February 9, 2021 • 44 mins
Rainn Willson, AKA Dwight Schrute, joins Brian in the studio for some salty nuts and Office talk. Rainn explains how he engineered the worst possible haircut for Dwight, his early rise to the throne of Twitter King, the constant feeling that the show would end in the first seasons—and Brian reveals an unaired scene that will shake you to your core.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Lee, the listeners take here. Last season on Lethal Lit,
you might remember I came to Hollow Falls on a mission. Well,
I'm finding out that in this town, the dead don't
keep their secrets for long, and the bodies keep piling up.
The second season if Lethal Lit is available now on
(00:21):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Hey Hey, this is John
hopebryant entrepreneur and a fellow builder just like you. Thanks
you the help of I Heart Radio and Prudential Financial.
I'd like to present to you my brand new podcast.
It's called Building the Good Life, where each week a
(00:43):
special friend and I will unpack and talk in detail
about financial literals, building generational well building that community, building
the best version of you. Make sure to listen to
Building a Good Life on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Paris
Hilton and this is Trapped in Treatment, a weekly podcast
(01:05):
of shocking survivor experiences and stories from an industry plagued
by controversy. With my host 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,
(01:27):
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. My name's
Rain Wilson and I played Dwight Kurt Shrewd. Hello everybody,
(01:48):
Welcome to the office Deep Dive. I am your host
Brian baum Gartner. Today you will be listening to my
conversation with Rain Wilson. Now, when we started shooting the show, um, Rain,
he was the only person that I knew. I met
Rain back in circa nineteen all right. I was living
(02:12):
in Minneapolis and I went to see a production at
the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Now you should know this.
The Guthrie is a very, very big deal. It is
the largest regional theater in the country. It puts on
incredible shows, world renowned, etcetera, etcetera. Well, Rain was starring
(02:33):
uh in a production of Philadelphia. Here I come, and
I went to the show. And I have said this
many times. Rain's performance in that show it was the
greatest performance that I ever saw on the Guthrie stage.
It was brilliant. And so the show was over and
(02:55):
I was like, I've got to meet this guy. Rain.
This guy is brilliant and so we got introduced, we
met and we became friends. And when I showed up
to work on the first day of the office, there
was Rain, and I could not have been more delighted
to see him. He is. He's a special one, that's
(03:19):
for sure. I am so excited for you to hear
this interview. You're going to hear Rain in a way
you have never heard him before. I love talking to him.
You are going to love listening to him. So, without
further ado, here is Rain Wilson, Bubble and Squeak. I
(03:43):
love Bubble and squeak on Bubble and Squeaker cook at
every month left over from the night before. Oh, there
(04:06):
he is him, buddy, Hey man, how are you. I'm good, good,
I see you? Yeah? Yeah? Are you we? Um? That
felt really inappropriate? Why, um, we have some salty nuts
for you. I saw just a giant, like five pounds
of salty I was requested, what salty nuts? Nothing is requested?
(04:31):
What does that mean? I don't know? Um, all right,
let's do this. Let's do it. Hi, I'm all yours
for two hours? Really so exciting? Are you excited? No?
Why not? It's fun? To see me. I'm excited to
see you. Yes, that's that's what. That's what that's that's Yeah. Yeah,
(04:57):
we're gonna talk about a lot of it. I do things.
I also a excited about talking about the Office in
terms of like some stuff that you don't normally hear. Yeah,
like the the longer, more detailed stories of some of
the intricacies of how stuff was arrived at and some
of the choices that were made along the way and
stuff like. Well, that's what my goal is with you,
(05:17):
because you're a thoughtful person. I'm gonna try to do that.
You're not gonna get that from Creed. No, I know.
Well I think we've scheduled him for twenty two minutes. Okay,
so that's fine. Um No, but yeah, I'm excited to
talk to you. What what So we're starting, we're rolling. Yeah,
we're just we're just chatting. Good. What were you doing
before the Office? Um? Before the Office? Well, going way
(05:43):
way back before. So, I did theater for about ten
years in New York before I did any TV or film,
so early was a theater actor. Some lot of people
ask like, how were you an improv or were you
and stand up or something? Like that, but I didn't
do anything. I'm similar to you exactly. Yeah, theater theater
person that kind of found that we were well suited
(06:04):
to kind of comic character guys despite our ravishingly good looks.
So yeah, So I came out to l a in
and then started doing commercial auditions and voiceover auditions and
little guest spots on TV shows. I was unlike Charmed,
and yeah and c S I and I did c
(06:26):
S I. You did see s I too. For you,
I was a furry you're a guy who gets sexual
gratifications out of wearing a big furry suit. I was
creepy guy in supermarket. I'm not kidding, creepy guy in Supermarket.
I think I was dog. I think literally that perfect.
I think that was my role that was perfect. Yes,
So I did a lot of that stuff and some pilots,
(06:46):
and I did some decent movie roles here and there,
and um, what happened for me that really led to
the office is a lot of people think I kind
of waltzt into Dwight. But the big role that put
me on the map was in Six ft Under. So
after a lot of slogging around the casting people, Libby Goldstein. Um,
(07:08):
they brought me in multiple times to six ft Under
and finally I got the role of Arthur and I
did ended up doing thirteen episodes on that right when
HBO was heating up, and that was kind of revolutionizing
what we think of as television. You know, Sopranos the
Wire were on at the same time. It was Entourage
(07:29):
and a lot of really amazing shows, including six ft
Under and uh, all of a sudden, I popped onto
people's radar. Um. It was really incredible how that happened,
because that was one of those shows that everyone in
l A watches. There's there are the shows that people
watch all across the country. They watch n c I,
S l A or something like that, and it's fifty
(07:51):
million people will watch it, but no one in l
A who are like taste makers watch it. So this
six ft Under was one of those kind of shows
and that's what put me on the map. And all
of a sudden, I was in kind of pretty high
demand for movies and stuff. I know, you want a
SAG Award for that, the Ensemble Ensemble SAG Award. Yeah.
(08:12):
I might be the only person who has been part
of winning an Ensemble SAG Award for both Drama and
Comedy because I did it for six ft Under and
then twice we won I think twice we won uh
for The Office and now, so so you're in high demand, yeah,
And were you aware of the British version of The Office?
(08:32):
I was. I was so my friend Sam Catlin, he
had heard about it and he had seen a couple
episodes and somehow gotten some like British DVD or something
like that, and had like even like an English DVD
player or something somehow had advanced copies and like, you've
got to see it. Groundbreaking, amazing, and so we went
over like on a special occasional We've got to watch
(08:53):
The Office, and we were blown away. So I was
really truly one of the first bowl to see it
in the United States. It might have been one of
the first couple of thousand people to see it in
the United States, and just we loved it. And then
he would get his hands on a couple more episodes
and we'd go back and have dinner and watched like
two or three more episodes. So I loved it. And
(09:14):
what happened was I got cast in a pilot with
Jeanine Garofalo for ABC. Mark Marin was in it and
Bob oden Kirk was in it. And this was this
infamous pilot that we did the table read and they
pulled the plug after the table read. So they had
sets built, we had locations, we had cast, we had
(09:35):
plane tickets. We were flying out the next day, literally
the next morning after the table read starts shooting and
uh did the table read? It went terribly, but I
guess what, I still got paid. And that was the
same pilot season as The Office. Kind of the Office
didn't really follow a pilot season when it was first casting, right,
So what happened was Vernon Sanders, who's one of the
(09:59):
big executives and executives right, and I ran into him
in the parking lot on the way to this infamous
table read and he's like, hey, we got good news
and I was like, what's that is? Like, we got
the rights to make the American version of the Office,
and I was like, outside, I was like, oh great,
and inside I was like, motherfucker, goddamn it. That's fucking sucks.
Because I love the British Office so much. I didn't
(10:22):
have an idea of like even what the American Office
would be or what role I would play or anything
like that. But I was just like inside, I was
just kicking myself. And then the plug gets pulled on that.
And then I called my people and I'm like, hey,
I hear about this office, and they're like, yeah, well
it was a few months to go on that. So
fortunately that the space was opened and the door was opened.
(10:44):
The universe works in mysterious ways, Brian, That's right, it does,
and so you eventually get a call to go in
and meet correct. I was the first audition for the office.
I have in my office at home, framed the audition
sheet of Alison Jones the first day of the auditions
(11:06):
for the office, and I was number one on that list.
