Mike Schur - Pt. 2

Dwight’s weird cousin Mose AKA the incredible writer Mike Schur joins Brian in the studio for the second half of their conversation. Mike talks about being a part of the cult of Greg Daniels, all of The Office sequels that could have been, and the absolutely hilarious jokes that the writers’ room played on their fellow crew members.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Glory Adam, host of Well Read Black Girl.
Each week, we journeyed together through the cultural moment where art,
culture and literature collide and pay homage to the women
whose books we grew up reading. It's the literary kickback
you never knew you needed. Listen to a Well Read

(00:20):
Black Girl on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast
or wherever you get your podcasts. Check out the new podcast,
I Am Kobe. Do you want to understand how Kobe
Bryant achieved his unequal determination? How did he come to
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(00:43):
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We weave together these tapes with Kobe's high school coaches,
his friends, and the figures who knew him in his youth.
All episodes are out now so you can binge the
whole thing. Listen to I Am Kobe on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. Hi,

(01:09):
I'm Hillary Clinton and I'm so excited to be back
with a third season. Of you and me both. When
I started this podcast, we were going through some tough
times and let's face it, we still are. And here's
what I know. We cannot get through this alone. So
please join me for more conversations with people who will
make you think, make you laugh, and help us find

(01:32):
a path forward. This season, I'll be talking about the
state of our democracy with experts and with people organizing
on the ground. We'll draw inspiration from some amazing people
like Olympic star Alison Felix and Grammy Award winner Brandy Carlisle.
And we'll get into the hard stuff with writer Cheryl

(01:53):
Strait and my dear friend and colleague, Huma Aberdeen. So
join us listen to you and me both on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. My name is Michael Shore. I was a

(02:21):
writer for the first four point two seasons and a
producer on The Office. Hi, everybody, Welcome to a new day,
And a new day brings a new episode of The

(02:43):
Office Deep Dive with me your host Brian baum Gartner. Now,
I'm thrilled to tell you that today I am bringing
back the incredible Mike Sure for Part two. Of our conversation.
This is going to be a good one to remind you,
Mike was one of our original writers and producers on
the Office. He went on to co create Parks and

(03:04):
Wreck with Greg Daniels, as well as some other huge
TV shows of our time like Brooklyn nine, The Good Place,
just to name a few. Now, as I mentioned in
the last episode, which you should definitely check out if
you haven't already, Mike as a writer, as a producer,
as an artist, he's had some insane achievements, and we're

(03:26):
gonna get into some of those. But more importantly, you're
going to get to hear about the one thing that
he always hated that he described as a quote waking nightmare.
That's right, his role as Mos Shrewd. Now, I was, Oh,

(03:46):
you have no idea how happy I was to find
out that my suspicions were correct that Mike had to
play Mos as kind of a cruel joke in the
writer's room, a writer's room joke because they found it
funny to make him do all of the stupid stuff
that he had to do. And boy, he had to
do some really stupid stuff. But I'm glad he did,

(04:09):
and I'm glad he is back joining us today because
Mike is a force in the world of TV, and
more than that, he was a huge and important part
of the Office family. So please join me in welcoming
the man who helped create so many of the iconic
TV personalities we know and love. Mike. Sure, Bubble and Squeak.

(04:37):
I love it Bubble and Squeak, Bubble and Squeaker Cookie
at every month lift over from the natty bore. You

(04:58):
and I. You may forgotten this, but you and I
share an Emmy. We do we do yes for the webisodes.
For the webisodes. Yes, um, did you ever get yours?
I don't think I have an actual trophy for it? Now,
Well I did, I do partly or all because we

(05:21):
were invited to the ceremony and we accepted them and
it came home with me. Great, Yeah, so I have
it it. Look it's great. Actually, it's really rebisodes was
really fun. I have nothing but fund memories of that
little crazy day that we spent around you and Paul
wrote them. And it was longer than a day. It

(05:43):
was three days, three days. It was ten episodes over
three days. That was like before everyone did webisodes all
the time. And these little extra things like that was
a really fun like side project that we just sort
of threw together. They're really funny too, they are, Yes,
And I think Randall's idea was we were able to

(06:04):
do some things there that we, well, we couldn't necessarily
do without the full camera crew. I think, yes, it was.
The premise was it was like a holiday or something
because we didn't have everyone to be in the background.
So yeah, that was right. It was. We had a
lot of backstory for why it was the way it was,
but um, the accounts significant because, um, I have an

(06:29):
Emmy congratulated, an actual Emmy, but you also want an Emmy.
But we were never paid for it, and it led
to the writers strike. I've watched a video of you
yesterday from when we were on strike. When you were
on strike, Yeah, you guys produced a video and you
said a number of things in the video. Okay, I

(06:51):
don't remember any of them, but I saw it and
I was like, oh my god. And then we were
joking that you guys were coming up with bits as
you were walking the picket line and making the video.
Kind of funny anyway, Um, but you said in part
that you're watching this on the internet, a thing that
pays us zero dollars. They were put on NBC dot

(07:11):
com and they sold ads and we won a Daytime
Emmy and didn't make any money. The writer strike was
a really big deal. I don't know, just talk to
me about that time and what you remember of Greg
saying no, we're not going to produce material for free.
There It was a very inspiring moment for me personally

(07:33):
because the central issue at the time, this is two
thousand and seven. The central issue at the time was
jurisdiction over the internet because Netflix hadn't started making original
shows yet, but people felt like they were going in
that direction, and NBC and every every network had a
website and they were starting to like stream in primitive fashion,

(07:54):
the stream things on the over the Internet. And suddenly
was like, well, if this is the future. It didn't
take a genius to think like, well, this is the future. Like,
who cares whether you it's a television screen you hang
on your wall or sit on a platform, or whether
it's your computer screen. This is how people are consuming
the work we do and we ought to get paid
for them. So so those episodes were like a big

(08:17):
part of that because I they were shot with the
union labor and no one got paid. So that was
like the you know, it wasn't like because of those
episodes that the writers could want one strike. Those we
episodes were an example of the kind of thing that
we were trying. We were saying like, if this is
the way things are going, we gotta do something about this, right.
So because the companies at the time, we're saying like,

(08:37):
you know, we don't have enough information. Let's just let's
just let's just wait three years from now, we'll have
more information and then we'll know what the future of
this is. And we were like, no, you're you're trying
to you're basically trying to grandfather in the internet as
like a thing that you don't pay for him. So, um,
we went on strike and it was a huge deal

(08:58):
and it was very scary. It was like unclear what
was going on. The communication wasn't sublime. And Greg was like, well,
we're gonna pick out our own show. And the reason
we're gonna pick out our own show is isn't a
show of solidarity. Isn't a saying like this is the
thing we care about the most in the world. And
we were in that little Chandler Studios out in the
middle of Van Eyes, and it was not on a

(09:19):
major studio lot, and so we all showed up to
work at six in the morning and we pick it
at our own show and we were in the middle
of season four. We were about to shoot the Dinner
Party episode, one of the most famous episodes of the
show of all time, the best read through I think
we ever had. You remember that read through? That read
there was was like it was like a rock concert.

