Whistleblower

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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 Rewatch podcast just for you.

Each week, we will break down an episode of The Office and give exclusive behind-the-scenes stories that only two people who were there can tell you.

We're the office ladies.

Hello.

Are you being a whistleblower, Angela?

I was trying.

I have the most pitiful whistle.

Hello, and welcome to the finale of season six: Whistleblower, also episode 26.

This was such a big season.

It was crazy.

I want to start off today apologizing if I sound a little nasally.

I'm working out some head congestion.

She's got a little bit of a stuffy nose.

I know.

Can you hear it?

I feel like you can hear it.

Lee said you can hear it.

He said I should acknowledge it when I got on air.

I can hear it.

It doesn't bother me, lady.

Well, he said, just right off the bat, if you just acknowledge it, then you know it's fine.

It's like when I had food poisoning.

I was like, hey, we're talking to Ellie.

I also sound like I just crawled out of the bathroom.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Okay.

So there we go.

It's been said.

Now moving on.

To Whistleblower.

Yeah.

This episode, which was written by Warren Lieberstein and Halstead Sullivan and directed by Paul Lieberstein.

I have a very short summary.

It is one sentence long, but I think it really sums it up.

Okay.

And angry Joe Bennett descends upon Dunder Mifflin Scranton to identify which employee talked to the press about Sabre's faulty printers, prompting the group to turn on Andy.

Lady, I have to say, I hadn't watched this episode since it aired.

Same.

And I really enjoyed it.

I did too.

There's so many great moments.

Well, there's a lot of Kathy Bates in this episode, and that made me very happy.

There's a lot of Joe and Michael, which I could not get enough of.

Same.

I mean, they're two amazing actors doing amazing work.

Yeah.

All right.

Fast fact number one.

Like we said, this is the season six finale.

It aired on May 20th, 2010, and was watched by 6.6 million households.

Now, if I remember correctly, Angela, we were originally only going to do 24 episodes.

And at the last minute, suddenly we were doing 26.

This was confirmed by our writers, Warren and Halstead.

Yes, because we reached out to them for this episode, and they shared with us lots of fun behind-the-scenes stuff that we'll share and sprinkle through the episode.

Well, Warren and Halstead did share with us that the finale had this dual purpose of both having to wrap up season six as well as set things up for season seven.

You know, in past years, our season finales have had some pretty big cliffhangers.

And this one has a few, but they're maybe not as dramatic as other years.

Right.

But, you know what's interesting about that to me?

If you have been watching all along, which which we have now, right?

We're watching every week.

Just when Michael mentions Holly, that felt so huge to me.

Yes.

Okay.

So

I remember that at this time, we knew that Steve would only be coming back for season seven, and that was it.

Yeah.

By the time we did this episode, it was, we found out kind of a few episodes before the end of season six.

So the writers knew that that season seven would be his last.

And Warren and Halstead shared that they had started brainstorming what Steve's last year might look like.

And the big thing that they settled on was that they wanted him to ultimately find happiness with Holly.

And that was going to be a seed that was planted in this season finale.

But besides that, they only set up two other things.

They set up that Dwight was going to buy the building.

And we start to see Aaron kind of warming up to Andy.

She touches his calf kind of and lets her hand linger there for a minute.

It's a lingering calf touch.

Touch, for sure.

Uh-huh.

Lingering calf touch.

Well, like you said, Warren and Halstead were awesome.

And we've got some fun little tidbits from them for this episode.

Thank you guys.

Yeah.

Are you ready for fast fact number two?

I'm so ready.

Please tell me it's a location breakdown.

Of a private plane.

Yes.

It sure is, lady.

We shot that private plane on location at the Van Euys airport on board an actual private plane that was not a set we got some fan mail people wondered if we built the interior of a fakey plane no that was a real plane and it was very narrow and our camera operators that was a bit of a challenge to figure out how to shoot because they couldn't move any seats they couldn't move any walls they were just crammed in there

Our production designer, Michael Gallenberg,

was friends with a senior executive at the aviation company called Castle and Cook.

And because of that, we were able to use their hangar and the interior of their jet for a cost of only $10,000.

Plus, we had to pay the Van Nuys Airport Authority a $5,000 usage fee.

Oh, the usage fees.

You know those?

Usage fees.

So Castle and Cook is a real aviation company, and it only exists in Van Euys, California, and Honolulu, Hawaii.

So you are not going to ever find this anywhere near Scranton, Pennsylvania.

But Warren and Halstead shared that they were writing this script up to the very last minute.

