20th Anniversary of The Office with Greg Daniels

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I'm Jenna Fisher and I'm Angela Kinsey.

We were on the office together and we're best friends.

And now we're doing the Ultimate Office Lovers podcast just for you.

Each week we will dive deeper into the world of the office with exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes details, and lots of VFF stories.

We're the Office Lady 6.0.

Hello there.

Hi, everyone.

We have such a big episode of Office Ladies 6.0 today

because you know on Monday it was the 20th anniversary of The Office and we thought, well, we have to celebrate it today.

This is a big milestone.

A lot of you wrote us about this.

Bethany C.

from Denver, Colorado said, hello ladies.

The first episode of The Office aired in the U.S.

on March 24th, 2005, which means this year will mark 20 years.

Is there a plan to celebrate the big anniversary?

And Brianna S.

from Athens, Ohio said, something I would be interested in as possible episodes now that you're doing character breakdowns would be a cast or crew breakdown.

For example, how about all about Greg Daniels?

Well, Bethany and Brianna, you are in luck.

Today we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Office with special guest, Greg Daniels.

It was so wonderful talking with Greg.

We had such a great conversation about 20 years of The Office.

Not only did we ask him about how he came to run the show, but we also reflect on so many wonderful memories.

Yeah, as this anniversary was approaching, Angela and I we both went back and we re-watched the pilot episode of The Office.

It was so interesting.

We were like the people who go back and start from the beginning in a way.

I know.

I watched the original broadcast and then I went and watched the Superfan version because I was curious.

I did the same thing and we talked with Greg about it.

And you know, guys, I went back into some of my...

Well, I guess it's not my digital clutter.

It's my actual clutter.

I went into my bin of photos.

I found the photos from the pilot, from the party we went to after the pilot.

Some of those, Jenna, we shared in our book, The Office BFFs.

Some we used in a reel reel that Josh made for us to celebrate the 20th anniversary.

Some I didn't put in either.

I'm going to share them in stories.

But then, you guys, are you ready for this?

I went to my journal that is titled, what's it called, Jenna?

Office Early Days.

Uh-huh.

I have a journal entry that I can't wait to share with you guys.

It is from our very first day of filming.

That is nuts to me.

Are you ready?

You told me you found this and I can't wait.

Well, I've been holding on to this for a while because I found it after we had already broke down the pilot and I was like, oh, dang it.

So here we go.

September 20th, 2004, 7.30 a.m.

First day of shooting of the office.

That is written in blue ink.

That means you wrote this on the set of the office.

Oh, oh, yeah.

It's going to be very clear.

Okay, so at 7.30 a.m., I wrote first day of shooting of the office.

That's in blue ink.

Next line is in black ink.

This is the best job ever.

Next line is in red ink.

I have all of these pens on my desk, so I'm trying them all out.

Oh, my gosh.

Okay.

Next line is in black ink.

My call time was 5 a.m.

So sleepy, exclamation point.

I didn't even really fall asleep in the first place.

12.40 p.m.

in red ink.

New time stamp, new ink.

Am so sleepy, but am having the time of my life.

4.35 p.m.

in black ink.

Am absolutely so punchy.

Drew a black heart.

Okay.

Almost asleep with my eyes open.

Oh, just got flowers from my agent.

Congrats, etc.

Very nice.

Okay,

next thing, blue ink.

Here is the letterhead from our fake company.

Also one of my call sheets.

I mean you taped it inside.

Oh, stop it.

It's so cute.

All right.

Next entry in black ink.

Gosh, I so want this show to be a success.

Next entry.

I'm already looking forward to Christmas.

Is that nuts?

It's my favorite time of the year.

I can't wait to decorate.

Wow.

That was a hard pivot.

I know, I know.

It's what was on your mind.

Okay, are you ready?

Final entry from the first day.

My peony hose are cutting me in half.

How do women wear these all the time?

Seriously?

Question mark exclamation point.

I want to ditch them.

Exclamation point.

And you did.

And I did.

There you go.

First day on the set of the office.

That's pretty amazing.

Sam, I can't believe you didn't pop on to give me a hard time about all the different color ink.

I didn't want to interrupt, but it was killing me.

Why was I so excited about all my different pens?

I don't know.

I like to think it's your different moods.

Well, Allison Jones found something in her clutter as well, and she sent it to me out of the blue.

She found the casting descriptions for the main cast.

These were written by Greg Daniels

and I thought it would be so fun to read them.

I can't wait to hear these.

I knew you got them, but I haven't heard them yet.

And I thought what would be fun is as you read one, I would play some of the audition tapes that are online and we can go back and forth.

I love it.

All right, let's start with Michael Scott.

Here is how he is described.

34 to 44.

Michael Scott is the manager of the office and the boastful, unreliable narrator of the documentary.

He is a legend in his own mind who thinks he is a comic genius, fountain of business wisdom, and his employee's cool friend.

He believes in his version of reality with the sincere enthusiasm of a nine-year-old child thinking he can do karate.

However, the documentary reveals the truth.

He is a buffoon, a pathetic mid-level bureaucrat overdue for a midlife crisis, whom decent people pity as a quote, sad little man, when his inappropriate behavior hasn't appalled them into silence.

Horribly overconfident, he is a train wreck of bad leadership characteristics only redeemed a bit by his childish enthusiasm.

Despite continual proofs that he's an ass, he clings shamelessly to his deluded self-image like a shipwreck survivor clinging to a scrap of wood.

And then it says, we need an actor who can play a juicy comic character, someone with an expressive face to get a laugh on a smug look, someone with the heart of a nine-year-old, but who plays between 34 and 44.

Someone whose face and physique do not command natural respect, i.e.

not buff and handsome.

Boyish, not rugged, capable of high-spirited, sunny energy, as well as small, specific acting.

Wow.

That's so much information.

Yeah.

Well, here is Steve reading for Michael.

This is just a portion of his audition, but let's hear it.

Actually, people say, I am the best boss they've ever had.

The world's greatest boss, given to me.

They go,

Michael, we have never worked in a place like this before.

I mean, you are a riot.

You get the best out of us.

And I say,

well, quesaras area.

You know, and if it's true,

awesome.

What is quesaras raw?

Well, it's kind of,

it's kind of a non-sequitur, I've been told.

It's kind of,

you know, kind of filler words?

Have you ever heard of filler words?

It's kind of, it's kind of like that.

You know,

quesarasera,

if I had to define what it meant, I'd say

what context did I use it, Justine?

Isn't that so great?

And I love that you can hear Ken Koffis.

Yes.

Well, what's so crazy about it is that it starts and it just sounds like an episode of The Office.

Like it just sounds like he's, it doesn't sound like an audition at all.

I know.

But then you see how our auditions went, which is that we would do the prepared material and then Ken would just throw a question at us.

Like, what's Kay Sir Ross?

Yeah, exactly.

It's a filler word.

Yeah.

It's just one of those filler words.

So great.

Are you ready to hear about Dwight Schroott?

Yes.

Here is how Greg described him in the breakdown.

Dwight is the team leader and Michael Scott's sidekick.

He really admires Michael Scott, although it is unclear if this is due to Scott's personality or Dwight's officious inclination to look up to whoever is above him in the hierarchy.

Dwight is obsessed with survival, personal security tactics, and other grandiose nerd action fantasies, probably because he got his ass kicked a lot as a kid.

A volunteer policeman on the weekends, he takes any excuse to go on a power trip in the office.

Yet, his survival training appears to be more Gilligan's Island than Green Berets.

Although aggressively horny, he has no idea how to behave with women.

His unpleasant social habits and annoying personality suggest an unsocialized loner, a sort of Caliban or gollom.

If stuck in an elevator, he would probably start drinking his own urine after 10 minutes.

I have to just like side note, just this idea that Dwight gets stuck in an elevator goes all the way back to the breakdown.

I love that.

Like how Dwight would behave in an elevator.

Elevator.

All right, going on.

He said, his lack of social skills render him the butt of office jokes and thus unbearable.

If Scott is redeemed by having the heart of a nine-year-old, then Dwight can perhaps be pitied for his interior teenage geek.

We need someone who can be believable as a geek, someone who has no desire to be likable or please an audience except through total identification with his character.

This is so rain.

I know.

I have to think the minute Rain walked in the room, they were like, Well, crap, that's Dwight.

Someone who can seem reasonable to himself while saying insane things,

who understands the comedy of playing it straight.

Late 20s to 30s.

Oh my gosh.

Okay, well now we have to hear Rain auditioning for Dwight.

Urine is sterile.

Okay?

That's a fact.

Did you know that?