(09:41):
And we had finished that script. That script is ready
to go, and that script could have been shot. The
actors could have just executed the script, and the directors
were on strike and the crew wasn't on strike. But
Steve Correll said, um, no, I'm not. This is the
way we make this show is collaborative, and there's writers
on the set and there's producers on the and we
change things and we work out new little moments and

(10:02):
pitched new jokes, and I don't think I'm gonna make
the show without the writers. And he didn't show up,
and so they shot a couple of scenes from the
episode that Michael Scott wasn't in, and then there was
nothing else to do. And the show shutdown, and that
was such a heroic thing. He just stayed home and
he got calls from a lot of lawyers and a

(10:24):
lot of studio executives, from really really powerful people saying
you have to do this, and he was like, no,
don't watch me. And Greg called him and he was
home and Greg was like, hey, I know that you've
been had a lot of pressure coming at you. Are
you okay? And he was like, yeah, I'm home, I'm
playing with my kids and was totally unfazed by it
and had the attitude of like, this is a collaborative effort,

(10:46):
this is a thing that we do together. We don't
do this, this isn't without writers on the set, we
don't make the same show. And I'm not going to
make that show fire me basically was what he was saying.
He called their bluff and the show shut down and
write it around strike for four months, and then they
gave up jurisdiction of the internet. We went back to
work and then we made the Dinner Party, which is amazing,

(11:07):
and it was truly the story of what he did
spread like wildfire. Um, he did not have to do that.
There were very few people who were in the position
that he was in, obviously as the star of a
very popular, successful, gigantic, monolithic hit show. But still he
didn't have to do that. He could, No one would
have been mad at him. He wasn't on the active

(11:29):
and I was, you know, I remember having a huge,
long conversation with my representations saying like, how can I
walk past them? How can I cross how can I
cross the line? And he said that that you know,
you have no choice. You have to show up, and
we knew that, and Ed, I remember, Ed, came out
and was like, hey, guys, and he hung out with us,
and I remember Ed going, I'm really sorry, but I

(11:51):
have and we're like, no, no, no, we get it.
Your union is not on strike here, like you're not.
We get it. It's fine. No one's bad at you.
Like no one had any animosity towards any of the
acts because you were in breach of contract if you
didn't show up. Steve was in breach of contract. He
just said, I don't care fire me. And it's easier
for the star of the show to do that than
it is for anyone else. But um, the story spread

(12:14):
like wildfire, and Mindy wrote a sign in marker Um
hung it on his trailer that said like Steve Corral
American hero or something and took a picture of it,
and it spread very quickly around the town and it
was a real like wind beneath the wings of the
guild at the time. It's amazing. I mean he you
can't sort of overstate just what an amazing guy he is.

(12:40):
And person to work with, ya, I mean, the person
who's number one on the call sheet sets the tone
of the show. It he or she just does it's
people take their cues from that person. That person kind
of says like this is what's allowable behavior, and this
is what isn't allowable behavior in a in a number
of different ways, actively and passively. And his presence at

(13:04):
the top of the call sheet, especially in that early going,
but his professionalism, his his dedication. He was never late
a day in his life. He knew all of his lines,
and when he didn't, he improvised something that was funnier
than what we had written. Um. I don't know if
you know this story, but there was a even on
successful shows. In fact, especially on successful shows, networks are

(13:28):
always trying to slash budgets, right, like it's when something's
making money, it's not like thank god, we're making money,
it's how do we make more money? And there was
a budget meeting with NBC and Greg. It must have
been after season four because Greg and I were developing
Parks and Wreck and he asked me to come to say, like,
you're gonna have to deal with this kind of crap
and you should see what it's like. And there was
a budget terry meeting and they were trying to slash

(13:50):
the budget, and one of the things on the table
was reducing the size of the cast because at that point,
how many series regulars were there, twenty two or something.
It was a lot by far, the largest cast of
any show on television. And Greg was like, I don't
think that's a good idea that people invest in these characters.
Everyone has a different favorite character and even a side character,

(14:12):
you know, a character like you know Jan or something
who was not even a series regular, Like if you
don't have her on the show in a certain number
of episodes, it doesn't feel like the same show. And
they were like, well, we have to find the money somewhere,
you know, and we're only making seven eighty million dollars
a year. On this thing. And so we went back
and we had a meeting with Steve and I can't

(14:33):
remember who was there, but Greg was like, okay, so
here's what happened in the meeting. And they want to
cut the budget in this and that, and they threw
out a number of options, one of which was reducing
the cast, and Steve went no, no, no, no, no, no,
like he said no like eight times in a row.
And Greg was like, well, that was my reaction to
and Steve just went no, it's not happening. That is

(14:54):
not happening. We with that is not going to happen.
Like he just so completely shut it down and is
even he was like, this is the show. These are
the people on the show. This is how the show
will be until the end of the show. That's it.
That's it, and and there were executives in the room
and it was like that ended the discussion. It was
just over, like there was no It was a little

(15:15):
bit like sue me or fired me. It was like,
in so many words, he was saying, I won't do
the show if you do that, like I will walk away.
And it just shut it down and shut it down forever,
and no one ever ever came up again, never once,
So mazing. Yeah, he's just he's just such a mench
and and his like it wasn't angry, he wasn't pounding