And by the time they got the idea to shoot on a private plane, they did not have time to change the Castle and Cook signage to something else.

They couldn't make like a giant new hanger sign.

Yeah.

So they just went with it.

Incidentally, Castle and Cook is part of the company that originally owned Dole Fruit.

What?

Yeah.

They are one of the largest suppliers of Hawaiian pineapples.

Well, I guess they fly them on their planes.

I guess.

Well, who knows?

Who knows?

I would hope that if I'm on a Castle and Cook private plane, someone serves me some fresh Hawaiian pineapple.

And if they don't, you'll bring it up.

I sure will.

I'll be like, you guys, you don't even have any canned pineapple back there?

It's your thing.

Well, listen, they didn't have time to change the big sign, but there are some really great details on the plane.

Thanks to our set decorator, Steve Rothstein.

I noticed one.

What did you notice?

Are those Joe's initials?

There's like a little fancy-looking,

I don't know what you call it.

It goes over the chair, like for your head.

Like a cloth.

Yes.

What are those called?

I don't know what they're called.

They're like, they're on the headrest.

Like a doily for an airplane.

Yes.

They were little cloths cloths on the headrest and they were embroidered with JB for Joe Bennett.

That was my question.

I was going to say, is that real embroidery?

Because it looked fancy.

Oh, yeah.

He had those made.

Also, and I'll point out with a time code when we get there, on the outside of the plane, they do have a big sticker

that is Joe Bennett's signature.

as a logo.

Oh, so cool.

Like she signed the outside of her plane.

I love little details like that.

All right.

Are you ready for fast fact number three, Angela?

I know you are because you were a big part of making this happen.

Yes, I'm very excited about fast fact three.

Fast fact three is all about our guest star, Nelson Franklin, as Nick the IT guy.

You guys know that Nelson has appeared in five episodes of The Office, and this is his last one.

And I believe, Ange, that he has the distinction of being the only actor to play two different roles on the show.

I think that is correct.

Now, you guys out there who are just the diehard office fans might have some stats for us that we're not thinking of right now, but I feel like Nelson is the one that immediately comes to mind to me because he was in job fair.

Yes.

And then two years later, he has this arc as Nick the I.T.

guy.

And Angela, you know him.

You worked with him recently on Black AF and you reached out to him.

Yes, we were co-stars on Black AF and we got to spend all day together because our characters were writers and we were in a writer's room and we got to like improvise and we just had the best time together.

Nelson is one of the nicest people you will ever meet.

I was so excited to reconnect with him.

And this is what he said about how he got his job on the office.

Hi, Angela.

Hi, Jenna.

It's me, Nelson.

Thank you so much for having me on the show.

I'm such a big fan of your podcast.

And obviously, I love the office and I love you too very much.

And so this is a big thrill for me.

Thank you so much for having me.

Let's get into these questions.

Number one, how did I get my job on the office?

And had I seen the show before being cast?

Oh, hell yeah, I'd seen the show before it being cast.

It was my favorite show.

Literally my favorite show.

And it was one of the biggest shows in the country, if not the world at the time.

So it was a very big deal for me to get this job.

And how I got the job, it was just a good old-fashioned audition.

Went in and read for Allison Jones, of course, who we all like to reminisce about fondly and with love because she's the greatest and she deserves all the praise she can get.

But I would also like to add that when I auditioned for the office, office,

it was for the job fair in season four.

And that was my first paid acting job out of college, if you can believe it.

I was like 21 at the time, and

it was insane.

It was a big deal for me to get on the show.

So yes, I auditioned.

I did not realize that we were his first gig.

I had no idea.

You would never know.

No.

I mean, I did that scene with him at job fair.

I never suspected that that was his first television gig.

I feel like like I was way more nervous and like obviously deer in headlights at my first acting gig.

I know.

I mean, Nelson, you were so composed.

Yeah.

Such a pro.

Well, listen, Antwin, you said you were going to reach out to him.

I had to know how is it that he ended up playing these two different roles on the show.

And you asked him, right?

I did.

I did.

And here's what he said.

Yes, it's true.

I did play two different characters on the office.

And I believe I was the only one.

This is being confirmed

by you guys.

And

that's amazing.

I always wondered if I was the only one.

So, you know, as I said,

the job fair, that was my first job ever.

It was supposed to be like a little one-off thing.

I was totally unknown, literally unknown.

It was my first job.

Made me Taft Hartley or whatever you call it when you got to join the union.

And

basically, Allison brought me back in two years later for the IT guy role

because I was right for it.