So other people on the list, or Jenna Fisher you
can find. It's on my Instagram somewhere. It might even
be in my book in the in the photos included
in my books, so you guys can find it. But uh,
I think Adam Scott audition. I think there were, um,
there was a lot of great talent that auditions. My
(11:28):
story about that I'll share with you really quick was
when Steve left, Alison Jones came to me when he
had a little party, a little reception. She came and
she goes, I was looking for stuff for Steve that
I thought might be cool. She probably gave that to you,
like when she was searching around and she hands me
a sheet and it says Kevin and it says Brian
baum Gartner, Eric stone Street and Jorge Garcia. No kidding.
(11:53):
So that was like the final three. But oh fantastic.
So you and although Eric's down Street is way richer
than you, he is now yeah he sorry, shoot sorry,
So yeah. So on that first audition, I auditioned for
both Michael and Dwight, and my Michael was just terrible.
(12:14):
It was just simply a Ricky Gervais impersonation. And I
knew that I had more of an affinity for the
Dwight role. Uh, And I knew that I could really
deliver on that. I just felt it in my bones.
I'm like, oh, this is me, this is that is
exactly my kind of weird. Yeah, well that I mean,
you're but you were so different also than Gareth in
the British version. I mean he was much yeah weasily
(12:38):
and and Dwight way more authoritarian and trying to derive power,
whereas Gareth seemed more backstabby. Yeah, we're different in a
lot of ways and similar in a lot of ways.
And it was this incredible luxury to go, Okay, here's
Mackenzie Crook, brilliant actor, really strange look dude, and he
(13:01):
killed as Gareth and was so interesting and I get
to steal all of his best stuff, and then there's
maybe stuff that I can add that's more of my own,
so it's win win all around. So one of the
things that Dwight is most known for is saying absolutely ludicrous,
preposterous stuff with a total straight face and a dead pan,
(13:25):
without any knowledge that what he's saying is ridiculous. And really,
Mackenzie did that so beautifully and I really just frankly
stole that from him. Another thing I stole from him
was the haircut. Um. I read an interview with him
where he said he went to like just a local
barber shop out in like Slough or some you know,
suburb of London, and he kind of got the haircut
(13:47):
that would be the least flattering for his head and
the most ridiculous haircut. And I read that I was like, oh,
I want to do that, so I spent time in
the mirror figuring out what's the haircut that is going
to make me look the most ridiculous. I have a
huge forehead, and I was like, I'm going to frame
my forehead perfectly with these little draperies of hair that
(14:09):
will highlight the enormity of my carapace. Is that a word?
I think it is a word. These guys aren't even listening. Um,
and then like really short on the sides, and then
in intense and then it evolved over time. But interesting now,
so we're not going to talk too much more about
the audition process, But at what point did you meet
John and Jenna and Steve in the callback sessions? Yeah?
(14:30):
So the callback sessions were months later, mostly for for
those listeners who don't know the way pilot season used
to work, at least less and less so. But all
the scripts would start getting released in December January, and
then all the auditions where this is called pilot season
January February. They'd shoot in like March early April. Decisions
would be made in late April or May about staffing
(14:53):
up for the summer, and if something was going to
be on the air in September, so it's always a
very narrow kind of window. It's like this, this is
how this nine month window worked. So the office was
outside of those bounds a little bit. I think my
first audition was like in September, October, and then the
callback was like December, and then we shot in like
February or something like that. So I had to wait
(15:13):
months after that first audition, and they had a callback
situation where they brought everyone and their mother and anyone
they were considering for the role over a weekend, and
Greg was incredibly thorough and I spent maybe I spent
seven or eight hours on one of the first day there,
and I met Jenna, I met John um. Steve was
(15:36):
shooting some other stuff, but he had a little bit
of time and we improvised together and did a couple
of scenes together. We were given scene, oh here, tried
this scene, tried this scene. Not much time to prepare
stuff we've never seen and just like just just shoot it,
you know, and then we'd improvise, you know, like Jim
brings Dwight a glass of water, and it's like just
improvised Jim bringing you a glass of water, and Dwight
(15:57):
as immediately distrustful, like as he poisoned it or something
like that, and and that was not really my gig.
I didn't do, you know, upright citizens Brigade or groundlings.
I wasn't really an improv guy, but I'm good at
improving kind of in character. In fact, later after I
was cast, Greg came to me and we had a
coffee and he gave me kind of a little bit
(16:18):
of a warning talk, and it kind of scared me. Essentially,
he said, in a very diplomatic way, you improvised better
than you act when you're on the script. And I
was like, what, He's like, Yeah, it was more, it's
more natural. It's more when you're doing scripted stuff, it
feels a little heavy and a little forced. And I
was like, oh, and this was before we were going
(16:41):
to shoot the pilot. So I begged my manager. I
was like, I want to see the audition tapes. I
want to see my audition tapes. And sure enough, he
was right, because somehow, when I improvised, it was just
a little looser, as a little more off the cough.
It was a little weirder when I was doing scripted stuff.
It's I don't want to say it sounded like a
(17:03):
theater actor or something like that, but it sounded a
little more scripted. It didn't have that kind of documentary
feel that the office had to have, and it was
a really great learning experience, like, Oh, I need to
just kind of let the script, let the script go,
improvise around the script, let it be much lighter. That
is fascinating. I did not know that story, but it
(17:24):
kept me up at night. I was like, oh shit,
what does that mean? I improvided a good improviser and
a terrible, terrible regular actor. It's a hard time for hiring,
so you need a hiring partner built for hard times.
(17:45):
That's Indeed. If you're hiring, you need Indeed because Indeed
is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview, and
hire all in one place. And Indeed is the only
job site where you're guaranteed to find quality applications that
meet your must have requirements or else you don't pay.
Instead of spending hours on multiple job sites hoping to
(18:07):
find candidates with the right skills, you need one hiring
partner that can help you do it all. Indeed partners
with you on every step of the hiring process. Find
great talent through time saving tools like indeed, instant match,
assessments and virtual interviews. With instant Match, as soon as
you sponsor a post, you get a short list of
(18:28):
quality candidates with resumes on Indeed that match your job description,
and you can invite them to apply right away. Plus,
you only pay for quality applications that meet your must
have requirements. Join more than three million businesses worldwide that
use Indeed to hire great talent fast. Start hiring right
(18:49):
now with a seventy five dollar sponsored job credit to
upgrade your job post at indeed dot Com Slash office
Deep Dive offer valid through March thirty one. Go to
indeed dot com Slash office Deep Dive to claim your
seventy five dollar credit before March one. Indeed dot Com
slash Office Deep Dive terms and conditions apply. Need to hire,
(19:13):
you need Indeed. Anybody who is deemed to have power
who thinks differently is a threat and needs to be eliminated.
Big Brother, North Korea's Forgotten Prince is a new true
crime podcast that investigates the life and mysterious assassination of
(19:33):
the man once destined to be North Korea's next dictator,
Kim Jong Nam join us as we interview top experts
and investigate the rise and fall of the Hermit Kingdom's
one time air from his early promise he should have
been the successor to the Deadly Palace. Entries a lot
of clothing and dagger, you know, James bogg kind of
(19:54):
stuff about Jim John m to the power struggles that
ultimately spelled his d in North Korea. It's business, it's
not personal. When somebody challenges you, that challenger must be eliminated.
Listen to Big Brother on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts coming February.
(20:19):
Look to your children's eyes to see the true magic
of a forest. It's a storybook world for them. You
look and see a tree. They see the wrinkled face
of a wizard with arms outstretched to the sky. They
see treasuring pebbles, They see a windy path that could
lead to adventure, and they see you. They're fearless. Guide.
(20:40):
Is this fascinating world? Find a forest near you and
start exploring and discover the forest dot Org brought to
you by the United States Forest Service and the ad Council.
(21:00):
So I want to talk about um you creating the
character of Dwight. How you went about that, Like what
elements you chose that that you brought into Dwight. How
did you approach that? So Um, I always say that
in terms of like when people ask me about playing Dwight,
I always say that I think my goal was to
(21:22):
make Dwight very specific, you know, having you know, Dwight
have a pager, stand a certain way, like drive a
certain way, sitting in his chair a certain way, have
certain attitudes about certain things that are very specified because
no one had done like combination muscle car nerd. You know,
when you think about it, there's a lot of disparate
elements that go into the creation of Dwight, like heavy
(21:46):
metal muscle car rarely equals Battlestar Galactica fan. And I
do think this is true as an act. And the
more specific you make your character, that made him more
human and then more relatable. Um So muscle car nerd,
um heavy metal, you know Amish. Of course, Greg Daniels
(22:06):
always said that the beat farmer thing was his grandparents.