(15:38):
his fist. He was just saying, no, that's not going
to happen, that nonstarter, move on, what's next. And that's
the way he is. He was. It was just this quiet,
firm leadership that he exhibited all the time in every direction.
And he there was another time in two the big
future of TV was product placement that where money was

(16:00):
going to really be made, right, you were gonna Greg
used to to say, like the deal was you have
to take some medicine when you watch TV. In the
medicine as these ads, but then you get a yummy
treat and the treat is the show you like, right,
And product placement was they were going to try to
swirl the medicine into the into the and um Ben
was like a big proponent of it, and so was
it by the way everyone else, Like it was like

(16:22):
this is the future, Like the futures were going back
ironically to like the fifties, and it was like the
Lucky Strike comedy exactly, this is delicious. So we have
this big meeting, all hands on deck meeting. Um, we
had done the Staples thing, remember the Staples where you
had it. You you you bore the brunt of it because
you had to play with that shredder and and Staples
didn't send me a check. No, Well that was that

(16:44):
was that was partly. That was a big part of
Greg's objection to it was like, if Brian wants to
do a Staples ad, then he can go do a
Staples ad and they can pay him money. But Staples
is getting free Brian baum Gardner and free Rain Wilson
and free whoever. By like giving NB see money you need,
the show doesn't even really benefit. It's this kind of
complicated calculus, right. But we had this big meeting where

(17:07):
we were really being sold on product placement, and it
was it was getting away from us. It was being
put to us in a way where it was like
you're going to say yes to this. We're going to
keep telling you to do this until you say yes.
Talk talk talk talk talk talk. And then Craig went, Steve,
what do you think, which was a brilliant idea, and

(17:30):
Steve said, you know, I started in commercials and commercials
are great when you're a struggling actor and you need
money and stuff. But what happens in commercials is you
do a commercial for coke, and you know, you do
a take where you take a sip of coke and
you say mmmmm, coke tastes great, and then they go, okay, cut.
Can you rotate the can a little more like this

(17:51):
and hold it like this? Okay, good? Go again and
you go coke. I love coke. Coke takes right, and
they go great, but can you raise it up to
your lips an inch higher when you take the sip?
Because you just do that over and over and over again.
And he said the idea that anyone would have that
kind of influencer control over our show and the way
we make our show, which is loose and fun and collaborative,

(18:12):
and the operators are diving for different things and the
actors get to try different things every time. I remember
him saying the idea that Rain would say something funny
and we wouldn't be able to use it because he
wasn't holding the coke can at the right angle. I
don't think that's a good idea. And there was a
pause and then it was like okay, well, let's we'll
pick up this discussion, you know, next week or something.

(18:34):
Never brought it up again. He just like he was
just the He was the guardian of the show. In
that way, he and Greg were just they had two
different versions of the job, but the onset world of
the show, Steve was the guardian protector of what we
did and how it was done and who did it

(18:55):
and no one messed them. It was just like he
was the final arbiter because he knew, he understood so
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(22:49):
office the office? Or what does the office mean to you? Oh? God?
Well those are those? Are you even questions? What makes
the office the office? And what does the office mean
to me? What? What? What does the office mean to you? Well?
I mean it's where the office is where I learned

(23:09):
how to write. And I mean that in exactly as
fundamental a way as I'm saying. And I didn't know
how to write before I got the job, and now
I do. And it's because of that show, not just
Greg's tutelage, but the mechanics of the stories that we
told and the the obstacles we had to overcome. Obstacles
are good for comedy, and The Office had the basic

(23:30):
obstacles of being a network show and having to cram
a story into twenty two minutes and all that stuff,
which are great obstacles everyone should learn how to write
on a network sitcom. But then it had all these
other artificial obstacles the Greg added and the mockumentary style added,
and the number of characters that in the show. So
Greg taught me how to actually write, and then the

(23:51):
show taught me how to write well, I think because
any episode you did, you would look at it and
go like, well, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. There are
twenty people in the cast, and there's there's three stories,
and I have twenty one minutes and thirty seconds? And
how do I put this all together? And you learn
to be really non precious with your own writing. You

(24:13):
learn like these things are disposable. They're not poems. Greg
used to say that the scripts aren't poems right there,
architectural blueprints there, they're living documents, and they change, and
it's okay for them to change, like you can think
this is great. There's only a couple of times in
my life where something didn't really play well and I
really really fought for it, knowing that it wasn't gonna

(24:33):
play well. One of them, this is like, this is
like my own, this is my own like indulgence. But
I wrote. I wrote a Dwight has a talking head
where he says, um, it was always backstory that Dwight's
and maternal ancestors were maybe Nazis, And so we did
a talking head where Dwight says, um, my maternal grandmother

(24:55):
is like a hundred and two and still puttering around
down in Argentina, and then he said, um, I tried
to visit her once, but my visa was protested by
the show of Foundation, and it didn't really it got
like a moderate laugh because a lot of people probably
didn't what the show of Foundation was. But I remember

(25:16):
fighting really hard for that in the edit, like Greg
wanted to cut it, I think, and I was like, please, please, please,
please please. But that's the exception that proves the rule.
Mostly it was like you watch, we watched these cuts together,
and you see what works and one doesn't work, and
you just cut everything that doesn't work, like you don't
get precious, what's the show of Foundation in there? Yeah?
That dead aired? Okay, Yes, that totally aired, and it

(25:37):
makes me laugh every time I remember that. I remember
that part of it. No, it aired, It definitely aired,
because I was basically like, I will never ask you
for anything for the rest of my life. You leave
this in. Was there anything that got cut that you
wish hadn't. I'm sure there was. I don't remember offhand.
So in the Job, I think it was in the
Job we wrote him talking for Dwight that was I

(26:02):
think an entire page long. It was insane. It was like, um,
a version of a much shorter version of it aired,
but there was a verse. It was about how one
of his cousins I think or Moses brother or something
was had one leg that was shorter than the other
one and when he ran to the bus, he would
have to curve in like a long arc because the
natural awkward gait of one leg being shorter than the

(26:24):
other would would cause him to run in like a
into like a long curve. And it was nonsense. I
mean it was. It went on for so long. Paul
and I were just in a crazy giggle fit and
we wrote like the endless talking head for Rain and
he loved it and he like memorized the whole thing
and like nailed it. And I was like, I wish
this could air, but there's no way to justify it.

