that your
favorite actor of all time is Paul Lieberstein. Paul is
(05:16):
very good. I mean, I'm certainly not gonna say anything
negative about Paul. I don't want to rank you guys.
I don't think that's fair. But Paul is like it
didn't expect him to be so good, you know, but
he basically just filled in at the table read in
season one, and Kevin would go to the table reads
and Paul got laughs and Kevin was like, what happened
(05:37):
to that guy with the red hair? You know? Put
him in more. And that's how he got on the
show pretty much. But he always had an interesting attitude
about it. And you know, Paul is like a jazz vibraphonist.
Uh and I feel like something about that jazz timing
was in his performance and was like a little bit unusual. Yeah,
(05:58):
I know, he's great, but I don't want to say, like, uh,
anybody's better than anybody else. Why did you Why did
you choose Paul and Jen to run the show after
when when you left to go to Parks. Well, Um,
the interesting thing about making the writer's performers is that
(06:19):
that kind of bites you a little bit. Like season one,
we wrote all the scripts, we shot all the shows,
and then I went into editing and just did full
time editing. And that was great because you could be
physically presented everything. It was really fun. And that was when,
you know, Paul became a character, Mindy became a character.
(06:41):
B J was always a character, and there was no
downside to that. Season two we start and then those
guys go off to the set and I'm suddenly looking around.
I've got like half the staff, you know. I got
Mike and Jen and Lee Gene and that's it. Everybody
else is on set, you know, and then they'd show up. Obviously,
still did great stuff and wrote great episodes and everything,
(07:03):
but there were times when the room was a little
bit thin because they were acting. And Mike was a
very mature, full package, like he could produce, he could write,
and he wasn't one of the main characters. And I
also felt very much responsible to the cast and to Steve,
And if Steve was not going to go do movies
(07:24):
and bug out and was going to stick with it,
I didn't want to be the guy who was, you know,
gonna do something to detriment the show, right, So I
didn't want to. I haven't be like, oh, you can't
find me into your pall on set because they're doing
a spin off or whatever and it and I guess
Mike had worked there for four years and he was
(07:45):
going to go anyway, do you know what I mean.
It's not like he was gonna put the rest of
his career working there. He was pretty icious and headed places.
So I felt like he would be a good choice
to do it because I could set it up with
him and then he could run it and I could
still see the office room. So and we had different ideas,
(08:06):
like the parks is the idea of okay, it's mockumentary.
Instead of being about business in the private sector, it's
about the public sector. But at the same time, I
had an idea that I thought was good, which was
all right, workplace is a good genre of TV. Comedy,
(08:27):
but an even bigger genre is family show. What about
a mockumentary about a family show? And I had a
plan after Mike was going to spin off and do Parks.
I was going to do a show with Jen and
we were going to do the family sitcom one and
we had worked it out ed Helms was gonna maybe
(08:50):
be the lead with Catherine Tate as his wife, and
they were, and it was going to be the mocumentary
looking at a cul de sac, some kind of suburban
cul de sac. And then Modern Family came out and
you know, was huge hit. That kind of put the
end to that plan, right. Mike Sure said about being
(09:10):
asked to go and develop Parks and Wreck, they basically
said that it feels like m Mozart told me he
wants to design a piano with me. It's not Steinway,
Moats are boats are designing a piano. Let's are very
incompetent piano maker, but still somebody who probably should follow.
(09:32):
But yeah, that's cool, that's nice. Yeah, it was. It
was certainly fun to do Parks. I mean we you know,
we're so close to the office that we thought Parks
was just completely different. I mean, like we didn't see
it as having any bearing at all on the office,
Like we got a female and it's a completely you know,
(09:53):
different world and everything. And of course, in the same
way like it took season one too be able to
get free of the English show, you know, like season
one Parks was too close probably still and I think
we figured that out. We didn't have a pilot because
Ben was now running NBC and Ben hooked us straight
(10:15):
to series for Parks, and so by the time we
looked at the footage of the pilot, we already shooting
episode three or something from Parks. But we kind of
steered it around. Part of it was I remember thinking, like, Okay,
it's not all about a crazy central character. It's more
(10:36):
like thirty Rock maybe, where the central character is surrounded
by crazy and like when we kind of made that adjustment,
it seemed to work better. But but Amy's like very
different from Steve. She's a different type of performer and
what way, well, like I don't think she can hide
her intelligence. Like one of to me, one of Steve's
(10:59):
um real gifts is you can stare at his face
and he's doing something really stupid and you can't tell
that he is aware that is stupid, you know what
I mean. He completely hides his intelligence, and Amy probably
could if she wanted to, but chooses not to, and
(11:20):
she just she doesn't hide it. And I think maybe
it's also being a woman, you know what I mean.