I think we're beat literally beat farmers in Poland and
they grew beats. Um. I think like before the Holocaust
and uh so he put that in from that, I
did not know that. So the beat farm was from yes,
and then the glasses, which, by the way, I really
(22:28):
do think that DWIGHTE has influenced popular culture because now
all the hipsters were the DWIGHTE glasses. You were the
first hipster. Yeah, I really was. I was like the
hipster nerd who took those glasses. And and now everyone
who goes to Intelligencia Coffee and silver Lake or Brooklyn
are wearing those same glasses. Yeah. Um, free commercial for
Intelligencia Coffee. Thank you, I'll take my gift card please. Um.
(22:53):
Was there anything for you as a theater actor like myself?
It's a loaded question. Was there anything physically, any physical
manifestation of Dwight within Rain? That's a great question, And
yes there was. And I've never really talked about this before,
but I went to theater school. I was an n
y U grad program, did a lot of like clowning,
(23:16):
and did a lot of a lot of physical work
and physical theater. You were involved in physical theater in Minneapolis.
And I'm not trying to sound pretentious at all like
Mr Theater, but when you get that kind of training,
a lot of it is physical, like how do you
find a character in your body? You know, that's part
of clown work as well. But there were certain elements
of Dwight that if I needed to kind of get
(23:37):
into character, I could just put my attention and put
my focus in certain parts of my body and I
would immediately be Dwight, like a really like a straight neck,
you know, and uh kind of hips forward and kind
of thinking about like like big hips. Like I don't
know if you noticed that Dwight always stands too close
(23:58):
to people and someone's sitting down and he's standing next
to him, like his hips are like really like big
next to their face kind of, and there's kind of
a ramrod neck, a little bit of a swagger, and
the shoulders thrown back. Those were some of the elements
of Dwight that if I was ever feeling like do
I really have him? Early on? You know, after you
do two seasons, you can just do the character in
(24:19):
your sleep. But but early on, there were some of
those physical choices that really were like clown kind of
choices that I could go to to just help me
get into the world. What about you for Kevin? Did
you have something for Kevin? Too. I mean too that
I can articulate. I'm sure there were more. For me,
it was my jaw. I knew there was a specific
place that I could put my jaw. That was him.
(24:42):
And also I imagined him for the jaw thing. You
had a weird mouth. You would make like a little
mouth like this, so it's like a little a little
jutting it for a little bit. And your lips should
be a little a little like pursed, yeah, exactly. And
also I had the ideas as he moved through the space.
There were two things. One is he wasn't aware of
(25:02):
his size within the space, right, which to me was
always hilarious when I would come against Angela right because
I just wouldn't see her there and knock her around.
And the other was that there was something about my
torso that it doesn't move agilely from side to side.
It's all sort of just all connected down at my hips,
(25:24):
and that there's yeah, yeah, yeah, so the whole body
turns at the same whole body and maybe even shuffle
my feet to turn to one. Um, hold on one second,
that is not your in that is water speak for yourself. Um,
(25:44):
why do people love Dwight Well? We talked earlier about
the specificity of Dwight, and I think that how his
glasses are and how his beeper is, and that the
certain colors that he wears in the car he drives,
and how he sees the world old um. But you know,
the thing I hate the most about comedy, and I
(26:07):
have been known to tiptoe into this land, but the
thing I hate them most about it is that when
someone knows that they're being funny, And that's one of
the I think keys to the comedy the Office is
that none of the characters thought of themselves as being funny.
I think the documentary element helped with that tremendously. And
I tried to play Dwight as outrageously as possible and
(26:31):
as grounded and realistic as possible at the same time.
So look at any scene and what's happening. As matter
how ridiculous it is, you can always tell there's a child,
there's a big kid in there. He could do just
preposterous things, but I always tried to motivate them internally
with some internal drive, like this is how Dwight saw
(26:52):
the world, This is how you always knew how Dwight felt.
I guess that would be my number one answer is like,
you can always tell what Dwight is feeling and what
he's going through on the inside. And he thinks he's hiding,
you know, people think, oh, is he you know, is
he is he on the spectrum? Does he have autism
or something like that, But his heart is on his sleeve.
(27:12):
You can always see what he's feeling, you know, is
even if he's being haughty or even if he's being arrogant, like,
you always see what's going on in the inside. And
I think that that allowed people to relate to him.
So in those moments when Dwight was sad or hurt,
or or put off or disappointed, like people really felt
for him. Look at your children's eyes to see the
(27:41):
true magic of a forest. It's a storybook world for them.
You look and see a tree. They see the wrinkled
face of a wizard with arms outstretched to the sky.
They see treasuring pebbles, They see a windy path that
could lead to adventure, and they see you. They're fearless.
Guide is fascinating world. Find a forest near you and
(28:03):
start exploring a Discover the Forest dot Org brought to
you by the United States Forest Service and the ACT Council.
Adoption of teams from foster care is a topic not
enough people know about, and we're here to change that.
I'm April Dinuity, host of the new podcast Navigating Adoption
presented by adopt us Kids. Each episode brings you compelling,
real life adoption stories told by the families that lived them,
(28:25):
with commentary from experts. Visit adopt us Kids dot org,
slash podcast, or subscribe to Navigating Adoption presented by adopt
Us Kids, brought to you by the U S Department
of Health, that Human Services Administration for Children and Families,
and the ACT Council. The Gangster Chronicles podcast is a
weekly conversation that revolves around underworld, the criminals and entertainers
(28:47):
to victims's crime and law enforcement. We cover all facets
of the game. Gangster Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify from modilsit activities.
We just discussed the ramifications and repercussions of these activities
because at the law if you played gamester games, you
are ultimately rewarded with Gangster Prizes. Our Heart Radios member
one for podcast, but don't take our word for it.
(29:08):
Find Against the Chronicles podcast and my Heart radio app
but wherever you get your podcast. What were your initial
thoughts of the pilot when you first saw it? Um,
(29:29):
are you proud of it? I thought the pilot. I
think if you look at all of our episodes, the
pilots one of the weakest. I think it feels a
little labored. It's not as funny as when we find
our own voice. And a few episodes the healthcare and
basketball episodes a few ones later on UM, I liked
(29:49):
it a lot, But because I knew the British office
so well, I just felt like, oh, this is this
is feeling a little bit like a Paler imitation of
the British offic I wasn't the hugest fan, but at
the same time, I really knew the potential of the
show that we had right UM So going back and
(30:10):
watching some of the stuff that I want to say too,
and this story has been told before, but that first season,
for you listeners out there who don't understand this, like
we did six episodes. That's never done. No one does
six episodes of the first season, especially back in those
days of network television. Network television only makes money when
(30:31):
they hit syndications and they have to have over a
hundred episodes, and they want to shoot as many as possible,
So it was really weird that they like found some
money in the budget to kind of shoot six under
the radar episodes of the Office. But I mean, we
barely hung on for the first year and a half,
and and then we were you know, a moderate hit
(30:52):
for a while, and then we were kind of fading.
You're so fired? Whoever, that was so funny, right, your god,
and hit you with my five pounds of mixed nuts.
So who would have ever think that fifteen years after
shooting the pilot, this is when we're having this conversation,
the Office would be bigger than ever, two hundred episodes,
(31:16):
you know, defining roles for for all of us. Do
you remember after we shot the first six episodes of
season two, you and Steve and I We're sitting in
Steve's trailer and Steve said, well, at least we got
to do twelve mm hmm, and we thought we were done. Yeah,
(31:38):
And wasn't the next order for like four? Two? Yeah?
And then there was four and then like one, like, hey,
we're doing four? How they ordered one? More? Like it
was like it just like just dribs and drabs, and
this is just not done in that world of network
television exactly. Yes, what I remember is six four, two, one, seven,
(32:01):
and then they said, okay, you can do twenty two.
And then a week later we got a third season
and it was like, oh we're rolling. Yeah, we're off
to the races. An NBC hung that big bulletin board
up no excuse me, what's it called a billboard over
by its offices with the office on it, like from
(32:21):
out of nowhere. All of a sudden, we were like
their prize new show, and we were going from like
almost canceled too, because the numbers just started to shoot
up dramatically and the interest in the show started to
shoot up dramatically. I mean there was forty year old virgin, Yes,
that certainly contributed to it. My name is Earl. We
(32:42):
followed my name as Earl, which had much stronger numbers
right out of the gate and really helped us. And
I talked about this in my book, But what happened
around that Christmas time was that the first video iPods
came out and they were preloaded with the Office Christmas
episode on it. So basically all of the you talk
(33:05):
about like influencers. Like I view it as like who
got video iPods for Christmas? The first year that came
out the rich kids to all the rich kids around America,
all of a sudden had an office episode and it
was young people with their iPods who knew how to
set up an iTunes account because their parents didn't. And
that was the amazing thing. And I don't think I
(33:25):
think that Blindside and everybody, including NBC, that we would
be so popular with young people, right, um, iTunes, the
video iPod technology. I mean the show were you on
my Space very briefly, like for like two and a
half months, because that was Jenna and myself and Angela
(33:47):
and b J really used my Space in that first
season season and a half when we were trying to
cultivate viewers. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that.