(26:44):
It's complete. There's nothing to do with the story at all,
you know. Um. Greg Greg also introduced this concept of
double duty. Have people talking about double duty. Greg's thing
was like, look, we have such a limited time here,
and he said the bad sitcom split their lines. Some
are jokes and some are are like story, because he said,

(27:07):
what happens is if you've separated the story and the jokes,
you cut all the jokes to get the story, and
then you have nothing but stories. So he was like
really hard on us of like, you have to make
the story lines funny. They have to do double duty
and if they don't, then it's not good enough and
you got to do it again, do it again, and
do it again. Yeah, and it's that was an amazing
lesson to learn it because it was like, yeah, you

(27:29):
don't have time. You can have talking heads that are
just jokes, except for when they were about the show
a foundation. Yeah, I mean, they're definitely worse. So that's
so funny. Yeah, I want to get you out of here.
You have talked so much about Greg and so poetically
and articulately. Is there anything that you want to say
about you leaving with Greg to start Parks and Wreck? Yeah?

(27:49):
So he it was actually during the writers strike, we
were picketing um at Paramount and he was like, Hey,
I want to talk to you, and he basically said
like the network wants me to do a new show
and I want to do it with you, which was like,
you know, I remember, remember, like what what does this
feel like, and I was like, oh, it feels like
Mozart told me he wants to design a piano with

(28:11):
me or something like. That's the closest analog I could come.
Was like, this is the this is it, Like, this
is the moment that my life changes even more than
it has already. And so at the time, Ben wanted
to do a spinoff of the Office for obvious reasons.
But I was like, is that? What was that? What
this is? And he was like, I don't know. I
told Ben in the network that I would do another

(28:33):
show with with you and if it turned out that
the best idea, this is It's classic Greg. It's like,
if the best idea is to do a spinoff of
the from the Office, great, But if the best idea
is something else, then we should do something else. Which
is such a again like Greg also is a man
of enormous integrity, creative integrity, and personal integrity. But the
idea that he wouldn't just cash in. He could have

(28:54):
cashed in so easily. He could have taken every department.
He could have taken the accountants and spun them into
his own show. And he could have taken Kelly and
spun her into a show, and he could have taken
Jan and spun that into which he could have it.
He could be the dick Wolf of comedy if he
wanted to. But he was like, I don't want to
harm the integrity of the Office proper. If there's a
way to do it that doesn't do that, then great,

(29:16):
but if not, then we'll do something else. And so
the strike ends and we go back and we make
I don't know fifteen or sixteen episodes of the show
that year. And then he and I started meeting. We
went to um Norm's diner and we met for breakfast
like three times a week, and I pitched him I
don't know, two hundred and seventy five ideas for TV

(29:37):
shows and he and he picked, and he to me
like it wasn't a one way street. Some of them
were spin off. Some of them was like, well, maybe
we could do something with the warehouse, you know, or
maybe a different branch. I mean, he called the show.
I don't know if you've ever heard this story, but
the reason the show is called The Office cole an
American workplace is because he, thinking a thousand chests moves ahead,
was like, if this works, you could do the school

(29:59):
an American work place and do a show about teachers.
You could do like, you know, the Team an American
workplace about a monor league baseball team whatever. So some
of them were spinoff, some of them weren't. We ended
up settling on what became Parts and Wreck, which was
basically like the Office is an investigation of the private sector,
and we could do it at the same thing with
the public sector. And then we got really excited about
like we can invent dunder Mifflin, but an entire town,

(30:22):
like an entire ecosystem with media outlets and restaurants and
city hall and local celebrities and all and a history
and all that stuff and that. So that was what
set our brands on fire. So I was around for
the beginning of season five through Weight Loss and a
couple other episodes, but really mostly what I was doing
was focusing on Parks and Rack from that time. So,

(30:45):
I mean, I I was very nervous because The Office
is the best job I had ever had in my
life by a factor of a thousand. But again I
was like, I don't you don't turn down the chance
to develop a show with Greg Daniels and be like,
tell Mozart, no things. I can find a better piano teacher,
you know. Um. So it was very scary, but it
was also I was like, yeah, this is right, this

(31:07):
is the right move. And obviously I was correct. Right,
here's a I don't know, this just occurred to me.
If Greg had not said that to you, would you
have left the office? No? God, no, No, I would
have stayed. I mean, I don't know if I would
have stayed the whole time, but I certainly would have stayed.
I had no plans to leave, like, I was happily
working there. I would have worked there for at least

(31:28):
another I think my contract was like two more years
at that point. So yeah, I mean I wasn't looking
to leave at all. Like I there was no part
of me that was itching. I mean when he offered
me that chance, and I sort of did my evaluation
of like, is there any reason not to do this?
The only reason not to do it was how much
I loved working on my current job and like, and

(31:49):
the obvious risks involved with starting something new. There is
a real scary thing in this business of like, if
you've got a bird in the hand, man, take like
leave in your hands, like what are you doing? But
then I was like, well, if it blows up, I'll
bet he'll hire me. Still find some junior writer to
kick out of the way. Can I tell you my

(32:09):
favorite here's my favorite Greg story maybe ever And it
doesn't even really involve Greg. So we're trying to come
up with the idea for parks and rec and I
got really excited about it, and I was like, oh, yeah,
it's like it's like a comedy West Wing. That's the like,
if the stakes of the West Wing are Russia and
China are going to go to war in Kazakhstan, the

(32:29):
stakes of this show are the boys soccer team and
the girls soccer team both are trying to use the
same soccer field, right, And I just saw the whole thing.
I saw And Greg was the one who came up
with the idea that there's like a pit that she's
trying to fill in. And and so we talked and
talked and talked, had like a full day session where
we'd like pitch and it's usually with ideas for episodes
or anything. Like you know, it's good when like you

(32:52):
it feels like you accidentally hit an oil vein, you know,
the oil spurt, like ideas are just flying, but because
he's Greg, he didn't commit to it. He was like, Okay, good,
we've got that. Let's keep let's keep pitching, trying to
come up with something else. And we talked about a
family show and mockumentary about a family, and we talked
about I can't remember what else, but just day after
day after day after day, and the whole time, I
was like, no, we have the idea, we know what