When you are in the field, you can clean a wound by whizzing on it.

True.

It is in the first aid guidebook from the American Red Cross Association.

So it's totally unfair for me to get in trouble for whizzing in the sink.

Amazing.

Well, I know there's so much more footage, but that's what you can pull from online.

And it's, you just, you hear him immediately as Dwight.

I felt like, as all of us, and this was true when I went back just now and re-watched the pilot, I think Rain as Dwight was the most fully realized of all of us from day one.

Day one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Next up is the breakdown for Jim Nelson.

The original name was Jim Nelson.

Jim is a sales rep in the office who has to share a workspace with Dwight.

He is an ordinary, decent person with good taste leading a life of quiet desperation.

He likes people, is a good listener, and wanted to be a psychologist.

Hmm.

Well,

his clever sarcasm and takes to the camera are little defense against the vulgarity that surrounds him, although they make Pam the receptionist laugh.

You wish he would be more assertive in love and at work.

After playing with Pam, his chief enjoyment in the office is using his superior social and emotional skills to prank Dwight.

Although you get the sense that when he indulges in his immature impulses, he is letting the environment defeat him.

We need someone likable, around 30, who can get laughs by raising an eyebrow or doing a take to the camera.

He needs to be pleasant looking enough for you to root for him to get the girl without being a hunk in any way.

Although hidden by his ordinariness and bad haircut, Jim is the romantic lead.

They wrote in bad haircuts.

Yeah, no.

All right, here is John auditioning for Jim.

I'm a saleswriter, which means that my job is to speak to clients on the phone about

quantity,

type of paper,

whether we can supply it to them, whether they can

pay for it.

And

I'm boring myself just talking about it.

To be honest, it's.

I mean, that just sounds like it's from the show, honestly.

I know.

That was an audition tape.

All right.

Finally, here is Pam Beasley's breakdown.

26 to 29 was the age range.

And it says, Pam is the receptionist and Jim's friend.

Pam is decent, reasonable, and friendly.

She has the manner of a nice kindergarten teacher or a future mom.

She is an ordinary woman with a sense of humor.

She allows her loudish boss and fiancé to push her around some, but she can exhibit flashes of working class toughness in protecting her friends.

She's not cynical or a smartass, although her way of disagreeing is a gentle sarcasm.

She's not arrogant or glamorous or overtly sexy, but she is cute compared to the other office workers, and she loves to play with Jim, who understands her better than Roy, her fiancé.

Jim and Pam probably would not have met without being thrown together in the office, but they have become true friends, and their flirting is more serious than they acknowledge.

Pam needs to be soft and kind and vulnerable.

Pretty too, but definitely not a head turner, more of a likable, accessible pretty.

A working-world girl next door type who can deliver sarcasm with a light touch, yet a touch of the tragic waif.

Pam is the other romantic lead.

Oh man, when you watch your audition tape, when you watch the pilot, Jenna, you got Pam right away.

You just did.

And let's hear you audition for Pam.

I hope they get rid of me.

Because then I might actually get off my ass and do something.

Because I don't think it's many little girls' dreams to grow up and be a receptionist.

And I don't know what I'm going to do, but whatever it is, it's got to be a career move, not just another arbitrary job.

And

Jim's advice was that it's better to be at the bottom of a ladder that you want to climb than halfway up one you don't.

Yeah, I remember doing that.

She's not quoting Roy, even in the audition.

That's right.

All right, next up, I have two batches of shorter clips of multiple characters auditioning.

We have BJ for Ryan, Craig for Daryl, David for Roy, Dave for Todd, and Malora for Jan.

Let's hear them.

Okay, I'm into foreign films.

I read The New Yorker.

Love Shakespeare.

Did you happen to see the Dunder Mifflin flag out in the parking lot?

Isn't it inspiring?

I think I'm one in on my coffin.

Hey, baby, yeah.

You got here.

Uh, yeah, would you mind if I went out for a drink with these guys?

Uh,

no, no, let's

go let's go.

It's a gimmick, I think, really.

You know,

Casual Friday, one day you let your hair down.

It's pathetic.

Michael, go on.

Can we not talk about downsizing?

Oh, we have to, sooner or later.

Yes, but right now, what we have to decide is do you fold Stanford people into this branch or vice versa?

Those are just quick little snippets of each person auditioning.

And then what's the other batch?

Do you have the rest of you guys?

I have Brian for Kevin, Oscar for Oscar, Angela for Pam, Leslie for Stanley, and Kate for Meredith.

What did you watch on TV last night?

I didn't.

I rented a movie.

I watched that special victim SVU.

Never seen that.

Friggin' retweet.

Well, that sucks, doesn't it?

Not for me.

I hadn't seen it.

It is a question of trust.

It's communication.

Do you trust me?

Do you trust me?

Yes or no?

Yes.

I trust you.

I like that.

Because it's not often that you get something that's both romantic and thrifty.

So there's that going.

I said if Corporate wants to come here and interfere, you ain't messing with my chillin.

I am if anyone's going to.

Yeah, but Michael, what if they do downsize here?

Not going to happen.

It could be out of your hands, Michael.

Was there anything that you wanted to add to the agenda?

That was it.

Kate just got one line.

Is there anything you wanted to add to the agenda?

Well, they're just little clips.

Our auditions were much longer.

We improvised a whole bunch and did all these different takes, but that's what we have access to.

And I don't have me auditioning for Angela Martin.

We might have to hit up Dave Rogers for that when we do All About Angela Martin.

Oh, we should.

Let's see if we can get a hold of that.

I know.

That would be going into the archives for sure.

Well, listen, everyone, we're going to take a break, and when we come back, we have a fantastic interview with showrunner Greg Daniels.

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Greg Daniels.

Welcome, Greg.

Here you are.

You were on the regular Office Ladies and now you're on Office Ladies 6.0.

How did you jump to 6.0 instead of 2.0?

Greg, Greg, this is a deep cut.

Oh, that's a joke from the show.

Yes.

Yes.

This interview is not going well.

So, wait, what show is this?

I think I saw this.

In Hot Girl, Michael says that Katie is Pam 6.0.

Right, right.

So, this is really making me question

why you've been why we named, no, why we named our show a deep cut that is so deep that even the creator does not recall.

I like it.

I like the mystery for those that don't know.

No, it's not.

We are so thrilled to have you here.

This is a big occasion in the world of the office.

This is a huge anniversary that we've come here together to celebrate.

It is the 20th anniversary of the office.

Crazy.

Crazy.

Is it crazy, though?

Now, here's the thing.

I realized that for

a lot of times that people would say that I think the sort of expected thing is like, oh, I can't believe so much time has gone by.

But then I was questioning like that didn't really sit right with me.

And I was like, no, I think it feels like it's been a long time to me.

So I don't know.

I don't know.

How does it feel to you?

I mean, I think it's a combo platter.

I think sometimes it feels like a whole different existence.

You know, it was such a chapter so long ago.

And then sometimes we will hear a clip or revisit an episode and I'll remember, you know, what we were doing that week.

And then you're right back there.

So it's a little bit like going through an old family album of photos in a way.

I had a weird experience because

we are doing season 14 and 15 of King of the Hill.

Oh my gosh.

If you can imagine that.

And that's

a much older show.

Yeah.

And

so I was

writing for those characters.

And,

you know, and I hadn't really thought about them since

before our show started.

And I was just so happy to kind of talk to the characters again.

It was a very kind of hippy-dippy thing going on in my head, but I was like, oh my gosh, Peggy.

Yes, I haven't talked to you in ages.

That's right.

Jenna said that one time.

You said, you know, we have all stayed in touch, you know, the cast, we have this text thread, but you were like, I miss like, like Meredith and Kevin, and I miss Dwight.

And yeah, I see rain, but I don't really

get to talk to Dwight again.

I'd love to talk to that guy.

Yeah.

Some weird dreams.

You got to just got to eat like weird, cheesy things right before bed.

You know, I do have dreams where we're shooting again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm back back on set and we're all there.

And sometimes the dream is like we're making the show, but then sometimes the dream is that we've created a reunion show.

It's like present day.

So I've had both of these dreams.

And is one of them a nightmare?

Actually, the reunion ones got the nightmare.

So take that for what it's worth.

It's usually me.

It's usually wrapped up in that idea of like, oh my gosh, I didn't, I said yes to this and I forgot to prepare.

And I don't remember how to be Pam and I don't know what I'm doing.

Well, I feel like it's incredibly stressful to have a show that you really care about on the air because it can go south at the last second and everybody can be mad and

you can ruin it.

And it was such a nice feeling for

me when we finally stopped producing new episodes of the show.