So we were the kind of the first show that
when end in hand with technology and social media. Yes,
and then you became kind of king of Twitter. That
was later, but yeah, two thousand nine, early on in Twitter,
(34:11):
I joined early because I was founding the company's soul
pancake and they kind of insisted that I do it.
And young people young nerdy people that were starting out
on Twitter and comedy people. Um I was like the
big cheese for the first like nine months of Twitter
that were hardly any bigger celebrities than me. So I
immediately like had a million followers on Twitter early on.
(34:35):
Yeah what? Um So the Cold Opens the show kind
of started finding itself and also finding its form, right,
Like having the cold opens that we're separate from the
regular episodes, right, what do you feel like those allowed
us to do well? I think they discovered early on.
(34:58):
Greg is one of the people I've worked with the
most who has this ability to ride this line of
like real instinct, like he'll just throw something out like
try this, I think that will be really funny and
it's weird and it's out there and it's not related
to anything, but also like really almost spocklike precision about
like what works about characters and what works about storylines.
(35:20):
And one of the things they realized early on is
that like you know, Jim pranking Dwight, which the British
show started obviously, but audiences loved that, so that was
a really great way to have cold opens. They weren't
all pranks, but a lot of them were pranks and
the audience just love them. I still to this day,
(35:42):
and people like, what's your favorite prank? When he did
this prank, when he did that prank. Do you guys
prank each other? I always get that, like do you
prank each other? Back say She's like, no, we don't.
It takes too much work and effort to prank someone.
You have to plan it and think it through. We
were just they're shooting a TV show, like what you know.
The only thing that I could think was and it
happened like eight times. I remember there was a period
(36:05):
probably when the computer started working, where we had we
could send I M s to each other, so it
would be like what are you doing? Like what while
someone was doing a scene like that's kind of the
only like yeah, yeah. But so I think the cold
opens really helped hook an audience in. Remember this was
not streaming. You're gonna have a commercial between my name
(36:27):
is Earl and the the office is going to start. You
gotta hook him. You got that ninety seconds, two minutes.
You want him to sit through the commercials that come
right after that and stick with the show. So I
think Greg was really canny about that too, kind of
like we got to hook him in, and those things
became swiftly kind of one of the strongest aspects of
(36:48):
the show. Well, and one of the other things that happened,
which was a purely business decision. Right. I don't know
if you remember this. This was when the DVR. You
would set the DVR to record from nine to nine thirty, right,
and then we started showing up at eight, So if
you had not set it to start earlier, right, you
would miss it. So you would need to tune in earlier,
(37:08):
which means if you were watching another channel, you'd have
to turn over to NBC before nine o'clock. And that
changed the whole ratings things, and then the supersized episodes
and all of those things. I I you know, speaking
of the length of the episodes, we did a lot
of episodes that were double episodes, and we did a
lot of episodes that were just longer episodes. Yes, but
I always felt and I wonder if Greg would do
(37:31):
this at some point in time. I don't know if
there's some vault that has all of the office material.
Is that the first not the first cut, but the
rough cut that would get passed around for like notes,
that was too long. The six minute cuts of episodes
were always way better, and I wonder if they'll ever be.
(37:54):
In fact, I think that would be a really smart
money making scheme, is to re release kind of directors
cut of all the episodes and let them be four
to twenty nine minutes long. But it was always just
such a pain to like cut them down from like
that twenty five minutes sweet spot to that twenty one
minute forty second mark that they would have to be
(38:17):
to air with the commercials. Was there any story or
anything that got cut out that you specifically remember regretting.
I have one that I yelled at the editors about.
I think there was a lot more with me and
Ellie doing doth RACKI early on for Game of Thrones,
that was they cut that almost down to almost nothing,
(38:39):
and I remember being pistols like that was so funny,
and they're like, we gotta lose stuff, sorry, we gotta
cut stuff. And because it was like the C story,
so they always going to cut the C story. The
A story is always going to be like Michael and
Jan and something, and the B stories like Dwight and
Jim battling, and then the C story is going to
be like some smaller thing. And sometimes to White is
(39:00):
in the A story, but a lot of times he's
in the C story, and that's always the one that
gets kind of cut to the bone, right, what was
your one? Mine was um baby shower and Jan is
having the baby and um, Kevin asks her where she
got her sperm donated from, and Jan says, it's a
(39:21):
it's a very very exclusive place. You wouldn't know it.
And Kevin says, the one behind the eye hop. And
they'll look on Steve's face and her face, and the
idea that Jan's baby might have was just pure. And
they were like, yeah, we're not doing anything with that
or like what if that? And I was like, oh
(39:43):
my god, that's just so funny. All Right, we're gonna
stop there now. I'm so sorry, we have to stop
right in the middle. M that's what he said. I guess, uh,
(40:07):
don't freak out because you're going to hear even more
from Rain in a future episode. But I just I
had to leave you with that thought, the idea that
Kevin may have been the father of Jan's baby. In fact,
I'm quite convinced that he was uh that that that
Kevin was the father of Astrid, and he would have
(40:28):
loved the name and giggled at it, So think about
that before we're back anyway, Thank you for listening. You
guys are the best. I am so excited to have
you with me on this journey and we'll see you
next week for another episode of the Office Deep Dive.
(40:53):
The Office Deep Dive is hosted and executive produced by
me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Langley. Our senior
producer is Tessa Kramer, our associate producer is Emily Carr,
and our assistant editor is Diego Tapia. My main man
in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme song Bubble
(41:14):
and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton, and
the episode is mixed by seth Olandsky. Special thanks to
the amazing production crew who recorded these interviews with us
Joanna Sakalowski, Julia Smith, Benny Spi Wack Russell with Jaya,
Margaret Borchard, Christian Bonaventura, Matthew Rosenfield, Alex Mobison, Lucy Savage,
(41:35):
Judson Pickwork, Jack Walden, Jonathan Mayer, Andrew Stephen, David Lincoln,
and said A Lee Hi I'm Arden Marine from Insatiable
(41:59):
and will you accept this Rose Podcast? And I'm Julianne Robinson,
an Emmy nominated director of Bridgeton And where are the
hosts of Lady of the Road, a funny and inspiring
podcast where we have conversations with influential women about their
lives and we get self help advice because we are
always looking to improve ourselves. Sure story. We talk about money, health, relationships,
you name it, from inspiring women like Joan Jet, Nicole Buyer,
(42:22):
Lauren Lopez, Raheta and more. Listen and subscribe to Lady
of the Road on the I Heart Radio app, Apple
Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. What's Up, guys,
I'm a Shop Balau and I am Troy Millions and
we are the host of the Earnier Leisure podcast where
we break down business models and examine the latest trans
and finance. We hold court and have exclusive interviews with
some of the biggest names of business, sport, and entertainment,
(42:43):
from DJ Khalid to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross and Shaquille O'Neil.
I mean our alumni list is expansive. Listening as our
guests reveal their business models, hardships and triumphs and their
respective fields. The knowledge is in death and the questions
are always delivered from your standpoint. We want to know
what you want to know. We talk to the legends
of in this sports and entertainment about how they got
their start and most importantly, how they make their money.
(43:04):
Earnie Alisia is a college business class mixed with pop culture.
I want to learn about the real estate game. Unclear
is how the stock market works. We got you interested
in starting a trucking company or vendor machine business. Not
really sure about how taxes or credit work. We got
it all covered. The Earnie Leisure podcast is available now.
Listen to Ernie Leisure on the Black Effect podcast Network,
I Heart Radio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
(43:27):
your podcasts. On the latest season of The Next Question
with Katie Correct podcast, Katie dives into Well Katie Here
exclusive podcast only conversations between Katie and the people who
made her memoir Going There Possible. Katie is a pack
rod and she has basically her own archive of sorts
(43:52):
in her basements. Plus, Katie explores some of the big
news stories she's covered over the decades and the people
behind them, like Anita Hill. I thought I could just
get back to my life, and that was impossible. It
was not going to be the same. There's plenty of
Katie's signature curiosity and no holds barred interviews, along with
some of her own revealing answers. We spent a lot
(44:15):
of time together around a dining room table here and
in the city, and you know, it was a very
intense experience. All episodes of Next Question with Katie Curic
are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, Lee, the listeners take here. Last season on Lethal Lit,
you might remember I came to Hollow Falls on a mission. Well,
I'm finding out that in this town, the dead don't
keep their secrets for long, and the bodies keep piling up.