(33:13):
it is, we know what it is. So Greg used
to have people over to his house to watch episodes, right,
we had the whole cast and all the writers, everybody
would come to his house. And I saw his wife, Suzanne,
and she was like, how's it going? And I was like,
it's going great, you know. And she was like, do
you know what the ideas yet? And I was like no,
and she was like I kind of hope it's that
government one. And I was like I kind of couldn't

(33:34):
mask my like anxiety and I was like, yeah, yeah,
me too, me too. And she laughed and was like,
let me tell you a story. And I said okay,
and she said so early on in Gregg's in my marriage,
we were driving I think They were driving from Chicago
to New York and she says, uh, it's ten o'clock

(33:55):
at night and I'm starving. And we're driving through like
shul Kill, Pennsylvania. And I said, honey, you gotta you
gotta start, you gotta pull around starving. I just weaned.
I need someone to eat. And he was like, okay.
So we pull off the highway and we see I
was like, there's a diner. Go to the diner. So
we go to the diner. We walk in and the
waitress comes over and Greg starts going out, what do
you guys serve here? Like? What is everyone like? What's

(34:16):
everyone's favorite this year? And she goes like, oh, people
were like the meat loaf and and he goes like like,
how do you prepare it? And she doesn't meat loafing whatever?
And he's like, what else do people like? And Susanne
says to him, can we just sit down and eat?
And he goes, no, I don't want to know what
kind of food they have, you know, And so he
asked a hundred more questions and she goes, honey, I'm starving.
Less to see and he goes, Susanne, we may never

(34:36):
be in Schokill, Pennsylvania. Again, this might be the only
time we're ever here. We have to like eat at
the best place. We have to like learn everything about
this place, like get the best dining experience in Scholkill, Pennsylvania.
And she said, then we pulled out and we we
we left. We didn't sit down. We what drove to
another restaurant. We went in. He repeated the asked, you know,
more questions, what do you serve here? What do people like? Whatever?

(34:59):
And find they found like the fourth place they went to,
and maybe they even doubled back and ended up going
back to the first one. But she tells me this
story and I'm like staring at her mouth agape, and
she goes, that's the man I chose to marry, and
that's the man you've chosen to develop a TV show.

(35:19):
And it was like I was like, you're right, You're
totally right, and like the truth is, I'll bet they
did have the best meat loaf and shol Kill, Pennsylvania,
and like there's no better TV show that I would
have created other than the one that we created together,
and like it's it's just who he is. Yeah, Hi,

(35:47):
I'm Glory Adam host of Well Read Black Girl. Each week,
I sit in close conversation with one of my favorite
authors of color and share stories about how they found
their voice, home, their craft, and navigated the publishing world,
and composed some of the most beautiful and meaningful words
I've ever read. We journey together through the cultural moment

(36:11):
where art, culture and literature collide, and pay homage to
the women whose books we grew up reading. And of
course I check in with members of the Well Read
Black Girl book Club. It's a literary kickback you never
knew you needed, and you're all invited to join the club.
So tell your friends to tell their friends so we

(36:33):
can be friends who love books. Listen to Well Read
Black Girl on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. M Hi, I'm Elizabeth
Dutton and I'm Elizabeth Dutton. Wait sorry, do you want
to say your name? I'm good ahead. We're the hosts
of Ridiculous Crime. People love true crime right, the mystery,

(36:57):
the intrigue, the human frailty totally. But what a lot
of us don't like is the blood and the guts
and the mayhem. Wait wait, wait, wait, some of us
do like the Mayhem. Okay, but let's be real, there's
nothing funny about murder. Our show gives you stories like
the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. And the Max Headrooms
signal hijacking. Oh so you mean ridiculous stories like the

(37:18):
UK cat Shaver and Pablo Escobars cocaine hippos. Yeah, stories
like the dudes who stole Buzzy the animatronic whatever he
was from Disney World, and the woman whose husband tried
to kill her but came back from the dead and
surprised him at her own funeral. Yeah, that does sound good.
You can find this new podcast, Ridiculous Crime all over
the place, the I Heart Radio app, the Apple podcast,

(37:38):
or wherever you get your podcast. I don't know how
you live Ridiculous Crime. Hello, Hello, Hi, Oh my god.
I want to come through the screen and hug you. Hey, everybody.
Jessica's are here, also known as Vanessa Abrams on Gossip Girl.
I am so excited to share my new podcast with

(37:59):
you guys. It's called XO XO and it's a walk
down memory lane all about Gossip Girl. I'll chat with
some of the cast, crew, fans of the show and
I'm just so pumped for you guys to go on
this journey with me. All I made Westwick, I played
Chuck Bass. I just can't leave that. I did that
with my life Jay. We had like the most amazing time.
Listen to XO XO on the I Heart Radio app,

(38:21):
Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, let's
let's play that. Uh played number six. I thought it

(38:43):
was weird when you picked us to make a documentary,
but all in all, I think an ordinary paper company
like dunder Mifflin was a great subject for a documentary.
There's a lot of beauty and ordinary things. Isn't that
kind of the point. So it's really to me clear

(39:13):
that's what Greg thought it was all about. Did Lee
or anyone to talk about truth and beauty? Has that
phrase come up? Truth and beauty? There were a bunch
of phrases that were like sort of the mantras early on,
and Greg's the number one most repeated, almost truth and beauty.
And he was like, everything that we make should be true,
should be real, should feel like it's true, and it

(39:35):
should be the attempt should be to find the beauty
and whatever you're doing in the writing and the acting
and the directing and the set design and the costumes
and everything. Truth and beauty, Truth and beauty, and it
just got deeply ingrained in us. He gave us an
analogy for what the show was um in the first season,
which was, imagine a completely paved parking lot in an

(39:59):
office park. It's stretching out as far as you can see,
and you're walking across it, and it's a hot day
and as you're just in a corporate industrial waste land,
and then you look down and there's a crack in
the asphalt and there's a single little dandelion growing through
the crack. He's like, that's what the show is. It's
finding that dandelion, right, finding that little tiny glimmer of

(40:20):
truth and beauty and happiness in aggressively unbeautiful landscape. Greg
used to say, I'm really I feel like like a
like a cult member. It's we're talking about Greg as
much as I am, but it's impossible to talk about
the show without talking about him. The Truth and Beauty
was like, it didn't surprise me when that was the

