February 9, 2021 • 35 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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
My name's Rain Wilson, and I played Dwight Kurt Shrewd.
Hello everybody, 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
(00:29):
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 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,
(00:50):
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 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
(01:14):
it was the greatest performance that I ever saw on
the Guthrie stage. It was brilliant. And so the show
was over and 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
(01:35):
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 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
(01:56):
love talking to him. You are going to love. Let's
sending to him. So, without further ado, here is Rain Wilson.
Bubble and squeak. I love it. Bubble and squeak on,
(02:16):
Bubble and squeaker cookie every moment, lift over from the
nut before. Oh, there he is him. Buddy, Hey man,
(02:39):
how are you? I'm good? God 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? What does that mean?
(03:01):
I don't know? Um, all right, let's do this. Let's
do it. 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
(03:23):
that's where would Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna talk about a
lot of things. I also am excited about talking about
the office in terms of like some stuff that you
don't normally here. 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
(03:45):
goal is with you, 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. 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,
(04:11):
going way 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
A 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. Yeah,
theater theater person that kind of found that we were
(04:32):
well suited to kind of comic character guys. Despite our
ravishingly good looks. So yeah, So I came out to
l A and 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
(04:54):
I did c S I. You did see s I too?
Or you I was a furry you're a guy who
gets sexualification out of wearing a big furry suit. I
was creepy guy in Supermarket. I'm not getting 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,
(05:15):
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,
(05:37):
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
(05:57):
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 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 million
(06:20):
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. I
(06:41):
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?
I was. I was so my friend Sam Catlin, he
(07:04):
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
The Office, and we were blown away. So I was
(07:25):
really truly one of the first people 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
what happened was I got cast in a pilot with
(07:46):
Janine Garoffalo for ABC. Mark Marrin 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
plane tickets. We were flying out the next day, literally
(08:07):
the next morning after the table read, start 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
(08:28):
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 sucked. Because
I love the British Office so much. I didn't have
(08:51):
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. The
(09:13):
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
(09:35):
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, 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
(09:57):
story about that I'll share with you really quick was
when Steve left, Alison Jones came to me. He had
a little party, a little reception. She came and she goes,
I was looking for stuff for Steve that I thought
it 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 Baumgartner,
(10:18):
Eric stone Street and Jorge Garcia. No kidding. So that
was like the final three. But oh fantastic. So you
and Helo. Eric stone Street is way richer than you.
He is now he sorry shoot sorry. So yeah, So
on that first audition, I auditioned for both Michael and Dwight,
(10:41):
and my Michael was just terrible. 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
(11:01):
also than Gareth in the British version. I mean he
was much yeah weasily 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
(11:23):
to go, Okay, here's Mackenzie Crook, brilliant actor, really strange
looking dude, and he 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
(11:45):
for is saying absolutely ludicrous, preposterous stuff with a total
straight face and a dead pan, without any knowledge that
what he's saying is ridiculous. And really, Mackenzie did that
so be to flee, and I I really just frankly
stole that from him. Another thing I stole from him
was the haircut um. I read an interview with him
(12:07):
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
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 the haircut that is going
to make me look the most ridiculous. I have a
(12:30):
huge forehead and I was like, I'm going to frame
my forehead perfectly with these little draperies of hair that
will highlight the enormity of my carapace. Is that a word?
I think it is a word. I think these guys
aren't even listening. Um and then like really short on
the sides, and then intense, and then it evolved over time.
But interesting now, so we're not going to talk too
(12:52):
much more about the audition process. But at what point
did you meet John and Jenna and Steve in the
callback sessions? Yeah? 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
(13:14):
season January February. They'd shoot in like March, early April.