The second season if Lethal Lit is available now on
(00:21):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Hey Hey, this is John
hopebryant entrepreneur and a fellow builder just like you. Thanks
you the help of I Heart Radio and Prudential Financial.
I'd like to present to you my brand new podcast.
It's called Building the Good Life, where each week a
(00:43):
special friend and I will unpack and talk in detail
about financial literals, building generational well building that community, building
the best version of you. Make sure to listen to
Building a Good Life on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Paris
Hilton and this is Trapped in Treatment, a weekly podcast
(01:05):
of shocking survivor experiences and stories from an industry plagued
by controversy. With my host 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,
(01:27):
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. My name's
Rain Wilson and I played Dwight Kurt Shrewd. Hello everybody,
(01:48):
Welcome to the office Deep Dive. I am your host
Brian baum Gartner. Today you will be listening to my
conversation with Rain Wilson. Now, when we started shooting the show, um, Rain,
he was the only person that I knew. I met
Rain back in circa nineteen all right. I was living
(02:12):
in Minneapolis and I went to see a production at
the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Now you should know this.
The Guthrie is a very, very big deal. It is
the largest regional theater in the country. It puts on
incredible shows, world renowned, etcetera, etcetera. Well, Rain was starring
(02:33):
uh in a production of Philadelphia. Here I come, and
I went to the show. And I have said this
many times. Rain's performance in that show it was the
greatest performance that I ever saw on the Guthrie stage.
It was brilliant. And so the show was over and
(02:55):
I was like, I've got to meet this guy. Rain.
This guy is brilliant and so we got introduced, we
met and we became friends. And when I showed up
to work on the first day of the office, there
was Rain, and I could not have been more delighted
to see him. He is. He's a special one, that's
(03:19):
for sure. I am so excited for you to hear
this interview. You're going to hear Rain in a way
you have never heard him before. I love talking to him.
You are going to love listening to him. So, without
further ado, here is Rain Wilson, Bubble and Squeak. I
(03:43):
love Bubble and squeak on Bubble and Squeaker cook at
every month left over from the night before. Oh, there
(04:06):
he is him, buddy, Hey man, how are you. I'm good, good,
I see you? Yeah? Yeah? Are you we? Um? That
felt really inappropriate? Why, um, we have some salty nuts
for you. I saw just a giant, like five pounds
of salty I was requested, what salty nuts? Nothing is requested?
(04:31):
What does that mean? I don't know? Um, all right,
let's do this. Let's do it. Hi, I'm all yours
for two hours? Really so exciting? Are you excited? No?
Why not? It's fun? To see me. I'm excited to
see you. Yes, that's that's what. That's what that's that's Yeah. Yeah,
(04:57):
we're gonna talk about a lot of it. I do things.
I also a excited about talking about the Office in
terms of like some stuff that you don't normally hear. Yeah,
like the the longer, more detailed stories of some of
the intricacies of how stuff was arrived at and some
of the choices that were made along the way and
stuff like. Well, that's what my goal is with you,
(05:17):
because you're a thoughtful person. I'm gonna try to do that.
You're not gonna get that from Creed. No, I know.
Well I think we've scheduled him for twenty two minutes. Okay,
so that's fine. Um No, but yeah, I'm excited to
talk to you. What what So we're starting, we're rolling. Yeah,
we're just we're just chatting. Good. What were you doing
before the Office? Um? Before the Office? Well, going way
(05:43):
way back before. So, I did theater for about ten
years in New York before I did any TV or film,
so early was a theater actor. Some lot of people
ask like, how were you an improv or were you
and stand up or something? Like that, but I didn't
do anything. I'm similar to you exactly. Yeah, theater theater
person that kind of found that we were well suited
(06:04):
to kind of comic character guys despite our ravishingly good looks.
So yeah, So I came out to l a in
and then started doing commercial auditions and voiceover auditions and
little guest spots on TV shows. I was unlike Charmed,
and yeah and c S I and I did c
(06:26):
S I. You did see s I too. For you,
I was a furry you're a guy who gets sexual
gratifications out of wearing a big furry suit. I was
creepy guy in supermarket. I'm not kidding, creepy guy in Supermarket.
I think I was dog. I think literally that perfect.
I think that was my role that was perfect. Yes,
So I did a lot of that stuff and some pilots,
(06:46):
and I did some decent movie roles here and there,
and um, what happened for me that really led to
the office is a lot of people think I kind
of waltzt into Dwight. But the big role that put
me on the map was in Six ft Under. So
after a lot of slogging around the casting people, Libby Goldstein. Um,
(07:08):
they brought me in multiple times to six ft Under
and finally I got the role of Arthur and I
did ended up doing thirteen episodes on that right when
HBO was heating up, and that was kind of revolutionizing
what we think of as television. You know, Sopranos the
Wire were on at the same time. It was Entourage
(07:29):
and a lot of really amazing shows, including six ft
Under and uh, all of a sudden, I popped onto
people's radar. Um. It was really incredible how that happened,
because that was one of those shows that everyone in
l A watches. There's there are the shows that people
watch all across the country. They watch n c I,
S l A or something like that, and it's fifty
(07:51):
million people will watch it, but no one in l
A who are like taste makers watch it. So this
six ft Under was one of those kind of shows
and that's what put me on the map. And all
of a sudden, I was in kind of pretty high
demand for movies and stuff. I know, you want a
SAG Award for that, the Ensemble Ensemble SAG Award. Yeah.
(08:12):
I might be the only person who has been part
of winning an Ensemble SAG Award for both Drama and
Comedy because I did it for six ft Under and
then twice we won I think twice we won uh
for The Office and now, so so you're in high demand, yeah,
And were you aware of the British version of The Office?
(08:32):
I was. I was so my friend Sam Catlin, he
had heard about it and he had seen a couple
episodes and somehow gotten some like British DVD or something
like that, and had like even like an English DVD
player or something somehow had advanced copies and like, you've
got to see it. Groundbreaking, amazing, and so we went
over like on a special occasional We've got to watch
(08:53):
The Office, and we were blown away. So I was
really truly one of the first bowl to see it
in the United States. It might have been one of
the first couple of thousand people to see it in
the United States, and just we loved it. And then
he would get his hands on a couple more episodes
and we'd go back and have dinner and watched like
two or three more episodes. So I loved it. And
(09:14):
what happened was I got cast in a pilot with
Jeanine Garofalo for ABC. Mark Marin was in it and
Bob oden Kirk was in it. And this was this
infamous pilot that we did the table read and they
pulled the plug after the table read. So they had
sets built, we had locations, we had cast, we had
(09:35):
plane tickets. We were flying out the next day, literally
the next morning after the table read starts shooting and
uh did the table read? It went terribly, but I
guess what, I still got paid. And that was the
same pilot season as The Office. Kind of the Office
didn't really follow a pilot season when it was first casting, right,
So what happened was Vernon Sanders, who's one of the
(09:59):
big executives and executives right, and I ran into him
in the parking lot on the way to this infamous
table read and he's like, hey, we got good news
and I was like, what's that is? Like, we got
the rights to make the American version of the Office,
and I was like, outside, I was like, oh great,
and inside I was like, motherfucker, goddamn it. That's fucking sucks.
Because I love the British Office so much. I didn't
(10:22):
have an idea of like even what the American Office
would be or what role I would play or anything
like that. But I was just like inside, I was
just kicking myself. And then the plug gets pulled on that.
And then I called my people and I'm like, hey,
I hear about this office, and they're like, yeah, well
it was a few months to go on that. So
fortunately that the space was opened and the door was opened.
(10:44):
The universe works in mysterious ways, Brian, That's right, it does,
and so you eventually get a call to go in
and meet correct. I was the first audition for the office.
I have in my office at home, framed the audition
sheet of Alison Jones the first day of the auditions
(11:06):
for the office, and I was number one on that list.
So other people on the list, or Jenna Fisher you
can find. It's on my Instagram somewhere. It might even
be in my book in the in the photos included
in my books, so you guys can find it. But uh,
I think Adam Scott audition. I think there were, um,
there was a lot of great talent that auditions. My
(11:28):
story about that I'll share with you really quick was
when Steve left, Alison Jones came to me when he
had a little party, a little reception. She came and
she goes, I was looking for stuff for Steve that
I thought might be cool. She probably gave that to you,
like when she was searching around and she hands me
a sheet and it says Kevin and it says Brian
baum Gartner, Eric stone Street and Jorge Garcia. No kidding.