So I was like, okay, it's safe.

Did it actually put it on the show?

Put to bed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I still remember when I, you know, one of the things Jenna and I did

for this episode is we went and re-watched the pilot and we went and watched the super fan cut of the pilot because neither of us had seen that.

And

I still, like when I watched it, What came back to me was that feeling when we would walk on the stage in the morning, like before we started filming, and we'd walk down that corridor and we'd go in the back way, you know, past hair and makeup.

Yeah.

And then you were all of a sudden in the Dundromifflin offices.

I just remembered all of that, how I would walk to my desk in the morning.

Are you picturing the offices from the pilot in season one?

No, no, I'm picturing, I always picture the ones where we filmed the majority of the time.

Although I do remember that office because Oscar and I made such asses of ourselves.

Like,

and when we filmed in Culver City, I think I've told this story before that he and I decided to walk down the stairs, you know, because we filmed upstairs to our trailers, and we decided to walk swinging our arms left to right, left to right, and kicking our legs.

And we made these noises.

And we were being so silly.

And behind us was Terry Weinberg and like all

the network producers.

All our network suits and people we didn't even even know.

We just knew they were important because they all went into the room to chat and stuff.

And Oscar was like, oh, God, we're fired.

We're fired.

So I do remember that building very clearly, but I can remember what it felt like to walk on set.

Do you remember what it felt like?

Oh, yeah.

That is something I wish I could do.

I wish that.

And to me, it's still there.

I've never been back to those same stages.

I know that there's like

game shows and stuff that shoot there.

I think always Sunny and Philadelphia shot there.

They have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is weird.

Do you remember in season one, and this might have been the pilot, but I remember that to get to the stage, you had to go up a couple of stairs or down a couple of stairs, and there was a very low concrete ceiling lintel at the doorway.

I would come running onto the set to give a note and bash my head against this you would lintel and then eventually they put a big rubber bumper there that said like Greg Daniels Memorial head bumper or something so that I wouldn't knock myself out.

That is so funny.

Trying to rush in.

Oh my gosh.

I mean, I never had that problem because I never will.

That's not a problem you have to worry about.

I clear a doorway very easily.

When's the last time you watched an episode of The Office start to finish?

Oh,

I watch them periodically.

Like, you know, it comes up because, as you probably know, I'm doing the next documentary from the same documentary crew.

Yes.

This new show.

And

the paper?

Yes, the paper.

And so a lot of times we'll have some things that we wanted to do differently and then they may not be 100% working out and I'll go back and I'll check the original show and I'll be like, oh, you know,

that's why we had the blinds that are two inches apart and not one inch apart so you can see people's faces.

Things like that.

That's my shot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love going back and watching the show.

And then, of course, you know, I have a 15-year-old and she doesn't know what it is, and she's watching it.

For the first time?

Yeah.

So sometimes I'll watch it with her.

Yeah.

She's just plowing through all that era, though.

She just finished New Girl.

She just started arrested development.

She's just like.

Yeah.

That's a pretty great time in television comedy, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We did that.

Part of our pandemic watch with our kids was Friends and then The Office.

And,

you know, Isabel just turned to me one day and said, mom, you're so mean to everybody.

When we were watching The Office, I was like, I know, but it's not me.

But yeah, that was kind of hard for her to reconcile.

My kids still haven't watched The Office.

We're watching Modern Family right now.

Yes, we did watch that too.

And it's so good.

Yeah.

That's a good one.

And I wondered, like, would, okay, now that you kind of have this, like, there's their version of talking heads, and I know they're, they speak to the camera.

I'm like, maybe, maybe now they'll want to watch The Office, but they haven't expressed interest yet.

Yeah.

They'll get there.

I found that when you remove the jealousy.

of them winning the Emmy every year.

This show is really great.

It really improved my experience watching Modern Family.

Yeah, recently.

I know.

We did go up against them a lot.

We really did.

All right.

Well, Greg, one of the questions we always ask our guests, how did it come about that you got your job creating the office?

Yes.

Okay.

So basically what happened was

I had been doing King of the Hill and it was very, you know, good experience for me.

And

it was probably around season eight and I was not really needed there.

And

my deal at 20th was up, and so I was a free agent, and I was looking around at all sorts of different things to be the next project.

And I had some real interesting meetings about the Muppet Show, which someone else did later, and a couple of other things.

And my agent sent me a tape, a VHS tape.

called The Office before Christmas break, like

probably 2003, December, maybe.

And

it was a little bit of a boring title, and I didn't watch it.

And then, so he called me like January 3rd and said, All right, I'm going to send it to the next guy if you don't want to do it.

And I was like, Hang on, hang on, let me watch it.

I'll watch it tonight.

And I started it, and I just fell in love with it the first season of six episodes.

And I stayed up late watching all of them.

And then I was like, This stuff is absolutely brilliant.

It doesn't feel like American TV, but I desperately want to meet the people who made it and just try and figure out how it works because it's the best thing, you know, that I had seen.

So I ended up having a meeting with Ricky and Stephen when they came to the U.S.

to interview people to adapt it.

And

it turned out that I had written Ricky Gervais' favorite Simpsons episode, which was called Homer Badman.

And

so that was good, kind of getting us off on the right foot.

And a lot of the stuff that I brought to King of the Hill had resonance with them in terms of the realism of the show and the sincerity, I guess, at times.

And

so we kind of hit it off.

And so I said, okay, maybe I'll adapt this.

And at the time, we definitely thought it would be probably on HBO or something like that.

And Kevin Riley was interested.

And he was at FX.

And,

you know, he very much

got the show and was enthusiastic about it.

So we were like, all right, well, FX would work.

That's pretty cool.

It has an edge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kind of edgy.

It'll do something different.

And so I signed on to adapt it.

And then Kevin went to NBC and he still wanted it.

And then Silverman was like, yeah, yeah, let's do it for NBC.

And I was like,

you know, it doesn't feel like NBC.

You know, NBC was multicam.

And so going into it, I was kind of like, all right, well, if we do it for NBC, we'll probably won't win, probably won't be successful, but maybe we'll like nudge the ship of comedy in a direction that I would rather see it float in

than the complete multicam direction.

And

yeah, so that's how I got into it.

And then the other thing was I

did not think that the original show was ever going to air in America because when you think of other British adaptations like All in the Family, like no one's ever seen the British show that All in the Family was based on.

So I just figured it was obvious that they wouldn't run the British original

two months before we aired,

which they did.

That was scary.

Well, I'm curious, looking back from your perspective,

when did you know that our version was going to stick?

Or when did you feel like we were sort of a hit show, I guess?

Well, that all happened season two.

I don't know if you remember the pilot, but I had a little some words after the pilot, and we all went out to a bar, I think, when it stopped shooting.

Do you remember that?

Oh, and we said goodbye.

Yeah.

I said, I'll see you on the next show.

I actually found pictures from that.

Yeah.

And I was telling Jenna this because when we did our book, we went through and looked at a ton of pictures and we found some from the pilot and things like that.

But I actually found pictures from that bar that we all went to.

Yeah.

And I remember thinking, well, that was such a fun experience.

It was completely worth it.

It didn't need, it doesn't need to be successful for me to have found.

happiness in shooting that pilot and meeting everybody and it was super good.

And I remember also saying something similar at the end of season one.

I was like, all right, this this will probably tank, you know.

Our six episodes of season one, our very short season one.

But, you know, it was very exciting in season two because it just kept going up and up and up in season two.

And by the end of season two, I think like on Casino Night, we were

kind of a successful show by then, I think.

What do you attribute that to in season two?

Do you think it's changes we made?

Was it just people getting used to it?

Like, what do you think it was?

Well, from my perspective,

Kevin Riley

wasn't sure he was going to pick up season two.

And there was a lot of drama before the upfronts for that year

where you I don't know if this is I think this is known in some places, but the company kind of lowered the budget and stripped everybody's bonuses out.

And you know, they really

did a lot of belt tightening to bring us back and I had to go pitch a new direction to Kevin before he would green light the next season and this actually does go back a little bit to King of the Hill again because what I had done at King of the Hill was say okay Hank has a lot of unlikable aspects to him but I'm going to build all these likable features to him to like undo whatever anybody's misgivings might be.

Like if he maybe appears a little misogynistic at times, then I'm going to make him super supportive of his wife and also, you know, a complete Boy Scout prude when it comes to his niece that's living with him.

And, you know, various things like that.

So going into it, I was like, all right, I was very, very...

so much in love with the original British show that we didn't make too many changes to Michael's character in the first season.

So I was kind of like, I think

I know what I need to do.