Decisions would be made in late April or May about
staffing up for the summer and if something was going
to be on the air in September. So it so
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
(13:35):
then the callback was like December, and then we shot
in like February or something like that. So I had
to wait 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
(13:57):
spent seven or eight hours on one of the first
day there, and I met Jenna, I met John um
Steve was 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
(14:20):
brings Dwight a glass of water, and it's like just
improvised Jim bringing you a glass of water, and Dwight
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
(14:40):
was cast, Greg came to me and we had a
coffee and he gave me kind of a little bit
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 why, He's like, yeah, more, it's more natural.
(15:01):
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 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,
(15:22):
when I improvised, it was just a little looser. It's
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 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,
(15:43):
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 kept me up at night. I was like,
oh shit, what does that mean? I improvised a good
improviser and a terrible, terrible regular actor. So I want
(16:19):
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 make Dwight very specific,
(16:42):
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 metal muscle car
(17:05):
rarely equals Battlestar Galactica fan, And I do think this
is true. As an actor, 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 always said that the beat farmer
(17:27):
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 do think that Dwight has
(17:47):
influenced popular culture because now all the hipsters were the
Dwight classes. 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 or wearing those same glasses. Um.
Free commercial for Intelligencia Coffee. Thank you, I'll take my
gift card please. Um. Was there anything for you as
(18:13):
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, and did a lot
(18:34):
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 into character, I
(18:57):
could just put my attention, 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 to people. If
(19:17):
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 your sleep. But but
(19:38):
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. And also I imagined
(20:02):
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 jutting it for 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
his size within the space right, which to me was
(20:23):
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 and that there's yeah, yeah, yeah, so the whole
(20:44):
body turns at the same whole and maybe even shuffle
my feet to turn to one. Um, hold on one second,
that is not your ine, that is water speak for yourself.
Of Um, why do people love Dwight? Well, we talked
(21:06):
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. Um. But
you know, the thing I hate the most about comedy,
and I have been known to tiptoe into this land,
(21:27):
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
(21:48):
as possible and 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 hid in there. Yeah,
he could do just preposterous things, but I always tried
to motivate them internally with some internal drive, like this
(22:09):
is how Dwight saw 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
(22:29):
heart is on his sleeve. 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. What
(23:07):
were your initial thoughts of the Pilot when you first
saw it? Um? 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 in a few episodes,
the healthcare and basketball episodes a few ones later on. Um,
(23:31):
I liked 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 Office. So 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
(23:52):
back and watching some of the stuff that I want
to say too, and this story has been told before,
but that first season, for you listener is 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
(24:13):
only makes money when 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,
(24:34):
a moderate hit for a while, and then we were
kind of fading. You're so fired. Whoever, that was so
fund I hit you with my five pounds and mixed nuts.
So who would have ever thunk that fifteen years after
shooting the pilot, this is when we're having this conversation.
(24:54):
The office would be bigger than ever, two hundred episodes,
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
(25:15):
to do twelve mm hmm, and we thought we were done. Yeah,
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?
It's like it's just like just dribs and drafts and
this is just not done in that world of network television. Exactly. Yes,
(25:37):
what I remember is six, four, two, one, seven, and
then they said, okay, you can do twenty two. And
then a week later we got a third season m
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 word
(26:00):
over by its offices with the Office on it, like
from 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
(26:23):
is Earl. We followed My Name Is 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
(26:46):
the you talk about like influencers, like I view it
as like who got video iPods for Christmas? The first
year they came out, rich kids, So 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
(27:07):
don't think I think that blindsided 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
(27:29):
Angela 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 went hand 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,
(27:53):
I joined early because I was founding the company sol
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, Yeah,
(28:18):
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. Greg is one of
(28:41):
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. And one of the
(29:02):
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.
(29:23):
I still to this day 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 you know. The only thing that I
could think was and it happened like eight times. I
(29:45):
remember there was a period 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, But so I think
the cold opens really helped hook an audience in. Remember
(30:06):
this was not streaming. You're gonna have a commercial between
my name is Earl and then the office is going
to start. You gotta hook him. You got that ninety seconds,
two minutes. You want them 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
(30:26):
those things became swiftly kind of one of the strongest
aspects of 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 fifty nine. So if you had not
(30:46):
set it to start earlier, right, you would miss it.