It's like it means something different to hide your intelligence.
It's more retro and you know, uncool, probably to hide
your intelligence as a woman. So it didn't fit great
to have her play naive. She had to be a
little smarter. What do you think was the bigger loss,
(11:44):
Michael or Steve? Huh wow? Oh yeah, well, um, I
do think that when we said goodbye to Steve, it
became really clear how much the crew loved him, and
the stories from different crew members was really sweet. I
(12:08):
mean I remember like when forty year old Virgin was
still in theaters and he was the biggest movie star
in the country, and we were shooting I think the Dundee's,
and um, we were in a parking lot like of
a defunct Black Angus. It's two or three in the morning,
(12:28):
and his entire role is to drive the car away
from Jenna after saying his line. And he's doing it
at three in the morning. Take after take after take
to support her in that scene where so many people
would have been like, yeah, yeah, put the photo double in. Goodbye,
And I'm doing a show with him now. I'm doing
(12:49):
Space Force with him now, and he's number one on
the call sheet. Same deal. We just had our rat party.
The crew came up to me. They were all like,
it starts at the top. The vibe on the set
is so beautiful and everybody, you know, such a great
feeling and and everything. But you know, one of the
things that I got out of working with Steve was
(13:09):
like I didn't really have an improv background, you know
what I mean. Like I had come from Sketch Comedy
and then Simpson's. And when we started working together, he
told me about this book Truth and Comedy, which is
kind of like the bible of the Chicago improv world.
And I found that to be really the key to
(13:29):
kind of how he worked, and it saved us a
bunch of times. When one of my favorite memories of
Steve as a producer or as a you know, not
as an actor, is we were doing Dundee's and the
problem was we went to a Black Angus and then
we went to to Chili's restaurant, and we didn't actually
(13:51):
get any money for it. You know, it's not like
what they paid us a lot of money to use Chili's.
What they did was they sent us their branded decorations
for set deck. So we say, yeah, we've got the
menus and we got some signs and stuff. Anyway, so
we're there. We're at this defunct black Angus for three
days shooting with all the chili stuff, and like on
(14:11):
day two, the Chili's lawyers call and they go, oh, hey,
we just looked at the script, the part where Pam
is so drunk she throws up. That's not gonna work
for us. We're being sued for overserving patrons and we can't.
Uh that's a bad look, so you can't do that.
(14:32):
And I was like cocky at this point. I was like, yeah,
well we're shot two thirds of our shoot, you know.
And I turned to the Universal executives and I was like, well,
check the contract with the Chilis because obviously, you know,
they don't have editorial control. And they're like, uh, there's
no contract. There's no written contract. We just thought we'd
(14:52):
say fifty dollars of set deck, and we just did
it on a handshake. So then we were like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait,
what do we do? What do we do? And they
were like, well, you don't have to take that note,
but in that case, you can't show any of the
branded set decoration that we sent you, which meant that
we would have had to shoot go back to the
beginning and not used the two days that we already shot,
(15:14):
which we couldn't afford, right because it was hundreds of
thousands of dollars. So I was like getting ill in
the corner, freaking out, and Steve notices and it's like,
what's up? And I told him the situation and the
thing that was so cool to me was this improv thing,
like he had utter faith always that he would his
creativity would never flag, that he would be able to
find an answer when it was necessary, Like that's what
(15:37):
all that improv training was. And I completely shot down.
I was like going to blow my brains out, and
he was like okay, all right, well all right, and
then he came up with this notion of the manager
being interviewed and saying that Pam had a lifetime band
from Chili's and it solved everything. And I really was like,
huh that's a different way to live than I'm used to.
(15:58):
You know, the overthing here doesn't doesn't do that right.
I had all my plans had just been thrown for
a loop, and uh so I feel like I try
to take that away. I think it's like a little
bit of a religion for him to be an improv guy.