(11:53):
So that was like the final three. But oh fantastic.
So you and although Eric's down Street is way richer
than you, he is now yeah he sorry, shoot sorry,
So yeah. So on that first audition, I auditioned for
both Michael and Dwight, and my Michael was just terrible.
(12:14):
It was just simply a Ricky Gervais impersonation. And I
knew that I had more of an affinity for the
Dwight role. Uh, And I knew that I could really
deliver on that. I just felt it in my bones.
I'm like, oh, this is me, this is that is
exactly my kind of weird. Yeah, well that I mean,
you're but you were so different also than Gareth in
the British version. I mean he was much yeah weasily
(12:38):
and and Dwight way more authoritarian and trying to derive power,
whereas Gareth seemed more backstabby. Yeah, we're different in a
lot of ways and similar in a lot of ways.
And it was this incredible luxury to go, Okay, here's
Mackenzie Crook, brilliant actor, really strange look dude, and he
(13:01):
killed as Gareth and was so interesting and I get
to steal all of his best stuff, and then there's
maybe stuff that I can add that's more of my own,
so it's win win all around. So one of the
things that Dwight is most known for is saying absolutely ludicrous,
preposterous stuff with a total straight face and a dead pan,
(13:25):
without any knowledge that what he's saying is ridiculous. And really,
Mackenzie did that so beautifully and I really just frankly
stole that from him. Another thing I stole from him
was the haircut. Um. I read an interview with him
where he said he went to like just a local
barber shop out in like Slough or some you know,
suburb of London, and he kind of got the haircut
(13:47):
that would be the least flattering for his head and
the most ridiculous haircut. And I read that I was like, oh,
I want to do that, so I spent time in
the mirror figuring out what's the haircut that is going
to make me look the most ridiculous. I have a
huge forehead, and I was like, I'm going to frame
my forehead perfectly with these little draperies of hair that
(14:09):
will highlight the enormity of my carapace. Is that a word?
I think it is a word. These guys aren't even listening. Um,
and then like really short on the sides, and then
in intense and then it evolved over time. But interesting now,
so we're not going to talk too much more about
the audition process, But at what point did you meet
John and Jenna and Steve in the callback sessions? Yeah?
(14:30):
So the callback sessions were months later, mostly for for
those listeners who don't know the way pilot season used
to work, at least less and less so. But all
the scripts would start getting released in December January, and
then all the auditions where this is called pilot season
January February. They'd shoot in like March early April. Decisions
would be made in late April or May about staffing
(14:53):
up for the summer, and if something was going to
be on the air in September, so it's always a
very narrow kind of window. It's like this, this is
how this nine month window worked. So the office was
outside of those bounds a little bit. I think my
first audition was like in September, October, and then the
callback was like December, and then we shot in like
February or something like that. So I had to wait
(15:13):
months after that first audition, and they had a callback
situation where they brought everyone and their mother and anyone
they were considering for the role over a weekend, and
Greg was incredibly thorough and I spent maybe I spent
seven or eight hours on one of the first day there,
and I met Jenna, I met John um. Steve was
(15:36):
shooting some other stuff, but he had a little bit
of time and we improvised together and did a couple
of scenes together. We were given scene, oh here, tried
this scene, tried this scene. Not much time to prepare
stuff we've never seen and just like just just shoot it,
you know, and then we'd improvise, you know, like Jim
brings Dwight a glass of water, and it's like just
improvised Jim bringing you a glass of water, and Dwight
(15:57):
as immediately distrustful, like as he poisoned it or something
like that, and and that was not really my gig.
I didn't do, you know, upright citizens Brigade or groundlings.
I wasn't really an improv guy, but I'm good at
improving kind of in character. In fact, later after I
was cast, Greg came to me and we had a
coffee and he gave me kind of a little bit
(16:18):
of a warning talk, and it kind of scared me. Essentially,
he said, in a very diplomatic way, you improvised better
than you act when you're on the script. And I
was like, what, He's like, Yeah, it was more, it's
more natural. It's more when you're doing scripted stuff, it
feels a little heavy and a little forced. And I
was like, oh, and this was before we were going
(16:41):
to shoot the pilot. So I begged my manager. I
was like, I want to see the audition tapes. I
want to see my audition tapes. And sure enough, he
was right, because somehow, when I improvised, it was just
a little looser, as a little more off the cough.
It was a little weirder when I was doing scripted stuff.
It's I don't want to say it sounded like a
(17:03):
theater actor or something like that, but it sounded a
little more scripted. It didn't have that kind of documentary
feel that the office had to have, and it was
a really great learning experience, like, Oh, I need to
just kind of let the script, let the script go,
improvise around the script, let it be much lighter. That
is fascinating. I did not know that story, but it
(17:24):
kept me up at night. I was like, oh shit,
what does that mean? I improvided a good improviser and
a terrible, terrible regular actor. It's a hard time for hiring,
so you need a hiring partner built for hard times.
(17:45):
That's Indeed. If you're hiring, you need Indeed because Indeed
is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview, and
hire all in one place. And Indeed is the only
job site where you're guaranteed to find quality applications that
meet your must have requirements or else you don't pay.
Instead of spending hours on multiple job sites hoping to
(18:07):
find candidates with the right skills, you need one hiring
partner that can help you do it all. Indeed partners
with you on every step of the hiring process. Find
great talent through time saving tools like indeed, instant match,
assessments and virtual interviews. With instant Match, as soon as
you sponsor a post, you get a short list of
(18:28):
quality candidates with resumes on Indeed that match your job description,
and you can invite them to apply right away. Plus,
you only pay for quality applications that meet your must
have requirements. Join more than three million businesses worldwide that
use Indeed to hire great talent fast. Start hiring right
(18:49):
now with a seventy five dollar sponsored job credit to
upgrade your job post at indeed dot Com Slash office
Deep Dive offer valid through March thirty one. Go to
indeed dot com Slash office Deep Dive to claim your
seventy five dollar credit before March one. Indeed dot Com
slash Office Deep Dive terms and conditions apply. Need to hire,
(19:13):
you need Indeed. Anybody who is deemed to have power
who thinks differently is a threat and needs to be eliminated.
Big Brother, North Korea's Forgotten Prince is a new true
crime podcast that investigates the life and mysterious assassination of
(19:33):
the man once destined to be North Korea's next dictator,
Kim Jong Nam join us as we interview top experts
and investigate the rise and fall of the Hermit Kingdom's
one time air from his early promise he should have
been the successor to the Deadly Palace. Entries a lot
of clothing and dagger, you know, James bogg kind of
(19:54):
stuff about Jim John m to the power struggles that
ultimately spelled his d in North Korea. It's business, it's
not personal. When somebody challenges you, that challenger must be eliminated.
Listen to Big Brother on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts coming February.
(20:19):
Look to your children's eyes to see the true magic
of a forest. It's a storybook world for them. You
look and see a tree. They see the wrinkled face
of a wizard with arms outstretched to the sky. They
see treasuring pebbles, They see a windy path that could
lead to adventure, and they see you. They're fearless. Guide.
(20:40):
Is this fascinating world? Find a forest near you and
start exploring and discover the forest dot Org brought to
you by the United States Forest Service and the ad Council.
(21:00):
So I want to talk about um you creating the
character of Dwight. How you went about that, Like what
elements you chose that that you brought into Dwight. How
did you approach that? So Um, I always say that
in terms of like when people ask me about playing Dwight,
I always say that I think my goal was to
(21:22):
make Dwight very specific, you know, having you know, Dwight
have a pager, stand a certain way, like drive a
certain way, sitting in his chair a certain way, have
certain attitudes about certain things that are very specified because
no one had done like combination muscle car nerd. You know,
when you think about it, there's a lot of disparate
elements that go into the creation of Dwight, like heavy
(21:46):
metal muscle car rarely equals Battlestar Galactica fan. And I
do think this is true as an act. And the
more specific you make your character, that made him more
human and then more relatable. Um So muscle car nerd,
um heavy metal, you know Amish. Of course, Greg Daniels
(22:06):
always said that the beat farmer thing was his grandparents.