So you would need to tune in earlier, 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
(31:11):
felt and I wonder if Greg would do 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
(31:33):
way better, and I wonder if they'll ever be. In fact,
I think there would be a really smart money making
scheme is to re release kind of directors cuts of
all the episodes and let them be to nine minutes long.
But it was always just such a pain to like
cut them down from like that twenty five minutes sweet
(31:54):
Spot to that twenty one minute forty twond mark that
they would have to be 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 death RACKI early
(32:17):
on for Game of Thrones, that was they cut that
almost down to almost nothing, 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're always going to
cut the C story. The A story is always going
to be like Michael and jan and something, and then
B stories like Dwight and Jim battling, and then the
(32:38):
C story is going to be like some smaller thing.
And sometimes Dwight is 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
(32:59):
where she got her sperm donated from, and Jan says,
it's a 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 made was
just pure. And they were like, yeah, we're not doing
(33:23):
anything with that or like what if that. I was like,
oh my god, that's just so funny. All right, we're
gonna stop there for now. I'm so sorry we have
(33:44):
to stop right in the middle. That's what he said.
I guess, uh, don't freak out because you are 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 and may have been the father
of Jan's baby. In fact, I'm quite convinced that he
(34:05):
was that that that Kevin was the father of Astrid,
and he would have 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
(34:27):
Office Deep Dive. 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
(34:52):
main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme
song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton,
and the so it is mixed by seth Olandsky. Special
thanks to the amazing production crew who recorded these interviews
with us Joanna Sakalowski, Julia Smith, Benny Spiwack Russell with Jaya,
Margaret Borchard, Christian Bonaventura, Matthew Rosenfield, Alex Mobison, Lucy Savage,
(35:18):
Judson Pickwork, Jack Walden, Jonathan Mayer, Andrew Stephen, David Lincoln,
and said A Lee
My name's Rain Wilson, and I played Dwight Kurt Shrewd.
Hello everybody, 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
(00:29):
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 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,
(00:50):
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 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
(01:14):
it was the greatest performance that I ever saw on
the Guthrie stage. It was brilliant. And so the show
was over and 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
(01:35):
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 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
(01:56):
love talking to him. You are going to love. Let's
sending to him. So, without further ado, here is Rain Wilson.
Bubble and squeak. I love it. Bubble and squeak on,
(02:16):
Bubble and squeaker cookie every moment, lift over from the
nut before. Oh, there he is him. Buddy, Hey man,
(02:39):
how are you? I'm good? God 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? What does that mean?
(03:01):
I don't know? Um, all right, let's do this. Let's
do it. 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
(03:23):
that's where would Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna talk about a
lot of things. I also am excited about talking about
the office in terms of like some stuff that you
don't normally here. 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
(03:45):
goal is with you, 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. 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,
(04:11):
going way 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
A 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. Yeah,
theater theater person that kind of found that we were
(04:32):
well suited to kind of comic character guys. Despite our
ravishingly good looks. So yeah, So I came out to
l A and 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
(04:54):
I did c S I. You did see s I too?
Or you I was a furry you're a guy who
gets sexualification out of wearing a big furry suit. I
was creepy guy in Supermarket. I'm not getting 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,
(05:15):
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,
(05:37):
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
(05:57):
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 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 million
(06:20):
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. I
(06:41):
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?
I was. I was so my friend Sam Catlin, he
(07:04):
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
The Office, and we were blown away. So I was
(07:25):
really truly one of the first people 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
what happened was I got cast in a pilot with
(07:46):
Janine Garoffalo for ABC. Mark Marrin 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
plane tickets. We were flying out the next day, literally
(08:07):
the next morning after the table read, start 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
(08:28):
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 sucked. Because
I love the British Office so much. I didn't have
(08:51):
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. The
(09:13):
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
(09:35):
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, 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
(09:57):
story about that I'll share with you really quick was
when Steve left, Alison Jones came to me. He had
a little party, a little reception. She came and she goes,
I was looking for stuff for Steve that I thought
it 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 Baumgartner,
(10:18):
Eric stone Street and Jorge Garcia. No kidding. So that
was like the final three. But oh fantastic. So you
and Helo. Eric stone Street is way richer than you.