(16:21):
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If you've ever wondered what it's like to make a
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to find out. Join me and my friend Dana Goodyear,
who's the host of Pushkin's Lost Hills podcast, on March
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(18:18):
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(18:39):
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you and start exploring. I discovered the fourth dot Org
brought to you by the United States Fourth Service and
the AD Council. What do you remember about because you
(19:21):
obviously you came back for Goodbye Michael? Um? How did
you feel writing him off? I mean, did you did
you feel like the show was going to should go
on past him? Um? Yeah, I did, because you know,
part of the painful part of my job is as
(19:43):
the showrunner, you're not done when the rap right. You've
got to go edit all of the things. So, like
at least the third maybe more of my job was
sitting with the editors cutting the show down and it
then it made a huge difference in our show because
our rough cuts were thirty eight minutes long and we
had to get down to only one oh three or whatever.
So um, that's an enormous amount to throw out, and
(20:06):
it was very painful because we could get the show
down to twenty six minutes or something with with just
cutting the fat, but then after that you got to
cut the muscle. You know, there's good scenes that are
not going to be broadcast. And you know, once we
got five or six years into the show, the full
ensemble was really working and capable of doing really good stuff.
(20:30):
And so the best argument to me to continue was
it would let all these people who didn't have as
much screen time have more screen time. And Steve didn't
obviously didn't want us to shut down, so I kind
of felt like it was it was good that we
would do. Okay, Now, the difficulty is that people are
(20:53):
not created to be leads, and you know, all that
stuff that I was saying in the beginning of positioning
Steve in season two and finding you know, ways that
he uh has good intentions and is more of a
lead and everything, Like I knew the Dwight had been
(21:13):
created to be the foil to these people and was
a charactery creation to begin with. Andy Bernard was created
to be the Stanford version of Dwight. You know, in
season three, like, uh, you know, Jim shows up in
Stanford and he's got this weirdo who's like a preppy weirdo,
(21:36):
like a different type of weirdo, and um and well,
and also he was an idiot, like unlike Dwight, who
you know, Dwight was an idiot in his own way,
but I mean, like sorry bad at his job, Like
he had been positioned as being not good at his job.
He was very good at his job. He punched holes
(21:56):
in walls, you know, he wouldn't needed a lot of
It's the same kind of moving the character over that
we did in season two, and I believe Paul was
doing that with Andy, but it was different because we
were Everybody was paying close attention to the show at
that point, so there was definitely a lot of Like
there was a lot of for some reason. The thing
(22:16):
with the Office is like people get super into it obviously,
which is great, but then there's then there's so much
attention and worry about changing it or touching it or
you know, don't touch my my beloved thing. Right, So
in the same way there was all this negative attention
about adapting the British show. I think that there was
a lot of you know, worry about making any changes
(22:39):
to it, right. Well, but I think you you think
of the office right as this place of stasis, right,
and we're all there in one room, and there's the
whole bullpen and everybody's there all the time, and it's
all the same. But I think one of the special
things that you did was you created sort of a
kinetic energy by change, by constantly changing it and not
(23:02):
keeping it the same. Bringing in the Stanford branch and
Ed and Rashida, or Jenna leaving and going to art
school or so much of that was being driven by
Pam and Jim and the romantic storyline and the way
those two characters were set up. They were soulmates. And
what I didn't want to do was, like so many shows,
(23:27):
they come together, they break apart, they come together, they
break apart. You know, it didn't seem real. I felt like,
when they finally get together, they're gonna be together. I
don't see anything breaking them up. So then the question was, well,
how do you spin this out for a certain number
of years? Right? So, um, you know, so a lot
of it was what are the obstacles? And we you know,
(23:48):
when I was trying to figure out what came next
in the show. I didn't have an entire season broken.
I would be able to have about a half a
season arct out. And the thought with Pam and Jim was, okay,
you know, season one, she's obviously with Roy. Well, actually,
(24:09):
season one, the only kind of thing was he was
obviously pining, and then he starts dating first girl, right right,
So season two she's with Roy and he's getting closer
and closer to confessing his feelings and he rolls the dice.
And you always feel like when you're watching a TV show,
you you're worry about the yank, you know, that's what
(24:30):
we call it in the writer's room, where the jeopardy
of the episode is something you don't really believe because
it would change the show. You know, like you don't
really believe like Rain is going to go work for Staples.