I need to do the same thing I did with Hank.

And I had a list of

different things that would rehabilitate Michael's character in the eyes of the audience.

And they became maybe the first six or eight episodes.

So the emotional plot of the Dundees is, you know, the staff is very irritated by Michael, but if somebody outside the staff criticizes him, they'll defend him.

And so that's sort of like a family dynamic kind of thing where it solves the problem of, is he really hated by his staff?

No, he's not.

He's, you know, they have some sort of family feeling towards him.

And then there was Booze Cruz was from my initial napkin that I went in to pitch Kevin Riley was let Michael give some really good advice to somebody that the audience really wants him to say.

So when Michael tells Jim, never give up, that's exactly what the audience wanted somebody to tell Jim.

And,

you know, so the idea that Michael has that insight is good for Michael, you know, and in the coup, he's actually pretty good at sales.

So he's not a total incompetent.

And

the idea was

like there's something called the Peter Principle.

Do you know that?

Yeah, yes, yes.

Yeah.

So the idea was he's actually really good as a sales manager.

He just shouldn't have been turned into promoted into the general manager

or the

branch manager.

So, you know, the different things like that.

I had maybe six or eight things that I thought would fix his character over the course of the season.

So from my perspective, a lot of it is these things were chipping away at whatever the problems were and

kind of making a new version of Michael where he was

more of a, you know, exasperating uncle than like an evil boss.

A dirty boss, yeah.

I love hearing about that process of you laying out the emotional plot for a character.

That's the stuff I always find so fascinating.

Did you do that with multiple characters on the show?

Did you know what their emotional plot was?

Or were you charting that?

Oh, yeah.

That's a huge part of

the writer's room.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And one of the big things with Pam, for instance, is, okay, what's going on with Pam?

What are the obstacles to Pam and Jim getting together, right?

So the

show starts and the obstacle is Roy and she's engaged.

And then, you know, he takes his shot and she's not ready to break up with Roy or to, you know.

cheat or anything.

So she turns him down and then Jim goes to Connecticut.

And by the time he comes back, he has a new girlfriend, which from his perspective is okay because he was turned down.

And,

you know, Pam is watching him with Karen.

And, you know, the big obstacle at the second half of that season was

sort of Pam's confidence level.

And does she get the courage?

to say what she wants.

And in beach games, when she walks across the coals, that's, you know, that's, that's a moment that was like a year in preparation because it's getting her to feel enough emboldened and

love that.

So there's a lot of that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

And then my

writing predilection is to have an emotional story that is extremely well worked out, but is what I would call like underwater and only surfaces at one moment in the show to do its job and then disappears underwater again.

But you have to, to get that submarine at the right place, you know, you have to plot its path all the way when it's not noticed by the audience, you know, all the way through the episode.

All the moments, yeah.

Yeah.

And so one of the problems with, for me, doing rewrites is sometimes you forget, because you're just looking at the surface of the plot, you're forgetting that some of these lines are also charting a course for the submarine.

And

you're like, I got a better joke.

And you switch the joke to something else that works for the surface plot, but doesn't help the submarine get where it needs to go.

So you're constantly balancing the sort of surface story with like the heart story that's lying underneath a little bit.

Yeah.

Before King of the Hill, I had the experience of working on other shows where they didn't take the emotional storyline very seriously.

And a lot of comedy writers at that time had a term which they used called treacle cutter.

And the idea was that at the end of an episode, there'd be some treacle that was some little piece of like ah, hug, and then that they needed to have a joke after that called the treacle cutter because they were so disgusted that they had just

done some sort of treacle.

And I was like, well, you don't have to be embarrassed if it isn't treacle.

You know, if it actually works and you actually feel something, then you don't need a little treacle cutter, you know.

Yeah.

But it's a lot of underappreciated effort to put all those little beats in.

There's so many good Jim and Pam ones, too, when you rewatch it.

I mean, one of my favorites is when they're just listening to the voicemails at the end of the day.

Yeah.

That was one of my favorites.

Yeah.

I think Business School is possibly my favorite episode, but I think that one is such a great Pam Michael moment.

Yeah.

Yeah.

At the art show.

Yeah, at the art show.

Yeah.

When he's the only one who is really enthusiastic about her art.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's the one that showed up.

He's also the only person that knew Sprinkle, like who got upset about Sprinkles.

I just watched that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In Fun Run.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He did get the name wrong.

He got it right.

He got it right the first time.

He did.

And then he was back to Michael.

But he literally turned and goes, oh no.

He's like,

he was heartbroken for her.

Yeah.

Is there any storyline or card that was on the wall that you didn't get to do that

still wish?

We have that whole Pet Day script.

We have a whole script that didn't get printed.

Can you share a little bit about what that script story was all about?

Yeah, so we had, I think, it would have been season one, right?

So I think we had only enough.

budget for five episodes, but we had enough script budget for six.

So I wrote an extra episode called Pet Day, where Michael encourages everybody to bring their pets in.

And I think Dwight brought in a demi-wolf.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I was like, I'm going to make sure all the writers get a script and I'll take that one and shelve it.

And maybe it'll come back later.

And it never came back later.

I have to imagine if you were Kent Sabornak and you got handed Pet Day, he was just like, how am I because I I do remember the script how do I get this demi wolf but then also there were like there was a bird yeah that was in it and this was going to be a lot of animals on set yeah I think a lot of people would probably have said unproducible I hope Angela had 13 of her cats there I got to go back and look at that script I know she had cats

You know who knew almost every single of Angela Martin's cats?

Was Billie Eilish.

Yes, she's a huge fan.

She came on the show.

We played an office trivia game with her.

And I mean, I was struggling to name them all, and she got them.

It was, I was like, wow, that's amazing.

Are there any celebrities that you've met that have just gone on and on and on about the office that maybe surprised you?

Well, I love that your premise is that I'm meeting a lot of celebrities.

You're at all the fancy parts in our mind.

You're out there hop-nobbing.

Yeah, no, no.

I mean, I heard somewhere that Spielberg really liked the show.

Like, he knew it wasn't.

This is news to us.

Oh, my gosh.

So that's good.

Jenna has a good one.

Tell the story.

About Angelina Jolie.

Please tell it.

Yeah,

I was at a party and Angelina Jolie was there with a few of her kids.

And

I clocked her.

And I noticed, like, out of my peripheral vision, that she was walking right toward me.

And I was like, who's behind me?

Who's Who's she walking to?

And she came right up to me and introduced herself.

She said, hi, my name's Angie.

And I just wanted to tell you, my family, we are such a huge family.

And you're like, no autographs.

No, I was like, get out of here.

She was so nice and warm.

And I...

I was like, what?

And she said, I'm here with my kids and we watch it together and they're huge fans.

Would you mind saying hello to them?

And I said, yes.

And I walked over and talked to them all.

And she was so nice.

She was so nice.

She was like, oh,

we should get lunch sometime or we should.

And I was like, yes, of course, we should.

But then I'm like, I don't know how to follow up on that.

Yeah.

Is that like a real let's have lunch or is that kind of like

party chit chat?

She said it twice.

Okay, then you should have gotten her information.

But also one time Michael Douglas offered me

his house in Spain to vacation at because I did a a movie with him.

He said it three times on two different days.

So, like the first day, he said it twice.

He's like, oh, Catherine and I have a house in Spain.

You can use it.

And the next day,

when Lee was visiting, he said, did Jenna tell you about our place in Spain?

You two are welcome to use it.

Wow.

And yet I have not vacationed at his house in Spain.

I just, I don't know how to.

How do you transition that?

Yeah, how do I make that happen?

I would have followed up on that.

Also, maybe if you just have houses in Spain and whatnot, you're very gracious about it.

Maybe you're just like, go to my house in Monaco.

I don't know.

Maybe there's a tax reason.

It's like.

Look at it.

You're so cynical.

You're like, what's in it for Michael?

I could write it off.

Okay, I have a question since we're reflecting on 20 years.

We were debating about including this question and we got tickled about it.

So just take it with a grain of salt.

Is there a storyline or episode that you think we maybe jumped the shark with when you look back?

Oh, my goodness.

We almost jumped a horse over Niagara Falls.

Yes, but we did it, we know.

We came very close.

Yeah.

Boy.

Well, I mean, the notion of jump the shark,

for me, is like there's a dividing line between the show was good and then the show was kind of right oh cheesy and i i think that's not my intention with the question yeah no i think it's more like was there a moment or a decision where you're like yeah if i had it to do all over again i wouldn't have gone down that road i'm pretty proud of the show i'm not gonna i'm gonna go there and and also i think that there's i i learned on King of the Hill, I was very worried about, we had an episode where, and I know I've been talking a lot about Gateway Hill on this Office Ladies podcast, but we had an episode where they, all of Hank and his friends became volunteer firemen, and they were just like the three stooges go to a firehouse.