I'm basically an IT guy already.

And I read, and Greg and Mike Scher and those guys were like, oh, no,

you can't be two people on the same show in the same universe.

This doesn't, it doesn't work.

It's too bad.

We know that was his first gig and we would have wanted to give him something bigger, but he already used up

his one role.

So it's not going to happen.

And that was sad.

And then they read more people for like a week.

And then

after a little while, they came back to me and were like, hey, you know what?

Fine.

You get the job.

And

what a thrill that was being told no.

And then being like, actually,

remember when we said you didn't have that job?

Well, now you do.

And I said to Greg, like, what made you change your mind?

And he said, no one's going to remember that you were the jobs fair guy.

No one's going to remember that.

It was 25 seconds at the end of an episode.

Just don't bring it up to anybody who asks.

No one's ever going to know.

And I said, Greg, it's pretty feasible that.

A guy who was a graphics design person would then, you know, pivot into an IT guy career.

That's totally believable.

And he was like, no, no, no, no, just don't mention it.

No one's ever going to know.

And boy, was he wrong, because, you know, the Office fans are voracious.

They know every detail of every second of every episode.

So, yeah, it became a, I'm a folklore hero, basically, is the end of this question.

I love that so much.

He was trying to justify it.

Yeah.

He was like, you know what?

Let's just, we'll have a little thing where maybe I got it.

Like, Pam's like, hey.

And he's like, yeah, I'm in IT now.

That's all it would have taken.

All it would have taken is one line.

And then he's the same character.

Yeah, same guy.

Now we know his name is Nick.

I don't think, did we know his name before?

I don't think.

I don't know.

I think he's just graphic design guy.

That cracked me up.

And of course, we always ask our guests if they're still recognized from being on The Office.

And here's what Nelson had to say.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's like the number one thing I get recognized for.

I mean, you know, The Office, as I said, it was just such a big deal.

It's got the most fans of any show I've ever known.

I mean, it's totally ubiquitous.

People from all walks of life watch The Office, and so I get recognized constantly.

And the other thing that happens is people come up to me and be like, Wait a second, I know you.

Are you, wait, are you Tom's brother?

No, no, no, you were at that concert last night.

And then I just, after I let them flail around for a second, and I say, IT guy, and they go, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, got it, got it.

All right.

And then they flip me off because they remember that scene.

He gets flipped off.

It's hilarious.

Well, he's got a big moment at the end of the episode.

It's pretty great.

I know.

You get people saying, don't throw garbage at me.

I get save bandit.

He gets the finger.

Well, and you also asked him if he took anything from the show when he left.

And I loved his response because it made me remember a thing that I had forgotten.

Okay.

You know, I wish I had.

That seems like a great idea to swipe something, a little memento, but I didn't do it.

I did take a cell phone picture of

the like sort of whiteboard.

There was like like a dry erase board that somebody was keeping up, a second AD or something, where it would have the names of the guest stars that were appearing in the episode for whatever reason.

And the handwriting was super bad.

So I have this great picture of this dry erase board where it says like

Kathy Bates.

And then right under it, it says Nelson.

And it's like written like a sort of like a drunk person wrote it on there.

It's just a fond memory.

That's the only thing I kept.

I remember that whiteboard.

And you know what's crazy?

In our final season, I was going around.

I was just taking pictures of things because I just wanted to remember every detail.

Yeah.

I took a picture of the whiteboard.

I did.

Because it would have our, like our numbers on it.

Each cast member was assigned a number and it would say like who's in the scene, who's on deck.

Yeah.

And it would have guest stars and it would have all these numbers.

It was like a code.

Like we knew what it all meant, but somebody coming in to visit may not know.

Yeah.

It's like how, you know, I think so many baseball stats.

I'm like, what's that?

Yeah.

It's like that.

And it was by the back door as you walked into our set, right there on the wall.

So the minute you walked in, you knew who was in the scene, who was up next.

Who was in the background of the scene?

Who's that speaking?

Yeah.

And I mean, my gosh, if I saw my name on white

base, I'd have a picture of that.

Yeah.

Oh, well, he is just wonderful.

I loved hearing from him.

And we have more clips.

Yes, he's going to share a few more things about his time on the office, and we'll be adding those in as we talk about this episode well why don't we take a break and then we'll get into this episode okay

we would not make good whistleblowers clearly not if it not actually whistling

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This episode starts with Michael watching a clip of himself defending Sabre on the local news.

Yes.

And then Todd Packer calls because everybody's seeing him on the news.

And of course he knows this.