He is now he sorry shoot sorry. So yeah, So
on that first audition, I auditioned for both Michael and Dwight,
(10:41):
and my Michael was just terrible. 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
(11:01):
also than Gareth in the British version. I mean he
was much yeah weasily 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
(11:23):
to go, Okay, here's Mackenzie Crook, brilliant actor, really strange
looking dude, and he 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
(11:45):
for is saying absolutely ludicrous, preposterous stuff with a total
straight face and a dead pan, without any knowledge that
what he's saying is ridiculous. And really, Mackenzie did that
so be to flee, and I I really just frankly
stole that from him. Another thing I stole from him
was the haircut um. I read an interview with him
(12:07):
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
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 the haircut that is going
to make me look the most ridiculous. I have a
(12:30):
huge forehead and I was like, I'm going to frame
my forehead perfectly with these little draperies of hair that
will highlight the enormity of my carapace. Is that a word?
I think it is a word. I think these guys
aren't even listening. Um and then like really short on
the sides, and then intense, and then it evolved over time.
But interesting now, so we're not going to talk too
(12:52):
much more about the audition process. But at what point
did you meet John and Jenna and Steve in the
callback sessions? Yeah? 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
(13:14):
season January February. They'd shoot in like March, early April.
Decisions would be made in late April or May about
staffing up for the summer and if something was going
to be on the air in September. So it so
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
(13:35):
then the callback was like December, and then we shot
in like February or something like that. So I had
to wait 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
(13:57):
spent seven or eight hours on one of the first
day there, and I met Jenna, I met John um
Steve was 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
(14:20):
brings Dwight a glass of water, and it's like just
improvised Jim bringing you a glass of water, and Dwight
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
(14:40):
was cast, Greg came to me and we had a
coffee and he gave me kind of a little bit
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 why, He's like, yeah, more, it's more natural.
(15:01):
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 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,
(15:22):
when I improvised, it was just a little looser. It's
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 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,
(15:43):
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 kept me up at night. I was like,
oh shit, what does that mean? I improvised a good
improviser and a terrible, terrible regular actor. So I want
(16:19):
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 make Dwight very specific,
(16:42):
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 metal muscle car
(17:05):
rarely equals Battlestar Galactica fan, And I do think this
is true. As an actor, 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 always said that the beat farmer
(17:27):
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 do think that Dwight has
(17:47):
influenced popular culture because now all the hipsters were the
Dwight classes. 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 or wearing those same glasses. Um.
Free commercial for Intelligencia Coffee. Thank you, I'll take my
gift card please. Um. Was there anything for you as
(18:13):
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, and did a lot
(18:34):
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 into character, I
(18:57):
could just put my attention, 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 to people. If
(19:17):
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 your sleep. But but
(19:38):
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. And also I imagined
(20:02):
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 jutting it for 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
his size within the space right, which to me was
(20:23):
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 and that there's yeah, yeah, yeah, so the whole
(20:44):
body turns at the same whole and maybe even shuffle
my feet to turn to one. Um, hold on one second,
that is not your ine, that is water speak for yourself.