(40:40):
end of the show. I remember thinking, like, yeah, he
nailed he he like, at the very end of the day.
He sort of laid out his view of what why
the show mattered for everyone through Pam, which is the
right character to do it through. You know, Pam believes
that Michael may have been whatever lead, but that Pam

(41:02):
was truly the heart of the show. Who said that, Jenna, Jenna,
I think she's probably right. Um. I've had this conversation
with a bunch of people in the last with the
with the weird resurgence of the show in the last
couple of years. I've talked to gent Alata and Paul
and and Lee and Mindy. I think about, like, just
when you rewatch it, one of the episodes that hit

(41:25):
you the hardest. I think that the maybe maybe the
best episode that we ever did was Pam's art show.
The ending of that episode is no one comes to
her art show because no one likes her at that
moment in the show. And at the end of it,
Michael shows up and one of the things that she
drew was the office, and he is just like so

(41:47):
blown away by it and it's so meaningful that he's
there for her because no one else showed up. Jim
didn't show up, Nobody showed up, and Um and she
hugs him, and then there's a great joke that I
think they added on the set where she's like, what's
in your pocket? And he goes chunky and she looks
at him and he pulls it out and it's an

(42:08):
actual chunky. But that the moment where he shows up,
I think is the is maybe the best moment and
that we ever did, like him showing up at her
our show and her reaction to it and her hugging him,
like I think she's right, Like Pam, that is the
She is the person in those moments who makes Michael
feel better when the bird dies, and who like he's

(42:31):
kind of the gatekeeper of everybody's emotional status and stuff.
And yeah, I know, well it's interesting that you bring
that up because that coupled with that talking head, that's
the last moment of the show. Is Pam picking up
that drawing and taking it with her. That's right, Yeah,
I know. And it was very That episode was very

(42:53):
hard to break. I remember I think Brent wrote it
Brent Forrester. As we did every episode, we rewrote it
over and over and over and over again, and like
that was the that was like a late addition, was
like that the way out of this. We're always looking
for the for the off ramp for Michael of like
how does he get out of his whatever miserable circumstances
he put himself in. And it was like, Oh, the

(43:15):
way out is he goes to Pam's art show and
then the idea that she drew the office and he
takes it back and hangs it up like he's It
was like that was the emotional solve, and uh, it
was like, oh, he should That's where he should hang it,
right outside his office. It should be the thing that
he sees every day before he goes to work, you know.
Is I mean those little, those little tiny consistencies. That's

(43:35):
what's so great about having a show that lasts for
a long time, as you get to do these things
in season three or whatever that are there and that
like end up mattering a whole lot in season I mean,
as a fan, I wrote the episode with the teapot
and the note and everything, and then it was like
in season nine when I was watching just as a
fan and I was like, oh my god, it's coming
back right and we had I had um John write

(44:00):
the note himself and I said, don't tell anyone what
you're writing, would write whatever you want, right, whatever you
think Jim would write. And I don't know what he wrote.
I have no I've never seen it, and I don't
think he ever told anyone. I don't think Jenn ever
told anyone. Like it's like I think I believe it's
like a secret shared by the two of essentially by
the two of them and maybe the props department if

(44:21):
they steamed it open and looked at Wow, Um, what
do you think it's legacy is? I mean, it's legacy
is Uh, it's going to be enormous, I think. I
mean for a couple of reasons. One is it's really good.
Two is the cast is incredible. And every time every

(44:42):
time someone discovers Jenna Fish or John Krasinski or Rain
Wilson or you or Angelo or anybody or Craig Robinson,
they're going to go like, where did this person start?
And then they're gonna go back and watch the show.
But also it just was on. It did we did
two episodes? Like there aren't many shows that do that anymore.
That is over, Like there how many more shows are

(45:02):
going to even do a hundred in this era that
we're in a six episode, eight episode, ten episodes seasons,
even shows that last ten years to eighty episodes or something.
And I think the reason why so many people have
discovered it and have like really sat with it is
because it's one of the last shows, one of the
most recent shows where you feel like you can watch
a new episode every night. And and you know, my

(45:24):
son is eleven now. My son was was born in
season four of the show, and he's now eleven, and
he just watched every single episode, and every kid in
his grads watched every single episode. By the way, here's
another thing Greg did. We used to try constantly to
like put pop culture references in the show, and Greg
was like, you know, no, no pop culture references. Um,
this show needs to feel like it could. It's timeless,

(45:46):
like it could be happening in any moment in time
from the seventies until like two thousand fifty. And I
remember thinking at the time, like, all right, you're pretty
high on yourself there. But they just think that this
show is gonna matter. And look, it's twenty years later
and it matters just as much. And my son doesn't
know that that show isn't on the air. Netflix shows
and ABC shows that are the same. And it's crazy

(46:10):
because now you can watch it and it doesn't feel
dated because there's no references to, you know, things that
were happening in two five. See, I think it's different
than that. I respectfully slightly disagree. Interesting because when you
watch it, which I recently did, it doesn't feel dated. Yeah,
we'll see when I think it was was you guys?
In the writing, we're so specific. The characters were written

(46:34):
so specifically, and so it almost functions now because you
don't watch a documentary about the seventies and go that
feels dated, right, It's just like that's when it happened.
So now we're watching a documentary right about this very
specific moment, at this very specific moment. I I think
maybe it's both things, right. It's like we didn't call

(46:54):
attention to when it was happening, and also we were
very specific about what was happening, And then that way
just feels like it's a moment in time of place
and time, whoever you want to put it. So I
like the in terms of its legacy. To get back
to that, I keep getting off topic, but I think
that people settle into the show and watch the show
because it has this incredible specificity and it has this

(47:19):
just deep It feels like you're eating the richest dessert
a tiny bit at a time, and that is a
really lovely feeling to have. Like, you know, it's a
different kind of hangout show from other successful hangout shows
from Cheers or Friends or the it's a it's a
hangout show that that feels like the emotional lives of

(47:40):
the characters are completely wrought and thick and juicy, and
you can really follow people's psychologies and their lives as
they grow over the course of nine years. And I
don't I think a show like that is very rare,
and I think that people will still be watching this
show a very long time. Right now, from Cavalry Audio,