Michael is so tickled.

Oh, he loves it.

He's probably re-watched this clip over and over.

I want to say at 14 seconds, Packer has a line where he says, I want to pinch your tiny wiener.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh-huh.

The original table draft for this episode had the line, I want to lick your tiny wiener.

Oh, my goodness, but standards and practices said no, okay, so they had to change lick to pinch, and then it got approved.

I have become fascinated by standards and practices.

Who is that person that scrubs through our episodes with a red flag?

Yeah, and is like, we're gonna, no licking of the tiny penis, please.

We need to change that.

We need to change that.

I also would just love, love to have been a a fly on the wall for their meetings about our show.

I know.

Are they email exchanges?

I mean, that is some digital clutter I'd like to get my hands on.

Same.

While Michael is watching his news clip, did you happen to see the other news of the day?

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

It's all listed on the right-hand side of the computer screen.

Here are the news stories of the day in Scranton.

Okay.

Number one, local teacher wrongly accused of pedophilia.

We're going to discuss that later.

Yes.

Number two, area business manager responds to allegations.

That's Michael.

And it's highlighted in blue because it's the one Michael's watching.

Nice detail.

Number three, local zoo gets a baby otter.

Oh, yeah.

Number four, last of three murder suspects arrested.

Number five, former fire secretary sentenced for theft.

Wow.

Number six, expert semicolon, bill likely to be ruled constitutional.

Okay.

Okay.

Very vague.

I know.

Number seven, ex-state rep convicted in bonus gate scandal.

Bonus gate.

I'm intrigued.

Number eight, parents pack meeting to hear about drugs in schools.

And lastly, if you notice, Michael's clip has 1,069 views.

Okay.

Well, he's going to have a talking head where he brags about all of his views and all the people who are watching his clip.

He even called the radio request line and talked about it on the air.

Yeah.

Well, we had a fan catch from Kelly W.

from Cary, North Carolina, and many others who said, Michael says he called Froggy 98.7,

but all of the stickers and the magnets throughout the office say froggy 101.

Was this a continuity error or just Michael not knowing what he's doing?

We asked Warren and Halsted about this and they said this was a goof.

Yeah.

They know that fans have spotted this.

It is totally their bad.

And they can't believe that they wrote Froggy 98.7 and that none of us noticed.

We've been surrounded by these bumper stickers for like seven years.

Seven years.

There's one on the file cabinet by Phyllis's desk.

Here's the thing, though, I think they wrote 98.7.

This is my theory, because there's a local Los Angeles radio station that plays pop music, like whatever the billboard charts are, and it's 98.7.

And I think that just went sort of from their brain right to the page.

It must have, but it's very funny to me.

Yeah.

That everyone caught it, but we didn't.

Well, now Michael's going to run out of his office and he is going to declare DEF CON 5.

Do you know why?

Done, done, done.

He is the number two most watched clip on the local news, and we cannot have that.

Everybody has to watch his clip now.

Yeah, he said he wants everyone to stop what they're doing and watch his clip 11 times.

But pretty quickly, Angela gets distracted by that cute otter.

And then everybody gets distracted by the cute otter.

It's everybody watching the otter and it's making Michael crazy.

But then I loved it because Michael goes to watch it and he's like, I don't need it.

And then he's clearly charmed by the otter.

Well, I got a little interested in him calling DEF CON 5

because, you know, DEF CON 5, it actually stands for the lowest state of readiness.

It means everything's going great and nothing's wrong.

DEF CON 1 is we are in the middle of a nuclear war.

I just remember it from that Matthew Broderick movie.

Yes, war games.

War games.

All the DEF CON.

Yes.

Well, I did a mini-deep dive on the DEF CON's and I personally found it fascinating.

So I'm going to share.

Let's hear it.

Well, DEF CON stands for Defense Readiness Condition.

It is controlled by the President and the U.S.

Secretary of Defense through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combatant Commanders.

And different branches of the armed forces can have different DEF CONs going on at once.

So many DEF CONs.

One person can be DEF CON 5, and someone else might be a DEF CON 3.

Here are the different DEF CON:

five means

lowest state of readiness.

Okay.

For everybody.

Yeah.

Depending on wherever your DEF CONs are.

That's right.

Got it.

DEF CON 4 means increased intelligence watch and strengthened security.

Okay.

If you go to DEF CON 3, it means that we need an increase in force readiness above that that is required for normal readiness.

And the Air Force needs to be ready to mobilize in 15 minutes.

That means they're calling everybody.

Hey, folks, you got to come in.

Yep.