I think we're beat literally beat farmers in Poland and
they grew beats. Um. I think like before the Holocaust
and uh so he put that in from that, I
did not know that. So the beat farm was from yes,
and then the glasses, which, by the way, I really
(22:28):
do think that DWIGHTE has influenced popular culture because now
all the hipsters were the DWIGHTE glasses. You were the
first hipster. Yeah, I really was. I was like the
hipster nerd who took those glasses. And and now everyone
who goes to Intelligencia Coffee and silver Lake or Brooklyn
are wearing those same glasses. Yeah. Um, free commercial for
Intelligencia Coffee. Thank you, I'll take my gift card please. Um.
(22:53):
Was there anything for you as a theater actor like myself?
It's a loaded question. Was there anything physically, any physical
manifestation of Dwight within Rain? That's a great question, And
yes there was. And I've never really talked about this before,
but I went to theater school. I was an n
y U grad program, did a lot of like clowning,
(23:16):
and did a lot of a lot of physical work
and physical theater. You were involved in physical theater in Minneapolis.
And I'm not trying to sound pretentious at all like
Mr Theater, but when you get that kind of training,
a lot of it is physical, like how do you
find a character in your body? You know, that's part
of clown work as well. But there were certain elements
of Dwight that if I needed to kind of get
(23:37):
into character, I could just put my attention and put
my focus in certain parts of my body and I
would immediately be Dwight, like a really like a straight neck,
you know, and uh kind of hips forward and kind
of thinking about like like big hips. Like I don't
know if you noticed that Dwight always stands too close
(23:58):
to people and someone's sitting down and he's standing next
to him, like his hips are like really like big
next to their face kind of, and there's kind of
a ramrod neck, a little bit of a swagger, and
the shoulders thrown back. Those were some of the elements
of Dwight that if I was ever feeling like do
I really have him? Early on? You know, after you
do two seasons, you can just do the character in
(24:19):
your sleep. But but early on, there were some of
those physical choices that really were like clown kind of
choices that I could go to to just help me
get into the world. What about you for Kevin? Did
you have something for Kevin? Too. I mean too that
I can articulate. I'm sure there were more. For me,
it was my jaw. I knew there was a specific
place that I could put my jaw. That was him.
(24:42):
And also I imagined him for the jaw thing. You
had a weird mouth. You would make like a little
mouth like this, so it's like a little a little
jutting it for a little bit. And your lips should
be a little a little like pursed, yeah, exactly. And
also I had the ideas as he moved through the space.
There were two things. One is he wasn't aware of
(25:02):
his size within the space, right, which to me was
always hilarious when I would come against Angela right because
I just wouldn't see her there and knock her around.
And the other was that there was something about my
torso that it doesn't move agilely from side to side.
It's all sort of just all connected down at my hips,
(25:24):
and that there's yeah, yeah, yeah, so the whole body
turns at the same whole body and maybe even shuffle
my feet to turn to one. Um, hold on one second,
that is not your in that is water speak for yourself. Um,
(25:44):
why do people love Dwight Well? We talked earlier about
the specificity of Dwight, and I think that how his
glasses are and how his beeper is, and that the
certain colors that he wears in the car he drives,
and how he sees the world old um. But you know,
the thing I hate the most about comedy, and I
(26:07):
have been known to tiptoe into this land, but the
thing I hate them most about it is that when
someone knows that they're being funny, And that's one of
the I think keys to the comedy the Office is
that none of the characters thought of themselves as being funny.
I think the documentary element helped with that tremendously. And
I tried to play Dwight as outrageously as possible and
(26:31):
as grounded and realistic as possible at the same time.
So look at any scene and what's happening. As matter
how ridiculous it is, you can always tell there's a child,
there's a big kid in there. He could do just
preposterous things, but I always tried to motivate them internally
with some internal drive, like this is how Dwight saw
(26:52):
the world, This is how you always knew how Dwight felt.
I guess that would be my number one answer is like,
you can always tell what Dwight is feeling and what
he's going through on the inside. And he thinks he's hiding,
you know, people think, oh, is he you know, is
he is he on the spectrum? Does he have autism
or something like that, But his heart is on his sleeve.
(27:12):
You can always see what he's feeling, you know, is
even if he's being haughty or even if he's being arrogant, like,
you always see what's going on in the inside. And
I think that that allowed people to relate to him.
So in those moments when Dwight was sad or hurt,
or or put off or disappointed, like people really felt
for him. Look at your children's eyes to see the
(27:41):
true magic of a forest. It's a storybook world for them.
You look and see a tree. They see the wrinkled
face of a wizard with arms outstretched to the sky.
They see treasuring pebbles, They see a windy path that
could lead to adventure, and they see you. They're fearless.
Guide is fascinating world. Find a forest near you and
(28:03):
start exploring a Discover the Forest dot Org brought to
you by the United States Forest Service and the ACT Council.
Adoption of teams from foster care is a topic not
enough people know about, and we're here to change that.
I'm April Dinuity, host of the new podcast Navigating Adoption
presented by adopt us Kids. Each episode brings you compelling,
real life adoption stories told by the families that lived them,
(28:25):
with commentary from experts. Visit adopt us Kids dot org,
slash podcast, or subscribe to Navigating Adoption presented by adopt
Us Kids, brought to you by the U S Department
of Health, that Human Services Administration for Children and Families,
and the ACT Council. The Gangster Chronicles podcast is a
weekly conversation that revolves around underworld, the criminals and entertainers
(28:47):
to victims's crime and law enforcement. We cover all facets
of the game. Gangster Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify from modilsit activities.
We just discussed the ramifications and repercussions of these activities
because at the law if you played gamester games, you
are ultimately rewarded with Gangster Prizes. Our Heart Radios member
one for podcast, but don't take our word for it.
(29:08):
Find Against the Chronicles podcast and my Heart radio app
but wherever you get your podcast. What were your initial
thoughts of the pilot when you first saw it? Um,
(29:29):
are you proud of it? I thought the pilot. I
think if you look at all of our episodes, the
pilots one of the weakest. I think it feels a
little labored. It's not as funny as when we find
our own voice. And a few episodes the healthcare and
basketball episodes a few ones later on UM, I liked
(29:49):
it a lot, But because I knew the British office
so well, I just felt like, oh, this is this
is feeling a little bit like a Paler imitation of
the British offic I wasn't the hugest fan, but at
the same time, I really knew the potential of the
show that we had right UM So going back and
(30:10):
watching some of the stuff that I want to say too,
and this story has been told before, but that first season,
for you listeners out there who don't understand this, like
we did six episodes. That's never done. No one does
six episodes of the first season, especially back in those
days of network television. Network television only makes money when
(30:31):
they hit syndications and they have to have over a
hundred episodes, and they want to shoot as many as possible,
So it was really weird that they like found some
money in the budget to kind of shoot six under
the radar episodes of the Office. But I mean, we
barely hung on for the first year and a half,
and and then we were you know, a moderate hit
(30:52):
for a while, and then we were kind of fading.
You're so fired? Whoever, that was so funny, right, your god,
and hit you with my five pounds of mixed nuts.
So who would have ever think that fifteen years after
shooting the pilot, this is when we're having this conversation,
the Office would be bigger than ever, two hundred episodes,
(31:16):
you know, defining roles for for all of us. Do
you remember after we shot the first six episodes of
season two, you and Steve and I We're sitting in
Steve's trailer and Steve said, well, at least we got
to do twelve mm hmm, and we thought we were done. Yeah,
(31:38):
And wasn't the next order for like four? Two? Yeah?
And then there was four and then like one, like, hey,
we're doing four? How they ordered one? More? Like it
was like it just like just dribs and drabs, and
this is just not done in that world of network
television exactly. Yes, what I remember is six four, two, one, seven,
(32:01):
and then they said, okay, you can do twenty two.
And then a week later we got a third season
and it was like, oh we're rolling. Yeah, we're off
to the races. An NBC hung that big bulletin board
up no excuse me, what's it called a billboard over
by its offices with the office on it, like from
(32:21):
out of nowhere. All of a sudden, we were like
their prize new show, and we were going from like
almost canceled too, because the numbers just started to shoot
up dramatically and the interest in the show started to
shoot up dramatically. I mean there was forty year old virgin, Yes,
that certainly contributed to it. My name is Earl. We
(32:42):
followed my name as Earl, which had much stronger numbers
right out of the gate and really helped us. And
I talked about this in my book, But what happened
around that Christmas time was that the first video iPods
came out and they were preloaded with the Office Christmas
episode on it. So basically all of the you talk
(33:05):
about like influencers. Like I view it as like who
got video iPods for Christmas? The first year that came
out the rich kids to all the rich kids around America,
all of a sudden had an office episode and it
was young people with their iPods who knew how to
set up an iTunes account because their parents didn't. And
that was the amazing thing. And I don't think I
(33:25):
think that Blindside and everybody, including NBC, that we would
be so popular with young people, right, um, iTunes, the
video iPod technology. I mean the show were you on
my Space very briefly, like for like two and a
half months, because that was Jenna and myself and Angela
(33:47):
and b J really used my Space in that first
season season and a half when we were trying to
cultivate viewers. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that.