Why it's going to leave the show. It's like, no,
he's too important to the show. You're not gonna set
him the Staples. So we set up the situation where
Jim was like, well, maybe I should take that job
(24:51):
in Stanford, and um, we were like, is that a yank?
I don't know. We're worried, is that a yank? And
then we were like, let's let's put him in Stanford,
you know, let's really make it happen, and that'll give
us a whole new lease on the Jim Pam thing
because it's a new obstacle, and that cooled it off
a lot. And then by the time he finally came back,
(25:13):
he had Karen and that gave us another thing. And
then around the like beach games area, the obstacle was Okay,
the obstacle is now Pam. It's in Pam's court. She
wants to be with Jim, but she's too timid, and
so then she walks on the fire and we were
like kind of got past that obstacle, and then eventually
was like, well, I can't see any more obstacles. Gotta
(25:35):
get it together and get them together sooner, like slightly
sooner than the audience thinks, so that you could preserve
you know, a surprise to it. Uh yeah. So by
that drove an awful lot of the changes and bringing
people in and everything. Another thing that was super unique
about what you did, and I remember you talking about
(25:55):
it when it was going on, but that you wanted
the episode it's to air roughly when they were happening, right,
So it's obvious every network show once Christmas around Christmas
time or whatever, but that it was happening sort of
within the calendar year, and that you chose to keep
the form and the format of each episode is one day.
It takes place over one day, and in the summer,
(26:18):
the camera crew goes on their holiday and their vacation
and they're not there, so we don't see it as
opposed to Ross and Rachel kissing and then four months
passing and the next moment is the same moment that
we left with, because the audience now has to work
and find out what happened, what happened? Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, No,
(26:40):
I think that that was um, you know that that
works well. Uh. I mean obviously Friends did good too,
oh I know, But that was a conscious decision for
you that it was important that it seemed real. And
again also like if you're going to try and stay
in the pace, you got to catch up over the
summer somehow. I mean, we did it with weight loss,
(27:01):
we we did a different type thing, yes, but m yeah,
I don't know. I mean it helped with the storytelling
to jump a little bit, because the other thing is like,
with the Office being so realistic, sometimes it is hard
to do a restart or to jump and you sometimes
you have to shoot down ideas because you're like, well,
how did they get there from yesterday? So sometimes a
(27:24):
little uh time jump is really good for that, right,
why did you come back? Well, two questions and two
questions one. Um, the Office has a beginning, a middle,
and an end, and it was my belief that you
(27:44):
knew fairly early what that end was going to be. Well,
it did shift though, because like my idea for the
end in the beginning was like around season two, I
had this idea that you know, I was a big fan.
First of all, I love documentaries and I was a
big fan of seven Up. If you remember that one,
well seven Up changes every seven years, it was fourteen
(28:07):
up Up. And what it is is they are following
a group of British seven year olds. This is guy
Michael Appted and and he's been doing it. They just
did like sixty up or something. That's that's how old
the segmentary is. They're following these guys for every stage
of their life. And um, I think that is like
(28:28):
a reality show thing too of like, oh, it's Survivor
Survivors over and let's get them together on a stage
and see what happened. And I thought, well, this is cool, right,
we could get them together on a stage and you
think that it didn't work out for certain things that
you want, but the documentary is still filming. Things are
(28:50):
going to happen backstage at the wrap up. That was
kind of my notion was that I would provide an
unhappy ending for Jim and Pam in the last episode
that looked like the series, and then I would do
the wrap up and I'd have a happy ending at
the wrap up something like that. Anyway, this is the
obviously five seven years out, so this is just a thought.