(48:11):
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
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They were afraid it's face it out in that area,
what if they come back or whatever. It scared me

(48:32):
to death, like it scared me. I was very, very
intimidating to live here. Crazy to think you go to
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never wake up, or maybe you wake up in a
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upon smaller town, Ohio, killed eight members of an Ohio

(48:52):
family in a pre planned execution. The family was targeted,
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Moon Murders is if they will on February twenty second,
and you can follow the Pig Moon Murders on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Conquer your New Year's resolution to be more
productive with the Before Breakfast podcast. In each bite sized

(49:14):
daily episode, time management and productivity expert Laura vander Caam
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Just as lifting weights keeps our body strong as we age,
learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron.
Listen to Before Breakfast wherever you get your podcasts. When

(49:49):
was the decision made for writers to start acting in
the show from the before the before the pilot, I
mean Greg coming from SNL, Greg wanted SNL is very
the membrane between writers and actors is very thin, and
all the actors write stuff and a lot of the
writers are in sketches and stuff. And almost everyone there's
a writer performer, even if he or she is only

(50:11):
on staff as a writer or something. And he liked that,
and he wanted to get rid of the false dichotomy
of writers and actors. So he hired Mindy specifically because
she was a performer. She was in a play called
Mattin Band that she had written in New York. He
hired b J because BJ was a stand up and
a writer. He and then like we made Paul against

(50:32):
his will play Toby in the first season, like we
forced it. He did not want to do it. He
hated it, he hated acting. But we forced him to
do it because he was so funny to have him
be the guy that Michael Scott hates more than anybody.
But it was that was always the design. I think
he wanted everybody to to write and perform ideally, except
for me because he made me a freak. Most famously

(50:56):
and most annoyingly to me, played the character most shrewd.
Oh my god. We never talked about most Oh my god.
I assumed it was gonna be your first question. I
I know, I have a whole section on it. But
you were so great? Um, all right, well then just
very quickly, sure you were cast as most I was,

(51:19):
and you're happy about that now. I hated it. I
hated every second of it. Why did you hate it?
Because I was wearing wool clothes and had a neck
beard and it was always really hot and I didn't
The joke was I didn't talk, and that's not a
funny joke. And it was always like I had to
get up at four thirty in the morning and drive

(51:39):
to the middle of nowhere and wear woolf clothes and
it was. And then the joke became with the writers
because they knew how much I hated it. They loved
like what if your shirtless, what if you're on a seesaw,
what if you're on a trampoline, What if you're running
as fast as you can alongside a car like a dog.
I was at parks and wreck and they would call
me and they like, we need most and I was like,
I have a job, I have a life, I've young children,

(52:00):
and they would just make me do it. They would
compete with each other to see what was the most
humiliating possible thing they could have me do. But that
that episode Paul So Paul wrote that episode where they
where Jim and Pam go to shoot farms, and he
wrote in the in the script it literally says, Mose
appears out of nowhere and runs along the side of
the car like a dog. That's what it says. That's
I'm a human being. And so we did. That scene

(52:24):
was a hundred and forty degrees. I was in woolf
clothes and and old work boots that like didn't fit properly,
and that sprint is probably a hundred and fifty yards
down that dirt road from the time I come out
to the time I had to run all the way
up into shrewd farms. It of course cuts off long
before I ever get there. But they were like, you
got it. Paul was directing, was like you get a

(52:45):
run all the way there. So I did, over and
over and over again, probably twelve or fourteen takes because
Paul delighted in it so much. And then later in
that episode, I'm in Jurassic Park pajamas that don't fit
me properly. And then Greg pitched the thing where he
was like, what if there's a loud noise and Pam
goes to the window and looks at it, and Moses
in the outhouse with his pants down and the doors

(53:06):
flapping clothes. I mean it was like it was aggressive.
It was. They knew I never should have been. If
I had said, like, I love doing this, they never
would have put me in the show again. But because
I hated it so much and was so vocal about
hating it, Well, you have confirmed something. Moses a is
a fan favorite. You hear about people loving most. Okay,
let me tell you something. What I have always said

(53:28):
is I think Moses a writer's room joke. Oh, you
have now confirmed without a doubt that it was literally
a writer's room joke meant to torture you, meant specifically
to make me miserable. Yes, yes, I was in a coffin.
I was like hanging upside down somewhere like there were
a bunch of things that we did that were then

(53:50):
just cut out of the show. I was riding a
moped over like trying to jump a bunch of cars.
They made me do that moped thing. I don't know
how to drive a mope head. I don't know how
to drive him moped. No one taught me how to.
They were like, just get on and just rev the thing,
because the point was if I wipe out, it'll be
really fun now, and then run across the roofs of

(54:10):
these cars again. If you slip and fall and break
your pelvis, it'll be really funny. Like they was. The
subtext was always the worst this goes, the funnier it
will be when it happens. Well, I this was after
you left. I mean sort of from the beginning, but
then more and more Kevin started having a lot of
physical comedy type stuff, and there would be times where

(54:34):
I would go to the writer's room and say, I
don't remember if you were ever there, but I would say,
you guys are writing for Homer Simpson right now, and
a cartoon you can force to do whatever you'd like
him to do. He can do whatever, right, but I can't.
My body doesn't work that way. No one's does. Like

(54:55):
the most painful I feel like I still have pain
from it is the most innocuous you would never ever
ever know. The office workers have to go to the
warehouse and move boxes, so they decided they're gonna put
remember that episode, yeah, boiled down so they could move
boxes to get to the troll. And everyone thought the
big guy falling is really funny. So I just kept

(55:19):
falling slipping and which means on a concrete surface with oil,
kneecap on concrete over and it's like, guys, I can't
keep You've gotta like, yeah, there has to be some
other solution. We had a We had a similar thing
on Parson Wreck where Nick Offerman's character Ron Swanson was

(55:39):
a sort of he was a little cartoonish in his
abilities to do various things, and we wrote this joke
where he wanted to get he was eating a he
got lunch and he was eating his hamburger and and
the joke was he wanted to get out of the
lunch as quickly as possible, so in the script, he
shoved the entire hamburger into his mouth and ate it
in one bite. So they Dean Holland was directing it

(56:00):
and he was like okay action and Nick did his best,
but then Dean was like, you you really need to
eat the whole thing in one bite, and he was
like this is a like a half pound hamburger. Okay,
like I maybe the character can do this, but a
human can't. And yeah, all right, yeah right, sorry, yeah,
you're not your character, right, Okay, I I almost wiped

(56:23):
out super hard on that moped. Like well, first of all,
the joke was someone pulls up in the car. It
was the Garden Party episode. Someone pulls up in the
car night and I'm the valve Mos the valet and
I get in and they're like, just get in and
tear off down this road, right, And the joke at
the time is why is most driving so fast and
so insistent? And so I did, and like I tore
off down the road and I'm not a stunt driver.