And I was just completely sweating it because there was no subterranean emotional story on that one.

It was just all goofball stuff.

And I was like, well, that was it.

We broke the show.

And

then a whole bunch of people were like, that's my favorite episode and and i was like oh okay it's just a different

it's just you know slightly different gear yeah and once you have established what your main gear is yeah it's kind of fun to do something a little broader or a little weirder or something because there's going to be some people who that's the standout

well you're sitting across from two people who love the show and think it's perfect so what would yours yeah let's ask you've been doing the in-depth rewatch where did we go wrong there's one episode that i would remove.

I feel bad saying it.

It's our clip show that we were forced to do.

Oh, oh.

Remember that episode?

It's like, I don't even know if you call it an episode.

It was called The Banker.

It felt like a wraparound.

It was a lot of

minutes of a wraparound.

NBC made us do.

I don't remember the backstory on that.

It doesn't.

Well, and the thing is, is that the part that was original, where this banker comes in to.

Oh, and he's fantastic.

The guy is the banker.

Great actor.

And he has some scenes with Toby that then justify all of the flashing back.

All that stuff is great.

It was an interesting premise for an episode, which is that this insurance bank, right, he had to come in and he's like, do you have any HR problems?

Like this idea that Toby, who knows everything wrong with the office, is having to kind of protect the office.

I would have loved for the whole episode to be that, but instead we had to keep going to all these clips.

So I think it doesn't, that is the one that

it's hard to even say it was an episode of the office, but yeah, it almost doesn't register.

Yes.

I don't even remember it really.

Right.

Yeah.

But I think otherwise in watching all the episodes, I don't think we ever jumped the shark.

I don't think that there's, I think we did just have different gears.

And then in re-watching the show, when we get to one of those episodes with a different gear, I am excited about it.

Yeah.

And again, people will come up and they'll, you know, they'll love that kind of stuff.

And, and the other thing about the show is

because of the cold opens and because of the subplots, for me, there's memorable moments that I have no idea what episode they're in.

You know, like

parkour cold open.

Like, I don't know

what episode that's in, what season that's in.

Yeah.

It's just such a great, you know,

sketch comedy.

It's such great cold opens.

And, you know, we're watching the webisodes now as well.

And the webisodes are great.

I just love learning new things about characters that ring true, but maybe you just haven't seen them as much.

Even there was this very funny one where Gabe is so incredibly jealous that Oscar has a blog on the Sabre page that Joe Bennett loves.

And

Gabe just covets Joe Bennett's favor.

So he tries to start a podcast.

and it's just, it just cracked me up.

You know what's so crazy?

I can't,

I forgot her name was Joe Bennett, and I'm working with Joe Bennett, the animator now.

He does a show called Common Side Effects with office writer Steve Healy.

The two of them created it for the animation company that I do with Mike Judge.

And so I've been working with and talking to Joe Bennett for such a long time.

I forgot.

I forgot.

You did have a funny expression come on your face when I was switching it.

All right.

I have another question for you.

If you were a character on the show, Greg, which character?

I'm a character on the show.

I'm Michael's neighbor.

I'm the yarn salesman.

You're the yarn salesman.

We loved it.

So if you weren't the yarn salesman that lives next to Michael in the condo, Who would you identify most with and what main cast character would you be?

Oh, well, look,

you know I'm I'm not going to

pretend that I have the necessary charisma to be the star of the show but as somebody who in the in the social world of the office was the boss and was previously the boss on the prior show that I did I tend to identify with boss problems and the way people interact with Michael.

So for instance, the episode where Michael has to fire someone on Halloween, but still wants to be friends with them.

You know what I mean?

Like that's a real boss point of view kind of a storyline.

And, you know, just sort of, also, Steve and I are pretty much the same age.

And so like the idea that,

you know, he's super into,

I want to pump you up, you know?

Yeah.

All these things that are like, you know, hit exactly right for somebody of that age group.

So I would probably identify with Michael.

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Greg, I'm curious.

We never shot an episode in Scranton, and I think it was a cost thing.

Yeah, we tried.

Definitely had all these great plans to go shoot there.

The weird thing about Scranton is it's remarkably beautiful in a way that Panorama City has trouble, you know, measuring up to it because there's beautiful trees all

around Scranton.

And there's that lake.

It's really pretty.

Yeah, and you know, and it was...

It was a big deal in the 1800s.

So the buildings in the downtown are like these cool stone buildings.

And it's just got like a lot of beauty and character that we uh shortchanged it.

But I did try to shoot there and part of it is the difficulty of starting the season with Scranton or something like that.

It was like you couldn't put it in the middle of the season because it would just blow the whole schedule up.

And so it either had to be at the very beginning or the very end.

And I don't know, it just escaped us.

Parks and Rec went to England to shoot one season.

And the only way to do that was to put it like the first three days of shooting for the season were in England, and then, you know, it would get like salted in later.

Well, like I said, I've been watching Modern Family with my family.

They go to Hawaii.

They have gone to Hawaii.

They have, I believe, they've gone to Australia.

They're going a lot of places.

Hey, we went to Long Beach.

Well, you got to go to Niagara Falls.

I got to go to Niagara.

And that was actually really cool.

I mean, that was, I don't know if I would have gone to Niagara Falls otherwise in my life.

And it's one of the wonders of the world.

So that was pretty cool.

Yeah.

And Steve went to New York, like with the skeleton crew.

We had that.

That was super fun.

I was in the van for that.

That was a crazy thing because our permits, you know, we didn't, we weren't like a movie where we would shut down.

the street and get all these extras to come in and pretend to be real New Yorkers.

We were in two vans and basically a van would roll up to Times Square.

Steve would jump out, Randall would jump out with the camera.

And I think I directed that episode.

And so I was out there.

Just sort of gorilla style.

And it would be gorilla style until somebody went, it's a 40-year-old virgin.

And then suddenly, because

it was right after the movie came out, crowds would start to jam in on us and we'd be like, well, we got what we got.

And we'd jump back in the van and we'd go to someplace else.

It was extremely exciting shoot.

And I kept telling the line producers afterwards, no matter what situation it was in, I was like, why can't we just jump in a van and go shoot it like

New York?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And just hop out really quick.

Yeah.

Well, I remember one year because the St.

Patrick's Day Parade is so famous in Scranton, there was always a lot of talk about us incorporating that parade into an episode.

There were so many pitches about someone being in the parade or whatever it was.

And I remember one year, Greg, you told me, you said, I think we're going to do do it.

The problem is that, you know, we can't shoot the real parade because then the episode will come out after St.

Patrick's Day.

So if we want it to be

like in August or something, or and you told me that Scranton agreed to move their parade to August for us.

And I was like, the whole city is going to make a fake parade for us?

That's pretty amazing.

The city is super cool.

Yeah.

And actually, I'm still in touch with Tim Holmes and Michelle Dempsey.

Oh, yeah.

Remember them?

Of course.

And they're having a 20th anniversary exhibit in the Everhart Museum coming up.

Oh, that's fantastic.

Museum in Scranton.

We'll share that in our Instagram stories.

Yeah, I'm not sure exactly when it's happening, but it's coming up soon.

I know we've been trying to get props and stuff to be sent out there.

What are they going to have there?

Have they gotten items?

Do you know?

Yeah, I put them in touch with the nbc prop storage group like the desks and stuff well a lot of that stuff was sold oh right that's right that's right i did hear that you told us that i think yeah yeah no i was like i'm gonna i want to hang on to all the stuff and they were like no no we have to save it for the smithsonian and then i turned around and they were selling it on

some auction place but well it'd be cool to check out that exhibit i want to go online and look at it but you know i have pam's desk you've seen that right i'm sorry wait.

What?

I'm going to start crying.

You have my desk.

The whole thing is on your own.

I bought your reception desk online.

Wait, where is it?

In the auction?

I bought it in the auction, yeah.

It's in my offices.

No way.

Yeah.

Grace, can we come see it?

The reception desk for your offices?

No, it's just got, it's just sort of like on a

area of its own with a little bit of a.

You have to go sit in it, Jenna.

I don't know.

I don't know if you want to go sit in it.

I don't know.

It's so weird.

It's out of context i don't it oh my god i don't know how that would be emotionally yeah it's extremely heavy i i was i'm considering uh sending it to the everhart museum for this exhibit but you'd have to ship it like on a big truck or something

might fall apart i don't know i'm worried it was a real funky height so it was really hard to get my legs underneath it There's like a shelf on the sort of an awkward place on the back of it.