So then the idea of a wedding also was a
(29:12):
good one because it attracts people back. So I mean,
I think the idea was, let's jump a year, you know,
like if you jump a year, you can really find
out what happened to everybody in more of a rappie
up way. And then we're like, well, let's do both,
you know what I mean. And it made sense kind
of like the if I was the documentary crew and
I knew Dwight was getting married. That's when I would
do my reunion show because everybody's coming in for the wedding,
(29:35):
because otherwise I don't think I can get everybody, like
I can't get Toby to come back from wherever he
was Poland Yeah, and were you were you ready for
the show to end that season nine? I mean, for
for me personally, this was the most wonderful, you know,
experience in all aspects. It was like creatively super interesting,
(30:01):
It was successful. It had a great story in the
sense that it didn't look like it was going to
be successful and then it turned out to be successful,
which is obviously the best kind of story. And also
it was me being kind of daring a little bit,
like to take on doing the remake was a little
(30:24):
bit fraught with danger, so I did something a little bold,
you know. And it was also like there hadn't been
shows like this really, so it was a little bit
artistically bold. I don't know. It was a great story, obviously,
and I really loved the whole experience, and everybody was
so much of family by the time, and part of
it was the fact we were in this weird little
(30:44):
lot all by ourselves and we had every meal together,
you know, and it wasn't that show busy. So it
was a tremendous, tremendously wonderful experience. So when definitely what
I knew was I wanted to be there to do
it at the end. And I also realized how much
(31:05):
more pleasurable it is to be the show runner than
to be an executive producer who gives notes that sometimes
they're taken and sometimes you know, it's not as much fun,
uh of an experience, And there is something very personal
about the show. I mean, part of it is the
whole docu thing, the realism and the people and the
(31:26):
truth and beauty and all that kind of stuff like
that was everything I felt was important about writing for TV,
and it all was able to happen in that show.
So after the show was over, I was pretty spent,
do you know what I mean? I was like, well,
I did it. You know, I'm done. I don't know
if I need anything else, you know, And so yeah,
(31:48):
so it kind of felt like, when you're gonna get
this opportunity, let's see what a great ending is, you know.
So I guess maybe I like the idea of of that.
I do think it plays well, now when you look
at Netflix, like, I think the fact that it has
an ending is a positive totally. I think people like
it that has an ending, and then you can start
up up again if you want it. Did you know
(32:20):
that on the day doctor King was shot, the all
black security detail normally assigned to him was called off.
They're the ones who would not allow him to stay
at any hotel with balconies. That security union was reassigned.
I was a man there in And did you know
(32:45):
that on the day doctor King was shot, two black
firemen stationed across the street and one black police detective
who was surveiling King. We're all taken off the job.
What was the emergency that caused? Usually moved as she
did you ever asked all about? And this is the
(33:09):
MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now listen on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts. And we're live here outside the Perez
family home, just waiting for the and there they go,
almost on time. This morning. Mom is coming out the
front door, strong with a double arm kid carry looks
(33:31):
like Dad has the bags. Daughter is bringing up the rear. Oh,
but the diaper bag wasn't closed, Diapers and toys are everywhere. Oh,
but mom has just nailed the perfect car seat buckle
for the toddler. And now the eldest daughter, who looks
to be about nine or ten, has secured herself in
the booster seat. Dad zips the bag closed and they're off. Ah,
(33:55):
but looks like Mom doesn't realize her coffee cup is
still on the roof of the car and there it goes. Ah.
That's a shame that mug was a fan favorite. Don't
sweat the small stuff, just nail the big stuff, like
making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right
seat for their agent's eyes. Learn more at NHTSA dot
gov slash the Right Seat visits h s A dot
(34:15):
gov slash the Right Seat. Brought to you by Mizza
and the Ad Council from Cavalry Audio, the studio that
brought you The Devil Within and The Shadow Girls, comes
a new true crime podcast, The Pink Moon Murders. The
local sheriff believes there may be more than one killery.
It's been four days since those bodies were found and
(34:38):
there's no arrest. As it this morning, they were afraid
it's face it out in that area. What if they
come back or whatever. It scared me to death. Like
it scared me, I was very very intimidating to live here.
Crazy to think you go to sleep one night, maybe
snuggling with your loved one, and never wake up, or
maybe you wake up in a struggle for your life,
which you lose. Joint host David Radiman as he explores
(34:59):
one fateful when evil descended upon small town, Ohio killed
eight members of an Ohio family in a pre planned execution.
The family was targeted, most of them targeted while they
were sleeping. The Pink Moon Murders is available on February
twenty second, and you can follow The Pink Moon Murders
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. Last year, The Office was the
(35:33):
number one show on Netflix, streamed over fifty two billion minutes.