Of Um, why do people love Dwight? Well, we talked
(21:06):
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. Um. But
you know, the thing I hate the most about comedy,
and I have been known to tiptoe into this land,
(21:27):
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
(21:48):
as possible and 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 hid in there. Yeah,
he could do just preposterous things, but I always tried
to motivate them internally with some internal drive, like this
(22:09):
is how Dwight saw 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
(22:29):
heart is on his sleeve. 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. What
(23:07):
were your initial thoughts of the Pilot when you first
saw it? Um? 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 in a few episodes,
the healthcare and basketball episodes a few ones later on. Um,
(23:31):
I liked 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 Office. So 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
(23:52):
back and watching some of the stuff that I want
to say too, and this story has been told before,
but that first season, for you listener is 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
(24:13):
only makes money when 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,
(24:34):
a moderate hit for a while, and then we were
kind of fading. You're so fired. Whoever, that was so
fund I hit you with my five pounds and mixed nuts.
So who would have ever thunk that fifteen years after
shooting the pilot, this is when we're having this conversation.
(24:54):
The office would be bigger than ever, two hundred episodes,
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
(25:15):
to do twelve mm hmm, and we thought we were done. Yeah,
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?
It's like it's just like just dribs and drafts and
this is just not done in that world of network television. Exactly. Yes,
(25:37):
what I remember is six, four, two, one, seven, and
then they said, okay, you can do twenty two. And
then a week later we got a third season m
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 word
(26:00):
over by its offices with the Office on it, like
from 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
(26:23):
is Earl. We followed My Name Is 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
(26:46):
the you talk about like influencers, like I view it
as like who got video iPods for Christmas? The first
year they came out, rich kids, So 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
(27:07):
don't think I think that blindsided 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
(27:29):
Angela 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 went hand 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,
(27:53):
I joined early because I was founding the company sol
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, Yeah,
(28:18):
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. Greg is one of
(28:41):
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. And one of the
(29:02):
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.
(29:23):
I still to this day 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 you know. The only thing that I
could think was and it happened like eight times. I
(29:45):
remember there was a period 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, But so I think
the cold opens really helped hook an audience in. Remember
(30:06):
this was not streaming. You're gonna have a commercial between
my name is Earl and then the office is going
to start. You gotta hook him. You got that ninety seconds,
two minutes. You want them 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
(30:26):
those things became swiftly kind of one of the strongest
aspects of 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 fifty nine. So if you had not
(30:46):
set it to start earlier, right, you would miss it.
So you would need to tune in earlier, 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
(31:11):
felt and I wonder if Greg would do 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
(31:33):
way better, and I wonder if they'll ever be. In fact,
I think there would be a really smart money making
scheme is to re release kind of directors cuts of
all the episodes and let them be to nine minutes long.
But it was always just such a pain to like
cut them down from like that twenty five minutes sweet
(31:54):
Spot to that twenty one minute forty twond mark that
they would have to be 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 death RACKI early
(32:17):
on for Game of Thrones, that was they cut that
almost down to almost nothing, 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're always going to
cut the C story. The A story is always going
to be like Michael and jan and something, and then
B stories like Dwight and Jim battling, and then the
(32:38):
C story is going to be like some smaller thing.
And sometimes Dwight is 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
(32:59):
where she got her sperm donated from, and Jan says,
it's a 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 made was
just pure. And they were like, yeah, we're not doing
(33:23):
anything with that or like what if that. I was like,
oh my god, that's just so funny. All right, we're
gonna stop there for now. I'm so sorry we have
(33:44):
to stop right in the middle. That's what he said.
I guess, uh, don't freak out because you are 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 and may have been the father
of Jan's baby. In fact, I'm quite convinced that he
(34:05):
was that that that Kevin was the father of Astrid,
and he would have 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
(34:27):
Office Deep Dive. 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
(34:52):
main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme
song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton,
and the so it is mixed by seth Olandsky. Special
thanks to the amazing production crew who recorded these interviews
with us Joanna Sakalowski, Julia Smith, Benny Spiwack Russell with Jaya,
Margaret Borchard, Christian Bonaventura, Matthew Rosenfield, Alex Mobison, Lucy Savage,
(35:18):
Judson Pickwork, Jack Walden, Jonathan Mayer, Andrew Stephen, David Lincoln,
and said A Lee
Host
Brian Baumgartner
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