There is.

And also, it was very narrow.

Like it's not deep.

So it only was as deep as a keyboard.

So if I ever had to pretend like I was writing something down, there was nowhere to write it down or I'd have to like move the keyboard.

Well, I think it's, it's sort of like made for two levels, right?

Like if you wanted to type, you have a keyboard on a shelf that's sort of halfway down and you can like lower the chair or something.

No, it was just like there was just like a desk portion, but then there was the upper portion where people would stand and Jim would rest his elbows.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So a lot of times in the show, if I'm writing a message or something and you see that I'm doing it on that upper portion, it's because there was really barely any desk.

Oh, that worked well for camera, though.

It did.

Yeah.

No, it was a really well-made, you know, piece of furniture.

It goes very iconic.

fit the space perfectly.

It was unusual.

I want to come see it.

Yeah.

I can report back, Jenna.

I think on it.

All right.

I have another question for you, Greg.

If you could go back and relive a moment from your time on the office, what would it be?

Oh, my goodness.

Well, I

have to say that

I loved, obviously, hanging out with the writers, but directing was the most fun probably because

of the cast and

interacting with the cast.

And I just, I don't know, the first thing that popped into my head was there was

times when I would direct Rain doing talking heads and we would get the giggles and just, you know,

it was a super, super fun.

Because I also think that I have to say that Rain, you know, that Dwight is also another.

aspect that I identify with strongly is the kind of weird survivalist nerd part, you know?

So,

yeah, so he and I would really kind of get into a groove going into that side of Dwight

and the talking heads.

And there's other characters I had to be, I couldn't direct.

Like for some reason, Creed

would like have a meltdown if I was in the room directing.

So I would have to say to Creed, like, hey, I'm super busy.

I got to go use the bathroom.

You just keep going with the DP or whatever.

And I'd walk out and I'd I'd listen to him so that he could do it without me staring at him.

I don't know what the issue was there.

Oh.

Well, I love the bloopers so much.

And my kids love the bloopers.

So I've watched quite a lot of them.

And I would say the person that breaks the most is Rain and his talking head.

Yes.

He's all over the bloopers.

His brain goes ahead of the material, like searching for alternates and stuff because he's sort of, he knows he has the ability to like go off script and do his own thing.

And so sometimes he would get ahead of the material and start cracking up about what he couldn't see.

That he knows is terribly wrong.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We also talked earlier about all of the auditions.

We went back in sort of honor of the 20th anniversary and we watched all these audition tapes.

Because they're online.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's weird, isn't it, that they're all out there?

I mean, yeah, they're not the full audition audition, you know, tapes.

They're just little clips.

No, I remember we had to get permission, I think.

They were a DVD extra.

Oh, I see.

And I think we had to get permission from everybody.

Yeah, that's right.

It's not cool to just leak the audition tapes.

No, no, no, you're right.

They're on, I forget what season it is, but there's one DVD box set that has a whole bunch of extras.

It has like 21 minutes of bloopers, and it has the when everyone went to Scranton, and it has cast interviews, and I think it has audition tapes.

It's sort of a commemorative

well they also did that sort of like retrospective before our finale and they put some of our audition tapes in there as well.

Yeah.

So do you remember that the process of all of us auditioning?

Sure.

It was many months.

Yeah.

Well, the funny thing is where we're shooting the paper is across the street on the lot from the little bungalow that Revely was based at that we'd had all of our auditions at.

And

I don't know if you remember this, but sitting in that bungalow hour after hour, it's really funny because it's the tram goes right past it.

Yes, for the Universal Studios tour.

Yeah.

The tram.

The tram goes past it.

And you, you know, every like 12 minutes, you hear someone go, and in here is where they're going to find the stars of tomorrow.

And we'll be sitting there

looking at everybody.

No, I remember it well.

I mean, I'm sure we've talked about this before, but your audition was so extraordinary, Jenna, because it was like,

wait a second, this is exactly Pam.

I don't understand what she's doing.

She doesn't seem to really be doing anything.

And yet she's 100% the character.

And a lot of, you know, everybody was trying so hard in most auditions.

And you were almost like knowing, like, not yes and you were like negating all the suggestions for improv.

I was.

Do you remember that?

Yeah, it was a conscious decision.

Yeah, it was, it was brilliant.

And uh, I remember just thinking, like, oh my god, well, that's Pam.

We know that.

I'm pretty sure I was asking you, I can't remember if I was asking you or Allison Jones right afterwards, but I was like, How, what are you doing?

How are you doing this?

You know, you did.

You said,

and I said, Well, I work as an administrative assistant for real.

Like, that's what I've done for the last seven years.

And you were like, really?

Really?

Wow.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

And I know you worked at a 1-800 dentist.

Yes.

Ugh.

1-800 dentist about broke me.

So you had a lot of accurate

office work.

What was interesting is that I think, but I didn't know it at the time because my first audition was for Pam, but I really just, I knew who Angela Martin was because she was the the office manager.

She was, and she planned the Christmas party.

Like when I look back on it, you know, like just, and she, she yelled at me because I did a bow wrong on a stair banister for the office Christmas party.

I didn't know all of that when I first went in.

No, but I could easily buy that you at one point mentioned that.

And that's why you were the head of the party planning committee because it goes both ways, right?

I mean, we were listening to everything that you related to in the character, and often that would turn into script ideas.

Yeah, it's true.

I, you know, we talk about this so much, Greg, because we've never had an experience like we've had on the set of the office.

And the whole cast talks about this.

It's because of you.

It's because you

made us feel

Even if it wasn't always the case, you made us feel like we were part of a creative collaboration and that our voices felt heard when we spoke for our character or shared what we thought our character would say.

And,

you know, I know it's been 20 years, but I'll hold that forever close in my heart that

you

created that environment for us as creators and creative people.

Well, it was more fun that way.

I think.

I think everybody

was energized to participate.

Yes.

Because

you never knew what we would use.

And yeah.

Yeah.

But it wasn't just the actors, too.

There are so many people who were part of our crew that have expanded their roles in the industry thanks to the opportunities and the championship that you provided.

You know, I just...

think of someone like Randall Einhorn, who started as a camera operator DP, and now he's his own executive producer, showrunner, director, multi-hyphenate.

Yeah.

Well, I would have tried to keep him as a DP.

Yeah.

He's a very good DP.

He's very good.

Actually, I would use this.

I'm sure he still grabs the camera and looks through it, too.

I'm sure.

Yeah.

He is a strong creative vision, Randall.

He was so much a part of the visual style that we developed.

Because

when I think about it, you know, the original show was

cinema varite style, very kind of hangback.

And a lot of very low angles I noticed in re-watching the pilot.

Really low.

Like when Jane was different DP.

That was Peter Smokeler.

I know.

And I think he was borrowing from that way that the British show was shot because they're very similar.

And then when Randall came on, I noticed that camera went up on his shoulder

and it was a different look.

Well, Smokeler had one of these devices that was like a crane with a wire that

on the harness.

Yeah, it wasn't so much on the shoulder.

And Randall and Matt Sohn came from

reality shows like Survivor.

And

the interesting thing was that

in between the pilot and season one, I had to hire a writing staff because there was no writing staff on the pilot.

And

so when you're hiring a writing staff, you know, you read tons of scripts and then you have interviews with the script writers that you like.

So I probably had 50 interviews, and part of it is you're pitching the show to them.

Because if you're getting a really hot writer, they need to be wooed a little bit.

So I would try to come up with some bullshit about why this show was the most important show.

You had your sales pitch.

Yeah, my sales pitch.

And as, you know, the more I pitched it, the more it sort of started to boil it into something.

And part of the sales pitch was that

in a world of YouTube and everybody having a cheap camcorder, that people were shooting their own stuff.

And our show was shot the way you shoot your own life.

Right.

And

then I also had another thing about reality shows and this is the new genre or whatever at the time.

So by the time I had finished interviewing all these writers,

I really was like,

had a strong like philosophy behind how the show should look.

And Terry Weinberg, who you mentioned, I remember her.

I'm not sure exactly how she and Ben

came into contact with these reality show camera operators, but I think they were also doing reality programming like Biggest Loser or something.

Yeah, that Revelle did Biggest Loser.

So that's how I met Randall.

And it was a terrific

added piece of the puzzle to start leaning into this reality vibe.

I mean, it makes perfect sense that you say that.

I don't know why I haven't ever thought of it, but just the way we used to hold camcorders is exactly the point of view.

Yeah.

And that's amazing.