Why do you think that it has endured? Mhmm, Well,
I mean we did put a lot of good work
into it, you know. I think there was a lot
of talented people assembled for that show. It was kind
(35:55):
of a dream team. And I think that the approach
that we took to value character, comedy and behavior as
opposed to jokes. Like jokes kind of don't last that long,
but you fall in love with the characters and you
you always have something to see, like and the stuff.
The work that you guys did also gave so much
(36:19):
rewatchability to it, you know, because there you could follow
the story, but you guys were constantly acting in all moments,
Like you can watch the entire show looking at one
character and it's interesting because they're doing their thing, they're
being in character, and they're working the way and being
funny in the background. I think the layers maybe help
(36:42):
the rewatching. And I think that the voice of the
show is a very humanistic voice too, you know, if
there's a message or something that that was maybe in
the finale, just about the importance of just decency and
ordinary lives are worthy of, you know, being on TV.
(37:04):
I don't know. That's all good stuff. Yeah, it's it's
occurring to me truly, And I think about who the
show appeals to now, and it's so often it's young
people and even younger and people who are potentially marginalized
(37:25):
or they don't quite fit in this awkward teenage years
or high school college, and the show appreciates people of
all shapes and sizes, and but it does it in
a funny way which young people like too. Yeah you know, Yeah,
(37:46):
everybody gets to the pluses and minuses. It's not like
anybody's excluded. It's a pretty inclusive show, yeah, which I
think is great. And uh, the other thing about kids, like,
I didn't understand why it would be heel to kids
because a lot of people were like, well, you know,
it's the workplace, right, what do kids know about the workplace?
(38:07):
But it's actually really similar to the experience of being
a kid in school, because you know your teacher is
your boss, and you're sitting at your little desk next
to somebody else, so you may or may not like
you know, and you're compelled to listen to whatever boring
crap you know it's coming down down from above. So
(38:27):
I think they relate to it from that standpoint. I
also think, I wonder what you think that. I think
the show is subversive in a way. It's looking at
issues or race or the brilliant gay witch hunt episode
that you wrote, and it's looking at things in a
subversive way, which I feel like the older you get
(38:51):
is less appealing, But that sort of young idea of
doing something a little bit under the radar and that
it's um cool. I don't know, it's tough. You know,
it's hard to talk about what you're doing. I think
that there's something um that always makes me worried when
you talk about comedy or whatever, if at some point
(39:14):
you start to be like, I don't want to lose
the ability to do it. I don't want to talk
about it too much. YEA interesting. Yeah, there's that parable
of the centipede. I think it is where they have
hundreds of legs and when the centipede tried to think
about how it was that his legs all worked properly,
they all got taggled up, but he couldn't he couldn't walk.
(39:36):
I don't know, what do you think the legacy if
the office is well. I do think that it did.
Like that thing that I was saying about, maybe if
we go to NBC will change the boat of comedy.
I think it did. You know, it seems like a
lot of the shows that came after are, if not
completely doc you definitely have that style. And the people
(40:01):
went on to do a lot of great things, and
I loved it all this new people like the show
so much. We used to have a lot of visitors
from different make a Wish type things, and I always
thought that was indicative of something, you know what I mean,
Like people with all these health problems would get so
(40:22):
much solace out of the show. And I always was
proud of that. But I didn't really know what what
what what it was, But it seems like it's a
It was a valuable thing to have made. We did
a good job making it. People like it and it
provides something good for them. I was at a children's
(40:43):
hospital last year and um, we were going room to
room and one of the administrators would go to the
next room and make sure that the kid was able
to be seen and we could still kind of go
on our little tour. And she came back and she said,
so he doesn't know that you're coming. And I turned
the corner and I walk into his room and he's
(41:06):
got tubes everywhere and he's watching the Office It's TV.
And it like took my breath away. That's something that
we've created. It can really mean something to people and
give them comfort or a laugh in a moment that
they have a difficult time. That's something valuable. Yeah, I definitely,
(41:30):
I definitely agree with that. That is nice. I mean,
you guys in the cast feel it more than I
do because I walk around and doesn't come up all
the time, but like if I walk around with Paul,
it comes up all the time. Like like I was
just walking down the street with Paul the other day
and I hear the squeal of you know, breaks and
(41:51):
somebody you know just turned his car around and did
a you turn because he saw Paul out of the
corner of his eye and you know, jumped out to
tell him how much the show meant to him and everything.