Yep.

You got to be ready to fly in 15 minutes.

DEF CON 2 is the next step to nuclear war.

Oh, my lord.

And armed forces need to be ready to deploy and engage in less than six hours.

DEF CON 1 means nuclear war is imminent or has already begun.

We're all dead.

DEF CON 1, we're all dead.

Yes, nuclear war is in progress.

Goodbye, planet.

Well, as of 2014, the worldwide DEF CON level has never been more severe than DEF CON 3.

When was that?

Since 2014.

Okay.

But the U.S.

did reach DEF CON 2 twice.

Remember, DEF CON 2 means next step nuclear war.

Was that with Cuba?

Yes, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1991 Gulf War.

We went to DEF CON 2 for a short period of time.

Yikes.

I'm happy to be at DEF CON 5 with Michael.

Yes.

Even though he seems panicked by it.

Yeah.

DEF CON 5, everyone.

Well, I find that so interesting, Jenna.

And I also, like, as you were describing all of it, I imagine you and I in front of a huge boardroom, all the different heads of the military, all their accolades, and you and I, like, kind of dressed like the moms we are in front of a dry erase board, breaking down DEF CON.

Like, could you imagine if we were called in and you're like, here's DEF CON 4.

And I'm like, yeah, everybody show up.

Time to get dressed.

Got to report to work.

Well, that's DEF CON 3.

Got it wrong.

I draw an arrow to it.

From 4 to 3.

From 4 to 3.

From 4 to 3.

Yeah.

Something has gone very wrong if we are the people explaining the DEF CONs, I have to say.

It would make a great scene in Mom Detective's.

It sure would.

You could have like a DEF CON like home edition,

you know,

where it's more

like Chihuahua is out and there was reports of a coyote in the neighborhood.

That's too

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's an imminent attack pending.

Yes.

DEF CON too.

DEF CON too.

All right.

We did get fan questions for this scene.

Should I pivot to those?

Yes, let's go back to the episode.

All right.

Marnie W from Dallas, Texas says, everyone was watching Michael's press release on a YouTube-esque website, but it doesn't look like YouTube.

Was this a fakey site?

Yes, it was, Marnie.

It was meant to be the the website for the local news.

So it was, you know, like a video playback.

Randy said it was created by a company called Playback Technologies.

They created the fake website, and they also had to send a playback operator and a playback technician to make all the videos pop up on our various screens.

And then we had a fan catch from Frankie C.

in Seattle, Washington who says, hi, office ladies.

My name is Frankie, and I'm 14 years old.

I have watched the office five times and I have a question about the cold open of whistleblower.

Okay, Frankie, what you got?

Michael asked the whole office to watch his video and everyone's sound is playing at the same time.

But you guys have mentioned in previous podcasts that Oscar was the only one to really have sound on his computer.

So true, Frankie.

So how did this work?

Well, Randy said all of the computers ran the videos without sound,

and they actually added that in later in post-production.

So we're fakey reacting to sound.

Yep.

Exactly.

Real video, fakey sound.

And finally, Randy said that the video of the baby otters was footage from the Monterey, California Aquarium.

But, you know, the otters do not end up doing any of the things that Michael describes in his final talking head.

That's why you don't see too much of the video because it wouldn't match.

It just kind of plays out on Michael's face

in the most delightful way.

Like you really believe it.

Yeah, you do.

Are you ready for one of the most amazing, commanding scenes of someone talking and just cutting up a piece of newspaper?

Mesmerizing?

I watched it three times in a row.

I wrote mesmerized.

Look what I wrote.

I was mesmerized by this scene.

I'm showing Jenna my paper, you guys.

Joe Bennett is going to arrive, and she is coming in hot.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

She comes in in with two lawyers and her dogs.

It's a surprise visit.

No one was expecting her.

And she goes on to explain that the newspaper has run a story about Sabre's cheap foreign printers attacking innocent Americans.

And while she's saying all of this, she's moving around the room.

She's getting a pair of scissors.

She's cutting the article as she has this dialogue.

One of my favorite moments is when Kevin was like, I think I know what happened.

And she goes, I don't think you do.

And then he goes, No, I'm thinking I don't.

I know, I loved that too.

But she's doing so much action while having all of this different emotion.

It reminded me of that scene in Secret Santa when Michael had to go from Santa to Jesus all in one moment with his clothing.

Well, we had a fan question from Ann S.

in Zurich, Switzerland.

Who said, Can you explain Joe's insane choice to walk all the way over to Angela's desk to grab a glue stick to glue the newspaper article to the picture of the office instead of using tape.