So we were the kind of the first show that
when end in hand with technology and social media. Yes,
and then you became kind of king of Twitter. That
was later, but yeah, two thousand nine, early on in Twitter,
(34:11):
I joined early because I was founding the company's soul
pancake and they kind of insisted that I do it.
And young people young nerdy people that were starting out
on Twitter and comedy people. Um I was like the
big cheese for the first like nine months of Twitter
that were hardly any bigger celebrities than me. So I
immediately like had a million followers on Twitter early on.
(34:35):
Yeah what? Um So the Cold Opens the show kind
of started finding itself and also finding its form, right,
Like having the cold opens that we're separate from the
regular episodes, right, what do you feel like those allowed
us to do well? I think they discovered early on.
(34:58):
Greg is one of the people I've worked with the
most who has this ability to ride this line of
like real instinct, like he'll just throw something out like
try this, I think that will be really funny and
it's weird and it's out there and it's not related
to anything, but also like really almost spocklike precision about
like what works about characters and what works about storylines.
(35:20):
And one of the things they realized early on is
that like you know, Jim pranking Dwight, which the British
show started obviously, but audiences loved that, so that was
a really great way to have cold opens. They weren't
all pranks, but a lot of them were pranks and
the audience just love them. I still to this day,
(35:42):
and people like, what's your favorite prank? When he did
this prank, when he did that prank. Do you guys
prank each other? I always get that, like do you
prank each other? Back say She's like, no, we don't.
It takes too much work and effort to prank someone.
You have to plan it and think it through. We
were just they're shooting a TV show, like what you know.
The only thing that I could think was and it
happened like eight times. I remember there was a period
(36:05):
probably when the computer started working, where we had we
could send I M s to each other, so it
would be like what are you doing? Like what while
someone was doing a scene like that's kind of the
only like yeah, yeah. But so I think the cold
opens really helped hook an audience in. Remember this was
not streaming. You're gonna have a commercial between my name
(36:27):
is Earl and the the office is going to start. You
gotta hook him. You got that ninety seconds, two minutes.
You want him to sit through the commercials that come
right after that and stick with the show. So I
think Greg was really canny about that too, kind of
like we got to hook him in, and those things
became swiftly kind of one of the strongest aspects of
(36:48):
the show. Well, and one of the other things that happened,
which was a purely business decision. Right. I don't know
if you remember this. This was when the DVR. You
would set the DVR to record from nine to nine thirty, right,
and then we started showing up at eight, So if
you had not set it to start earlier, right, you
would miss it. So you would need to tune in earlier,
(37:08):
which means if you were watching another channel, you'd have
to turn over to NBC before nine o'clock. And that
changed the whole ratings things, and then the supersized episodes
and all of those things. I I you know, speaking
of the length of the episodes, we did a lot
of episodes that were double episodes, and we did a
lot of episodes that were just longer episodes. Yes, but
I always felt and I wonder if Greg would do
(37:31):
this at some point in time. I don't know if
there's some vault that has all of the office material.
Is that the first not the first cut, but the
rough cut that would get passed around for like notes,
that was too long. The six minute cuts of episodes
were always way better, and I wonder if they'll ever be.
(37:54):
In fact, I think that would be a really smart
money making scheme, is to re release kind of directors
cut of all the episodes and let them be four
to twenty nine minutes long. But it was always just
such a pain to like cut them down from like
that twenty five minutes sweet spot to that twenty one
minute forty second mark that they would have to be
(38:17):
to air with the commercials. Was there any story or
anything that got cut out that you specifically remember regretting.
I have one that I yelled at the editors about.
I think there was a lot more with me and
Ellie doing doth RACKI early on for Game of Thrones,
that was they cut that almost down to almost nothing,
(38:39):
and I remember being pistols like that was so funny,
and they're like, we gotta lose stuff, sorry, we gotta
cut stuff. And because it was like the C story,
so they always going to cut the C story. The
A story is always going to be like Michael and
Jan and something, and the B stories like Dwight and
Jim battling, and then the C story is going to
be like some smaller thing. And sometimes to White is
(39:00):
in the A story, but a lot of times he's
in the C story, and that's always the one that
gets kind of cut to the bone, right, what was
your one? Mine was um baby shower and Jan is
having the baby and um, Kevin asks her where she
got her sperm donated from, and Jan says, it's a
(39:21):
it's a very very exclusive place. You wouldn't know it.
And Kevin says, the one behind the eye hop. And
they'll look on Steve's face and her face, and the
idea that Jan's baby might have was just pure. And
they were like, yeah, we're not doing anything with that
or like what if that? And I was like, oh
(39:43):
my god, that's just so funny. All Right, we're gonna
stop there now. I'm so sorry, we have to stop
right in the middle. M that's what he said. I guess, uh,
(40:07):
don't freak out because you're going to hear even more
from Rain in a future episode. But I just I
had to leave you with that thought, the idea that
Kevin may have been the father of Jan's baby. In fact,
I'm quite convinced that he was uh that that that
Kevin was the father of Astrid, and he would have
(40:28):
loved the name and giggled at it, So think about
that before we're back anyway, Thank you for listening. You
guys are the best. I am so excited to have
you with me on this journey and we'll see you
next week for another episode of the Office Deep Dive.
(40:53):
The Office Deep Dive is hosted and executive produced by
me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Langley. Our senior
producer is Tessa Kramer, our associate producer is Emily Carr,
and our assistant editor is Diego Tapia. My main man
in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme song Bubble
(41:14):
and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton, and
the episode is mixed by seth Olandsky. Special thanks to
the amazing production crew who recorded these interviews with us
Joanna Sakalowski, Julia Smith, Benny Spi Wack Russell with Jaya,
Margaret Borchard, Christian Bonaventura, Matthew Rosenfield, Alex Mobison, Lucy Savage,
(41:35):
Judson Pickwork, Jack Walden, Jonathan Mayer, Andrew Stephen, David Lincoln,
and said A Lee Hi I'm Arden Marine from Insatiable
(41:59):
and will you accept this Rose Podcast? And I'm Julianne Robinson,
an Emmy nominated director of Bridgeton And where are the
hosts of Lady of the Road, a funny and inspiring
podcast where we have conversations with influential women about their
lives and we get self help advice because we are
always looking to improve ourselves. Sure story. We talk about money, health, relationships,
you name it, from inspiring women like Joan Jet, Nicole Buyer,
(42:22):
Lauren Lopez, Raheta and more. Listen and subscribe to Lady
of the Road on the I Heart Radio app, Apple
Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. What's Up, guys,
I'm a Shop Balau and I am Troy Millions and
we are the host of the Earnier Leisure podcast where
we break down business models and examine the latest trans
and finance. We hold court and have exclusive interviews with
some of the biggest names of business, sport, and entertainment,
(42:43):
from DJ Khalid to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross and Shaquille O'Neil.
I mean our alumni list is expansive. Listening as our
guests reveal their business models, hardships and triumphs and their
respective fields. The knowledge is in death and the questions
are always delivered from your standpoint. We want to know
what you want to know. We talk to the legends
of in this sports and entertainment about how they got
their start and most importantly, how they make their money.
(43:04):
Earnie Alisia is a college business class mixed with pop culture.
I want to learn about the real estate game. Unclear
is how the stock market works. We got you interested
in starting a trucking company or vendor machine business. Not
really sure about how taxes or credit work. We got
it all covered. The Earnie Leisure podcast is available now.
Listen to Ernie Leisure on the Black Effect podcast Network,
I Heart Radio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
(43:27):
your podcasts. On the latest season of The Next Question
with Katie Correct podcast, Katie dives into Well Katie Here
exclusive podcast only conversations between Katie and the people who
made her memoir Going There Possible. Katie is a pack
rod and she has basically her own archive of sorts
(43:52):
in her basements. Plus, Katie explores some of the big
news stories she's covered over the decades and the people
behind them, like Anita Hill. I thought I could just
get back to my life, and that was impossible. It
was not going to be the same. There's plenty of
Katie's signature curiosity and no holds barred interviews, along with
some of her own revealing answers. We spent a lot
(44:15):
of time together around a dining room table here and
in the city, and you know, it was a very
intense experience. All episodes of Next Question with Katie Curic
are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com