It's it's it's crazy. It is way bigger now than
it was when it was on Thursday. Interesting, I knew
(42:11):
it was big now, but I didn't know it was
felt bigger. But you know, like sometimes I feel almost
bad that you guys are walking around and unable to
escape it for the slightest second, you know. I mean,
I'd never have wanted to be an actor, so maybe
this is just maybe it's fun, but it's a heavy.
(42:35):
It's a heavy thing in a way, right, because's like,
oh yeah, yeah, it's very very constant, and and it's
television and it's special, and they're watching it as they
lay in bed or there in their box or shorts
or you know, there and their underwear, and they're watching
you and they think they know you. You're intimate with them.
And I wonder also, like to what extent um, you know,
(42:58):
the changes in the TV business have changed things, because
like it doesn't seem like there will be a lot
of two episode shows made in the future, and the
amount and that stuff, the sausage thing that I was
talking about before, Like when I turn on the show,
there's bits and jokes and like, like there's so many
(43:21):
with two episodes, plus all the subplots and all the
like cold opens and the little side. There's really a
lot of ideas packed into that, you know, into the
show and all the stuff happening in the background and performances. Yeah, right,
I think it's it's worth me saying to you the
degree to what I mean, you are a director, You're
(43:44):
an actor, Fern, you played Fern in the office. You're
fantastic performance um. But you the degree to which you
made decisions from the beginning and are so purposeful in
terms of actors is amazing. The idea that you wanted
(44:04):
reality and that behavior was so important for you on
this show its actors. It's really good for actors. Well
thanks for saying that. Yeah, no, I um, I do
love that part of it, and and maybe part of
it is just that it's not my part. Right If
(44:25):
I'm writing a script, it's hard to say. And now
he touched his head in a very you know, important
way or whatever, you can't really put that in the script.
So it's always really fun to see other people adding
all this creativity because you you've gotten you know, you've
gotten it too as far as you can get it,
and then you hand it over and then you just
like marveling at the people that run with it. And
(44:47):
then I guess it's sort of improv because like I
think part of the yes and spirit of improv and
the team aspect of improv is you take something and
you add to it. You don't contradict it, you kind
of elaborate on it. And like in the Halloween episode,
I had written a whole scene between Dwight and Michael.
(45:11):
I don't know if you remember this, but there's a
scene where Dwight comes in and is agitating for Michael
to get rid of Jim or somebody. Yes, he's like
he's like a sith lord and Michael's got another head
on it, and just just at the very end, it
was like no, no, no long scene. At the very end,
I had some like notion of Michael talking to his
(45:31):
head about Dwight in his presence, and they just ran
with that and we didn't end up using anything that
was written in the scene. We like started the scene
two lines after their improv began, you know, And it
was so good. It was such a joy to watch
that the run with this notion. But when like, when
you think about it, improv is this mix of writing
(45:52):
and acting, and it's more well known. I think that
actor will do that, right, They'll they'll be in the moment,
they'll be in their characters and they'll make up what
they have to say. But it's the same process mentally
that we're doing in the writer's room, you know what
I mean. We're we're thinking of what to say, and
(46:13):
then we're pretending really hard to be the actor in
the situation in order to see what comes. What's the
next line? You know, what can you think about? So
we're sort of coming at it from two two angles.
I guess what are you most thankful for. Well, I'm
really thankful obviously to have had the experience, like I
(46:35):
said after every season, because it was exactly what I
wanted from an artistic point of view, you know, just
the kind of stuff I like. And to be able
to have so many people with me on the ride
who were so much fun, and that we managed to
(46:55):
do it and still like each other is pretty cool.
I don't know, it was just the best experience. Well, Greg,
you changed my life, and you changed the lives of
every single person you invited to join you on this journey,
and we're stuck with each other. Now, that was what
(47:15):
I was going to say, were ghost Chip totally? Do
you remember going to the TV Land Awards that was?