I looked in the script and all of this stage direction is meticulously outlined within the dialogue.

There is like this whole silent play that is scripted out and I thought I would read it.

Oh, great.

And then I have a little tidbit about when she comes to my desk.

Ooh.

All right.

Here's what it said in the script.

Now, mind you, within all of this, there's also dialogue.

Right, you're just reading the stage directions.

Yes.

Joe enters with a couple of well-dressed lawyers.

People are surprised.

Joe pulls out a copy of the Times Tribune off Jim's desk and casually flips through it.

Joe points to an article titled, Sabre Defends Printers.

As Joe speaks, she walks over to Dwight's desk and grabs a pair of scissors.

Dwight looks like he might say something but swallows.

Joe methodically cuts out the article.

Some people nervously chuckle.

Joe slowly carries the article toward accounting, dropping the scissors on Jim's desk as she walks.

Dwight is about to grab his scissors.

Jim pulls them just out of his reach.

Dwight is furious.

Joe starts rummaging over the tops of Oscar, Angela, and Kevin's desk looking for something.

Finally, she finds it on Angela's desk, a glue stick.

Joe walks in a circle toward Michael's office while rubbing glue on the back of the article.

Joe slams the article onto Pam's painting.

People look a little scared.

Pam looks to Jim like, what the F?

Dwight smiles smugly at Pam, like, that's what you get.

That was all in the script.

Yeah.

And I remember us rehearsing it, Jenna.

We rehearsed all of this because it was like a one-act play and Kathy had to walk around the room and engage with all of us.

I thought it was great when I re-watched it because you really feel her presence amongst all the workers,

the way they staged her walking through the bullpen.

But here's what I wanted to share.

Here's my tidbit.

If you go to three minutes, six seconds, that's when Joe crosses to Angela's desk for the glue stick.

And this was the moment in rehearsal when Kathy Bates walked over to my desk and I was really cold and I had my heater cranked and it had been cranked all morning.

And she said, It's like the Sahara over here.

And I'll never forget it.

I wrote about it in our book, The Office BFF,

because I, with my foot, went under the desk to try to turn my heater off.

And I was like, so embarrassed.

I was like, oh no, Kathy Bates, like my desk area is so hot.

As soon as I re-watched it, I was like, that was the time.

Yeah.

I wondered if that was the time.

That's it.

Well, at the end of all of this, Michael is trying to tell Joe, listen, nobody in our office spoke to the press.

It wasn't anyone here.

But of course, Phyllis knows that it was Andy.

Yeah.

And she's kind of like, Andy,

you better say it was you.

Come on.

And Andy threatens her with such like intensity.

I know.

He said he will break her glasses, right?

And poke them in her eyeball or something.

What'd he say?

Yeah, you know, the little nubs of your glasses that sit on your nose.

There's a name for them.

And he says he's going to break them off and poke them in her eyes.

That's hardcore.

Well, he has a talking head where he explains that he is no whistleblower.

In fact,

generations of Bernards have made their money by silencing whistleblowers.

In fact, Woody Guthrie wrote a song about them.

For those of you who don't know who Woody Guthrie is, he was, by all accounts on the internet and people who love folk music, one of the most significant figures in American folk music.

He was, quote, a poet of the people.

His songs captured the heart of hard economic times and war.

One of his songs you might all know is This Land is Your Land.

This land is your land.

This land is my land.

You know that one.

And incidentally, he was born today.

What?

In 1912.

He was born on July 14th, which is the day we're recording this.

That is crazy.

I know.

I thought so too.

We got some mail from Barrett G in Arkansas who said,

have y'all heard the awesome song someone made from that snippet that Andy sang

about his family being whistleblowers?

It's actually really good.

No, I haven't.

I found it, it's by someone named Stormlight on SoundCloud.

Let's hear it

from ashes, they rose up, from nothing they came.

From utter damnation, Bernard was their name.

The shame of their past drove them near the insane.

When all of it crumbled, while others they blame.

Desperate for money, but with nothing to show.

They stooped to the lowest a person could go

Well, who are the ones who will tell what they know?

We'll make sure they sleep with the fishes below

Oh Mr.

Bernard, oh Mr.

Bernard,

who had your silence today

Mr.

Bernard, oh Mr.

Bernard, how will you make them pay?

I love the idea that the Bernard family are notorious for silencing people who are trying to do the right thing.

He's like, there's no way I can be a whistleblower because

we are Jewish

whistleblowers.

Well, I love that song.