I have never thought of that before.

Yeah, it's slightly different with phones.

Yeah.

You think, at least the way I hold a phone.

But if you're really good at phones, they have little handles and stuff

so that the phone doesn't wiggle around.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, now you're working on the paper.

But you finished shooting.

We finished shooting the first season.

We've, at the moment, at this point, we've locked picture on six of the first ten.

That's exciting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

it is exciting.

And I, you know, there's a lot of our old crew on the show.

Kelly Cantley and Kasha Trojack or the, you know, and Rusty Mahmoud.

They're all like the whole AD staff is the same guys, and Sergio is catering it.

And

you were so nice.

You invited us to set.

We haven't shared about it yet.

But when we saw our crew, when we saw Sergio, we about lost our minds.

Yeah.

And I was like, Sergio, do you still make your salsa?

And he was like, yeah.

So, I mean, that was wonderful to see those faces.

Yeah.

It's very nice to have them around.

And they keep you honest.

Like, Ben Patrick was doing sound.

And, you know, at one point he came to me.

He was like, this isn't right.

You know, you're not doing it right.

And,

you know, I had to talk him out of a tree at one point.

But

well, one of the things that happened on the set when we were there, I think I can tell this story, you tell me if not, but and there was a section of people and and so I thought, oh, well, I'll be friendly and I'll just come over and I'll say, I'm like, oh, what do you all do on the show?

And they all said, oh, we're employees

in the background.

Yeah.

And we sit here all the time.

And that was their spot.

And I was like, I did that.

I sat.

They're like, we are, we are on the show, but we're sitting here because we're in the background of this moment they're on deck yes yeah and i was like oh my gosh that's what we did we all sat there all the time and and i think one of the reasons why our show was successful was because we were all there all the time we were all in it all the time yeah well there's a lot of reasons i think why our show worked i mean the cast first and foremost but the spirit of the the cast and crew being in it together was very special.

And,

you know, and I think I had a lot of theories about that I got from Monty Python, I think, which was a huge show for me.

Yeah.

Like when I'm 12, Monty Python comes out in the U.S.

And I'm just like, you know, when you're a 12-year-old, that's the

general direction.

Yeah, no, exactly.

Yeah, so we would always do that.

But I mean, the thing about Monty Python was the writers and the performers were the same people.

And you could just get this feeling of them all living in a house somewhere getting weirder and weirder together, like this little, you know, cult that had split off from society.

Yeah, so I was definitely trying to encourage that with our little group.

Well, one of the things I love when I look back at pictures is that picture when we wrapped, you know, that final moment and how we were all in the scene together, just walking out of the building and

the crew had all gathered around when you were about to yell, you know, cut for the last time.

I felt like that, that was our show, was that big room of people.

Yeah.

You know, and we were missing our rap party.

Do you remember?

Yes.

Yes.

We were late to our own party, which is kind of perfect in itself.

Yeah, because the party was doing the show.

So nobody wanted that party to end.

And the party where you're drinking ginger ale in some rented warehouse was not going to be as good.

As right that moment.

Yeah.

That's one of the moments I would do again, I think.

You would wrap the series again?

No, just that.

But that's what I mean, like that moment.

That feeling of camaraderie is really special.

And there's that amazing picture.

And

I don't know why I'm tearing up, but I think just because it's that moment when we sort of collectively said goodbye was so powerful and just

special.

And, you know, the finale really turned out well.

Yeah.

Didn't it?

Yeah.

I think that makes a big difference because I think there's so many people who watch the finale and then they just crank it up to season one again to start watching again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I get it.

I really get it.

And our rewatch and having seen some of these episodes I haven't seen since we made them, I'm just like, I'm ready to start again.

Like we watched the pilot yesterday and I'm like, well, I'm ready to watch it again.

Yeah.

We change.

The characters do grow, but they grow really slowly in a way that's very satisfying.

And so

I think that's one of the things that is enjoyable about watching it again and again and starting over is that you really are starting at the beginning of a journey with these people.

And it's kind of even fun to know now where they're going to end up

as you go back and watch the second time.

Did you ever, have you ever seen a documentary that was called 7 Up when it started?

Yes.

14 up, 21 up.

I don't know what they're up to now.

They're like 63 up or something.

But it's every seven years they check in with this group of British people who start as seven-year-olds.

Yeah, it's really moving to see what happens to them.

But I think that part of

the bones of the show is that it is a documentary for real, and it can tap into some of the things that make documentaries emotional.

And the finale was like that.

It was kind of like

people summing their lives up.

Yeah.

Because when you go back and watch the pilot, in this Superfan version that we watched was a Jim Talking Head that was extended that I hadn't seen.

And that's one of the things in the rewatch.

There's so many talking heads I hadn't seen because we're not there when we film each other's talking heads, you know?

So there's all these kind of surprises.

And Jim says, well,

let's see.

I'm not married.

I don't have kids, but I was able to buy a car.

So I have a car.

My car is five years old.

And I'm just like, then I think about like all the the places that

where Jim goes, you know, and where he ends up and his life.

And I was just thinking about that.

That's exactly what you're talking about.

I felt like I had watched him become his fully realized self.

Yeah.

A lot of the extras for the pilot were stuff that I had added to the British script.

And then when we had to cut it down to time, a lot of those had to go

because

the original story had all the beats in it.

But a lot of those little grace notes were nice.

Well, the Superfan episode is really satisfying to watch.

It's really, really fun to watch.

That's good.

And

you get to feel that difference between the British pilot and then where you can know that our show is eventually going.

Yeah, yeah.

It's cool.

I like that we've watched the whole original broadcast and now we get to see, it's like we got a dessert, you you know

and I appreciate it and then you know we were talking to Dave Rogers about it and just the absolute care and integrity that he wants to make sure that these superfan episodes do not venture too far off the original mission and I'm just like they could not be in better hands and I know he's working directly with you on them and we're so thankful that Dave is is sort of helping with all of that.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

Well, Dave is really the custodian of of every moment of the show.

Oh, that's such a beautiful phrase.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He just knows everything about it.

Yeah.

As opposed to me, who's like, misses 6.0 joke.

And joke in it.

No.

Yeah.

Well, before we move on to the final part of this interview, I know everybody's going to want us to ask.

You don't have to answer, but we have to ask you about this news story that came out about a certain somebody who might be on the paper,

a certain character from the office,

Oscar.

Yes, well, we can now confirm.

You remember that when you visited the set,

it was extreme secrecy.

Yes, he wasn't even called Oscar, like in the script and stuff.

Well, my hope was that the first promo or the first piece of footage, that it would be a surprise.

Like when Steve showed up in the finale?

Yes, it's very difficult to keep a surprise nowadays with the amount amount of entertainment journalism and somebody sniffed it out.

How?

How did

someone sniff it out?

I don't know.

But,

you know, I mean, there was a lot of times where the tram would go by and Oscar would like dive behind a trash can.

When we were visiting, the tram went by and the NBC, the coordinator who had coordinated our visit, they were like, move away, move away from the tram.

Like they didn't want the tram to the day.

We last visited.

We dove behind a trailer and then a woman who just happened to be walking through the lot saw us and was like, oh my gosh, and asked for our picture and said yes.

We're like, sure.

And that NBC woman sprinted out and said, you have to, you can't post that.

You can't.

And we were like, oh.

And she was like, okay, you guys get in your cars.

Like, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's interesting because I always feel like It's more fun for surprises to hit while you're having the experience of watching the show.

And, you know, for an ordinary person who is going to watch the show several years later without paying attention to whatever the pre-launch, you know, publicity was, yeah, blogs and stuff, is just going to be watching it.

So, you know, you want to build it so that the surprises are for the people watching the show.

But sometimes it's very difficult to promote things if you're going to try and keep a secret.

And so, for instance, I am also putting the finishing touches on the last season of Upload, season four.

And we ended season three on an enormous cliffhanger of

which version of our lead character, Nathan, Rob Yamel.

He's, you know, a digital person who's been uploaded.

And there's, at some point, he was illegally copied, and there's two of them

in season three.

And then we sort of ended on this cliffhanger of one of them has been destroyed.

And

anyway, so we were like, oh, cool.

It's going to be such an exciting beginning to season four.

And, you know, when you find out which one.

And now I'm realizing, like, I don't know how to promote this because all of the,

you know,

all of the footage is very clear.

It's going to make it pretty clear which one, you know, which one survived, but I wasn't thinking along those lines.

But yeah, so I was really trying to protect Oscar to be a fun surprise for people watching

the new show to suddenly realize that he was a part of it.