(56:45):
I don't know, like and suddenly I'm going sixty five
on a dirt road and on a set and the
back tires fish tail because it's a dirt road, and
I like slow down and was like, oh right, I'm
not This isn't a no One's gonna like save me.
If I crashed this car, I'll die. Because I also
got in and didn't put my seatbelt on because the

(57:05):
joke was you get in and take off, And I
was like, oh my god, I just I forgot for
a second that I'm not fictional. I'm make sure I'm
not fictional. I'm a human could suffer consequences. Mine very
similar to that was I think it was when there's
the storyline of Dwight telling Holly that that Kevin is slow,

(57:25):
and there was a scene we did a number of
different ways. This didn't end up in but where I'm
driving and she's like you're driving. You have a car,
and I'm like, yeah, I have a car. And at
one point they were like okay, so do that, but
then get out of the car, but leave it running,

(57:46):
like leave it, leave it like leave it, leave it
in gear. So like as you step out, the car
is going to move forward and then we'll have somebody
else who can jump in and stop it. Yeah. I
did ideas like profound Meanwhile, it's vedas car, right like
her real car. I uh. That joke that they did

(58:09):
with Kevin in the later years where he didn't know
the alphabet elemento. Paul pitched that in season two and
we were like, Paul that's insane, Like you can't say
that he doesn't know that he's an accountant. He's a
working accountant. Like he might not be the best accountant,
he's an accountant. It made Paul laugh so hard, And
the second that Paul took over the show, that joke aired,

(58:32):
and I was like, well, that's what he got what
he wanted. Six years later he told me it was
his favorite joke that he ever wrote. Yeah, yes, Elmo,
he told me and us that and and tried to
get it into the show and like season two or
three or something, and we're like, you know, there's crazy
stuff like that. I mean, you know, again, this is
a writer's room joke that no one would ever know.

(58:55):
But what was Kevin's band going to be? And having
it be the Police? This was like a you thing actually,
But the idea that I was a drummer lead singer
of the Police, and with the Police, the lyrics and
the singing is off of the beat of the drums
because they had like rhythms. You would have to be

(59:17):
a musical savant to be able to play drums and sing. Well,
it wasn't the Police originally it was Steve was Steve
Miller band and they were called the Midnight Tookers because
my friend scotts Olvery was in a Steve Miller cover
band in high school called the Midnight Tookers. Scott's a writer,
and I always thought that was the perfect amount of
stupid for a cover but like a Midnight Tokers is like, oh,

(59:39):
what a great and so it was a Steve Miller
band and then they didn't give us the rights to
the music, and so we had to change it. And
so I think Mindy maybe pitched Scrantnicity Mindy or Paul.
But I remember being so bummed out that it couldn't
be the Midnight Tookers, just because I had really had
my heart set on that. I sang, we did the
whole video, was right, that's right, And we had trying

(01:00:00):
to volume down because he was to like jet airliner
or whatever, remember what it was. But yes, and maybe
it was the joker. I don't know, it was, yeah, right,
But I'm happy at the end of the day, I'm
happy that it was grantnicity. Yes, that was a good
solution to that stupid problem. Um, okay, you've given us

(01:00:20):
so much time, thank you so much. So really fun
I like walking down memory lane. It's fun. Yeah, it's
such a I mean, it's just actually awesome to see.
I know, it's been too long, I know. And congratulations
on everything, and um, thank you so much, my pleasure,

(01:00:50):
wow the things that could have been. Thank you Mike
for coming back and sharing so much of your story
with us. It was so great to have you and
just so great to talk the office with you. And
thank you all as always for listening week to week

(01:01:11):
or day to day. Don't forget to come back next Tuesday,
same time, same place, for another very special episode, because
that day, next Tuesday, is the day that we, or
at least I have been waiting for. It will finally
be here the launch of our brand spanking new book

(01:01:34):
Next Tuesday. Head to Amazon dot Com, Barnes and Noble,
Books a million, wherever you get your books. Basically go there,
pre order your very own copy of Welcome to dunder Mifflin,
The Ultimate Oral History of the Office, and if you do,
you could be reading it one week from today. Grab
one for yourself, grab one for everyone that you know,

(01:01:59):
because when it comes to a gift, you shouldn't have
a hard time getting it in. That's what she said, wait, no,
you shouldn't have a hard time getting it in time
for the holidays or you know, any day, because every
day is a holiday when you're with me. Okay, have

(01:02:22):
a great week everyone. The Office. Deep Dive is hosted
and executive produced by me Brian bom Gartner, alongside our
executive producer Langley. Our senior producer is Tessa Kramer. Our
producers are Liz Hayes and Diego Topia. My main man

(01:02:46):
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 o'landski from Cavalry Audio,

(01:03:19):
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. They were afraid he's face it out
in that area. 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

(01:03:41):
Pink Moon Murders on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Glory Adam,
host of Well Read Black Girl. Each week, we journey
together through the cultural moment where art, culture and literature
collide and pay on it to the women whose books

(01:04:01):
we grew up reading. It's a literary kickback you never
knew you needed. Listen to a Well Read Black Girl
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever
you get your podcasts. You can watch the NFL playoffs
like a fan, or you can prep like a scout
if you listen to the award winning Move the Sticks podcast.

(01:04:22):
The show is hosted by me, Daniel Jeremiah and my
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knowledge from a career as NFL talent scouts to the
podcast world so fans can watch and understand the nuances
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(01:04:42):
Subscribe now and listen to the Move the Sticks podcast
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