My gosh, what a beautiful voice.

It goes on and on.

It's really, really a good song parody.

It's really excellent.

Well, here's a little tidbit from Warren and Halstead and also Randy, because Jenna, you always reach out to Randy.

And they said this song was not in the script.

Randy said that Paul pitched the lyrics on the day.

And Warren and Halstead said Jenna Ed had such a great talent for coming up with a tune and being able to make up a song.

And they could really rely on him.

And so they found this on the day.

That's amazing.

So Paul wrote the lyrics and then Ed just sort of sang a melody.

And there it was.

And there it was.

See, if you gave me lyrics, my melody would be so awful.

Oh, I feel like I only have one melody and it's like that whenever I improvise any song and it's, it's the same and it's not great.

It's like sitting here talking to

exactly.

Exactly.

Ed is just an amazing

life too.

So it makes sense.

Well, Joe is determined to get to the bottom of this.

She's going to find out who that whistleblower is.

She has an amazing talking head where she talks about when her mom worked as a prison guard and something went missing.

To find the guilty party, she would ask everyone what they would do as punishment to the person who stole.

Right.

And if they said, oh, you know, you got to like go hard on them, she knew they were innocent.

But if they said, you know, maybe they had a reason, blah, blah, that's whose rectum would have been searched.

Her delivery on that line, that was the anus aid check,

is so good.

It's like brilliant comedic delivery.

Because she puts nothing on it.

She puts nothing on it.

She never, ever, as a performer, it looks like she's trying too hard.

It's just effortless and I love it.

I do have a random background check during this talking head.

Did anyone else out there notice how much unopened mail is at Dunder Mifflin?

Lady, I actually did.

There were three enormous bins of unopened mail just sitting there.

I'm so confused by the mail system at Dunder Mifflin.

Yeah.

The cart that never moves.

Yeah.

But sometimes moves, but really never moves.

We don't have a mail room

at Dunder Mifflin.

I don't understand if that's outgoing mail.

I don't understand if it's incoming mail.

I don't understand how it's distributed.

I know.

Well, apparently it just sits there by the conference room.

The next thing Joe is going to do is bring Michael into the conference room and ask what they should do when they find the whistleblower.

Yeah, she's starting her interrogation.

Well, Michael says they should just ship them off to Montego Bay where they keep all of Al-Qaeda.

Joe gives a look to camera in that moment.

That is so good.

Well, here's an interesting tidbit about that scene.

Halstead shared that at this time on the show, they were interviewing a new writer, Amalie Gillette, who was a very funny AV club writer.

All the writers were big fans of her.

And she visited Set the day they were filming the scene between Joe and Michael in the conference room.

It was her first time on a television set, and Halstead said they wanted to give her a feel for what it would be like to work on the show.

So she stood in the corner in the conference room, you know, with Veda and Halstead and Paul Lieberstein.

That was her job interview.

Her job interview was, great, we're going to chit-chat with you.

Would you like a little tour of the set?

And then they brought her down to a conference room with Steve Corell and Kathy Bates.

I know.

Was she dying?

I know.

Halsted said they just wanted to give her a feel of what working on the show would be like.

But then the next year, when she joined the staff, she told everyone how crazy it was to suddenly be on the set of the show that she had seen for so many years and then only be feet, just a mere feet away from an Oscar award-winning actor, Kathy Bates, as she had this heated scene with Steve Carell.

And Halsted said, in retrospect, I guess that is quite the introduction.

I mean, my gosh,

that is bonkers.

When we reached out to Warren and Halstead, Halstead reached out to Amelie because he was like, I remember you were there that day.

And Amelie also shared this.

She said, it was completely bonkers to be in the same room with Steve Corell and Kathy Bates.

All I could think about was telling my parents about it because they were huge fried green tomatoes fans.

And when I told my dad, I met Kathy Bates, he said, did you tell her we love fried green tomatoes?

And I was like, No, it didn't come up that my parents love that movie.

I think it's so sweet.

She said she was fangirling the whole time.

That is so sweet.

Well, let's take a break because when we come back, Nick, the I.T.

guy, is looking on everyone's computers.

Yeah, and Dwight is going to put him in an Apache percussion hold, which I looked up and it's not real.

Yes, thank you.

So far, I could find.

We'll be back.

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all right we are back and like we said nick the it guy asked dwight if he can look at his computer

and he reveals that he's checking everyone's hard drives for information on the leak i have never seen kevin take off so fast well he sprints to his computer he likes running he's a runner yeah

you know I was talking to Nelson because this is such a great scene.