And,

you know, and the essential story of the show, I mean, Oscar's wonderful, it's not the spin-off series for what happens to Oscar.

It's more the show of the documentary crew looking around for something else to do a documentary about and finding this newspaper that has fallen on hard times like most newspapers and does not even have a budget for any reporters.

So the idea is that a very

idealistic person comes in to try and put this newspaper back on its feet and finds out that's Donald Gleason, finds out that he doesn't have the budget to hire reporters and has to turn the existing staff of ad salespeople and

you know, accountants and truck drivers into reporters to make some content for the paper and they they don't know what they're doing and you know hilarity ensues

well we're so excited to watch it do you know when it's going to air do you have an air date um

i think

probably

in the fall like a back to school kind of a thing okay like it's like the old days well we can't wait to watch the paper and you'll let us know when we can start sharing about it yes of course yes okay thank you so greg we've started asking our guests the call sheet questions.

That's what we call them.

These were the questions on the back of our call sheets where we would get to know a crew member.

So we're going to ask you the office call sheet questions.

Okay.

Ready?

Question number one.

What was your first entertainment job?

Aha.

Well, I'll tell you that I

track it from it's not really a job, but my father worked for Capital Cities Broadcasting as his career when I was a kid, and he worked at different radio stations.

And

at one point, he

was the manager of a rock radio station in Rhode Island, and

he used to go to this manager's meeting

for all of the other station managers.

And he entertained at the meeting.

He had a

style act where he had

like Johnny Carson, where he would put an envelope up to his head and,

you know, read the answers and then open up the envelope and there would be the joke.

And

so

I wrote jokes for him for that act.

And we've used it in the show.

I remember that, right?

Yeah.

Michael does it.

Yes, and we use the same joke.

That was my first joke.

How old were you?

I was like a teenager, and he did it for many years.

And eventually,

various friends of mine wrote for him.

And at one point, he had Conan writing for him and this guy, Mike Rees, who was one of the showrunners of The Simpsons, who before, and obviously before they're,

you know, they had

big careers.

So in your dad's...

like employee circle and just circle of friends, do they just think your dad is the funniest person they've ever met?

I've stolen a lot of people.

I've stolen like the best comedy writers.

I've stolen a ton of stories.

My dad has like lived through a lot of funny things and he turns them into very funny stories and I've used them.

So for instance, I wrote an episode of Seinfeld that was 100% based on my dad where, you know, he lived in New York City and he had a car, but it was too expensive to have a garage.

So every two days he would drive around looking for a parking space.

And sometimes it would take 45 minutes, an hour to find a parking space.

So at one point, he found one.

He was so excited, and he started to back into it.

And this other guy tried to front into it, and neither of us did it.

I remember that episode.

Yes, and it was like a standoff in the parking spot.

Yeah, and this happened to him, and he wouldn't leave.

And a friend of his walked by and he flagged him down, and he had him, you know, tell my mom to make him dinner and bring it to the parking spot.

And, you know, so I pitched that to Larry David and, you know, sold that as a freelance episode.

So I feel like I've taken enough from him where I'm happy to have given him, you know, jokes for his manager act.

I love that.

I love that.

So that would be my first.

I mean, that wasn't a paid job.

First paid job was

Conan and I probably working for not necessarily the news

back in the day.

As writing partners?

Yes, we were writing partners.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Next question.

Do you speak any other languages or play a musical instrument?

It's so funny you should bring that up because I am pounding away at Duolingo right now.

What language?

I'm doing Spanish and French and

Portuguese and

Japanese.

I'm trying a whole bunch.

To see what sticks?

Yeah, well, sometimes you're, you know, mostly Spanish.

I'm making the most progress in Spanish, but sometimes I'll try some other ones.

And I just was at McCabe's guitar shop last week, and I

was listening to a concert, and somebody was playing a mandolin.

And I was like, God damn it, I got to learn how to play the mandolin before I die.

I really want to learn that, but I have really no musical ability.

Creed plays the mandolin.

Does he?

I'll bet.

I'll bet he's great.

All right.

Next question.

What's a place you've been to that you absolutely loved?

Well, I'm like

kind of like no matter where I go, I'm always like, could I live here?

This is cool.

And I remember driving out to LA with Conan and another friend, Rob Lazevnik,

to have jobs that not necessarily the news.

And we drove through Santa Fe, New Mexico.

And I remember being like, oh my God, this place is magical.

How could I work here?

And the only job that I thought I might be able to work on was the newspaper because they had a newspaper there.

So I had a little fantasy of living in Santa Fe.

Living in Santa Fe and working for whatever their newspaper was.

My in-laws live in Santa Fe.

Really?

Yeah, Lee's dad and stepmom live in Santa Fe.

We go there all the time.

We smell of the air there.

It's just like...

Well, you know, it's very high elevation, actually.

Kind of sneaks up on you.

But we moved to Santa Fe during the pandemic to be closer to them.

And that was our pod.

That's cool.

I mean, that's really cool.

It's great.

It's great.

Yeah.

Okay.

Question number four.

What do you like to do on the weekends?

Well, you know, I still have

kids who can't drive.

My youngest is just learning how to drive and

so my weekends are mostly driving her around.

Yeah.

Exactly.

I say something.

I'm just parent Uber.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

that's what you do on the weekends.

Yeah.

What do you like to do on the weekends?

I don't need to.

There's no, there's no point in having dreams

until she gets her driver's license.

That's going to change your life.

Yeah.

Um, all right.

Last question:

What is your favorite midnight snack?

Oh, man.

I just.

Okay.

So,

so, Paul Lieberstein, his son, uh,

had a

recipe that they shared with me when he was in first grade.

It's the easiest thing to make in the world.

It's Greek yogurt and self-rising flour mixed and it becomes a dough and you can then bake it and you can make a bagel out of it.

You can make a biscuit out of it.

It's like a good dough.

And so what I've been doing lately is putting different things inside of it and making like a little bread

pie.

Yeah, like a little hot pocket.

Like what do you put in?

Putting it in the toaster oven.

I put in some chicken and onions the middle of the night the other night.

You whip up a from scratch dough.

It's not

nice.

That sounds really good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That is a hit you up for that recipe, actually.

Oh, you just heard it.

There's no, nothing much.

But what are the proportions?

Is it like 50-50?

Oh, so a cup of dough and a cup of yogurt.

Like cup of yogurt, cup of flour.

Right.

Cup of flour, cup of yogurt.

And to keep it to two ingredients, it's self-rising flour, which is basically flour that already has baking powder mixed into it.

But you could just put in a teaspoon of baking powder to a cup of flour.

And then you knead it up and then you can

just

press it into the tray that comes with the

toaster oven.

And then you put whatever filling you want on top of it.

And you just kind of fold the flaps up and try and seal it up.

How long do you bake it for?

I don't know, 25 minutes.

Doesn't matter.

You can't really overbake it that much.

It just gets a little crustier.

It's not like exact science.

Greg, we have asked so many people this question, and that is the most unique answer.

I love it.

Oh, Greg, thank you so much for coming in.

And

marking this occasion.

And, you know, obviously, I'm very interested in the content of your show.

Are we doing okay?

Did we get it right?

It's fabulous.

It's fabulous, you know, and you guys always do your homework so well, and you always have such interesting questions.

And, you know, such a fun experience to come on the show and to hang out with you guys.

I miss having you in my daily life.

Oh, Greg.

I feel the same way so much.

Thank you.

Well, you know, we so appreciate, too, the fans send in fantastic questions.

So we have to like thank them for helping inspire us to ask you the things we do ask you.

But what a joy to see you.

And we can't wait to talk more about the paper with you when you're ready.

Sure.

Well, I can't wait for people to see it.

My hope is that if you like the office, you'll like this new thing because it has some tonal similarities.

Yeah.

And a great cast.

Fantastic cast and writers.

It's a marvelous cast.

Yeah.

So, and crew that we all know.

Yes, well, where in the world?

All right, Craig.

Well, we love you so much.

Thank you so much for being here.

Okay.

Have a great

rest of your broadcast.

I don't know.

I started that and I didn't know how to end it.

You did the thing whenever, like,

we joke about this, like, when we don't know how to get out of something, we either sing it or we do a voice.

Yeah, I turned into an old fisherman.

Yeah, you did.

Thanks, Craig.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to Office Ladies.

Office Ladies is a presentation of Odyssey and is produced by Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey.

Our executive producer is Cassie Jerkins.

Our audio engineer is Sam Kiefer, and our associate producer is Ainsley Bubbico.

Odyssey's executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman and Leah Rhys Dennis.

Office Ladies is mixed and mastered by Chris Basil.

Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton.

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