That was so crazy? Yes, I'm not. I have an
rs v P at least for the next decade. I'm
going to stay away. But has anyone told the story
of that? No? I don't think so. Yeah, you should
tell we want this was odd. The Office was still
(47:39):
on the air and we won the award for Future
Classic Television Show and Greg, you were there with me, yes,
And they had an opening number where I think it
was Vanessa Williams. Maybe it was singing, and she was
singing a song about all the different characters on different
(48:00):
TV shows. And it started off pretty respectfully with you know,
like the guy that played Greg Brady or something. I
forget that, but she would say the person's character name
and their or their actual name, and then that person
would slide in on a hook on a hook over
(48:20):
the audio of the audience zip lining yeah and if
it started off kind of cool and people are like, okay, okay,
and then she then she stopped using the the actual
actor's names. That just said the character's names, and it
was like horse shack and he would slide in, and
then the people started banging into each other, like slabs
of beef in the slaughterhouse. And then she started, uh,
(48:43):
and then she didn't even know the character's names. It
was like the guy from the Great American Hero and
he'd slide in and bang into the other people, and
they were like on these hooks about the audience. And
I looked at you guys as you were all looking
up and like, oh go, oh yeah, well yeah, we're
we're all stuck together, and it's it's uh, we'll see
(49:06):
what what happens in the future. Brings UM, well, eventually
they'll turn on us. We can't be this successful it's popular.
Something will turn They'll be like, oh generation Z office love.
That was everybody. Yeah, um, thank you. I mean we
covered so much, you were here so long. I'm so thankful.
(49:29):
It's super fun. I just would have been you know,
even if they weren't recording, It would have been nice
to have the conversation over a coffee with you. You know,
(49:50):
I honestly couldn't think of a better man to be
stuck with. Thank you, Greg for coming on and and
for sharing so much with all of us. And I
couldn't possibly end this episode without giving thanks to you,
every single one of my listeners that has been with
(50:11):
me every step of the way on this wild ride.
I appreciate you so much, and I hope that we
have brought just a small fraction of the joy into
your lives that you've brought into ours. So please go
out there, hug your friends, hug your family, and remember
(50:32):
the lesson that Greg has burned into all of our
minds by now that each and every one of us
weird human beings, is deserving of love, and there's always
beauty in ordinary things. And since I believe we're all
(50:54):
deserving of love. I would like to remind you about
our call in episodes where I will be showing you
guys all of the love. So be sure to send
me those voice memos that you can record on the
voice memo app on your phone. Email me at the
Office deep Dive at gmail dot com with your questions, comments,
(51:18):
special requests, stories, take out orders, whatever, Leave your name,
your phone number, where you're from, and then anything else
you want to tell me. I'm so excited to hear
what you have to say. Oh and of course don't
forget to tune in next week because we have a
really fun episode coming up. I'm not gonna lie. I'm
(51:41):
going back to Scranton where it all started, and you
are coming with me. Happy Thanksgiving everyone, Yeah. The Office
(52:07):
Deep Dive is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner,
alongside our executive producer Lang Lee. Our senior producer is
Tessa Kramer. Our producers are Liz Hayes and Diego Tapia.
My main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our
theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend
Creed Bratton, and the episode was mixed by seth Olandski.
(52:31):
Would you say your name and your role on the Office? Okay, um,
my name is Greg Daniels and I was the adapter
and showrunner for most of the Office. How about that?
I mean that is such a long identifier that will
(52:51):
never play that. I'm Fred, I'm ver Hi, I'm Greg Daniels.
I was the showrunner of the Office. Well done, Thank you,
my friend. Now you're directing me. Oh yes, shoes on
the other foot. Oh my gosh. Did you know that
on the day Dr King was shot, the all black
(53:13):
security detail normally assigned to him was called off. They're
the ones who would not allow him to stay at
any hotel with balconies. Did you ever asked what this
was all about? This is the MLK tapes. The first
episodes are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app,
(53:36):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Halbern,
host of Deep Cover. Our new season is about a
lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago. He bribed judges
and even helped a hit man walk free, until one
day when he started talking with the FBI and promised
that he could take the mob down I've spent the
(53:58):
past year trying to figure route, why he flipped and
what he was really after. Listen to deep Cover on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. I'm Paris Hilton and this is Trapped
in Treatment, a weekly podcast of shocking survivor experiences and
stories from an industry plagued by controversy. With my host
(54:21):
Caroline Cole and Rebecca Mellinger, we will uncover the truth
of one team treatment facility each season. First up, Provo
Canyon School. This one is personal. Listen to Trapped in
Treatment on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
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