And I did ask him, I was like, you know, what is one of your favorite memories?

And I was like, which scene is he going to pick?

He's had some good ones.

What he shared with me, I was totally surprised by.

And I wanted you guys to hear it.

One memory that I definitely cherish is when I was shooting this episode, the whistleblower.

I knew it was my last episode.

It was a very bittersweet thing for me.

I had taken another job opportunity, you know, to be the lead on a different TV show.

But I had a lot of mixed emotions about it because, as I said, The Office is my favorite show, and I was really heartbroken to be leaving.

So, I was pretty emotional that morning, and I'm in there in the makeup trailer looking at my lines.

Zach Woods pops in,

Zach Woods, who plays Gabe on the show, of course.

And I was blown away.

I was like, Zach?

And just for a little bit of context here, I went to college with Zach.

We were in the same graduating class.

We went to NYU together.

I was in the drama school.

I got a degree in acting.

And he was not in the drama school.

He got a regular useful degree.

And look, I knew he performed.

He did UCB and he was so funny.

He's an incredible performer, but I had no idea he was a professional actor.

This is the first time I've seen him since college.

I was like, Zach, what the hell are you doing here, man?

That was quite a shock for me.

If you just imagine one of your friends popping into your job and being like, oh, I work here now.

That's insane.

I know.

And also, you guys, again, this was a time before Instagram, before you knew what everyone's life was.

Yeah.

You could honestly be surprised by running into someone.

This is very similar to you walking over to accounting and Oscar sitting there.

A hundred percent.

Well, I love that we were his first acting job.

I love that when he left us, then it was because he was going to be the lead in another show.

Yeah.

And as you know, he went on to have pretty big roles on Veep and New Girl and Blackish.

And

in fact, Angela, we got a fan question

from Sierra E in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Deborah J in Massachusetts.

Can we please talk about The Office's connections to New Girl?

Oh, yeah.

Angela, Oscar, Kate, and Nelson Franklin have all been on both The Office and New Girl.

Angela, what was it like working on New Girl?

It was such a blast.

I had a recurring role.

I was a school teacher where Zoe's character also taught the same school.

We had so many fun scenes.

I also had some really great scenes with Damon.

And that cast was so fun.

And also, the writers, it really felt familiar to me, like the office, where you would do a scene, you would get it scripted.

Maybe if you had an idea, you could pitch it, you know.

I loved every second of being on that show.

It was just great fun.

And I'm still in touch with some of the cast members.

Here's one memory, though, that sticks with me.

And it's not from one of the regular cast members.

I was leaving one day.

I had worked a half day.

As I was leaving the soundstage, Josh Gadd was walking in.

He was doing a part as well.

And we met sort of in the parking lot.

We're like, oh my gosh, how are you?

And we chit-chatted, how are things going?

And I, um, and he said, oh, I just got this really cool project.

I'm pretty excited about.

I'm going to be a snowman.

I'm going to be the voice of a snowman.

Oh, my gosh.

It was frozen.

And he had just gotten the job and he was talking to me about it.

And I was like, I remember thinking, oh, that's so cool.

You know, that could be really cool.

And it's frozen.

Oh, my gosh.

He's Olaf.

He's Olaf.

Wow.

Wow.

Well, now we're going to move into Michael's office where Angela, Oscar, and Phyllis are trying to reason with Michael.

They're saying everyone knows it was Andy and everyone shouldn't have to suffer because of it.

And Michael just needs to say it was Andy.

And you all are wearing pink and purple.

It's like you had a club

called Throw Andy under the bus and the dress code is pink and purple.

Yeah.

The next scene is between Dwight and Joe in the conference room.

I love this scene.

It has one of my absolute favorite lines in the whole episode.

Dwight says, I don't want to waste your time and I wouldn't dare waste mine.

It's like one of my favorite lines.

I like want to say that in a meeting.

He says he didn't do it and he doesn't know who exactly did, but he has a list of people she should fire.

Well, we got a fan question from Mary M.

in Canada asking about that list.

Here is what Mary had to say.

Number one, whose handwriting do you think that is?

Is it Rain's?

Is it Phil Shay's?

Number two, what are the numbers that correspond to each name?

Michael has a five, Jim has a one, Creed has a four.

What does this mean?

And finally, what's up with the order of this list?

Why is Michael first?

Seems like whoever wrote this list just looked around the room and wrote in order who they saw.

I really need an explanation.

Well, Mary, guess what?

I was going crazy about this list too.

I was very curious.

First of all, Jenna, there's no way that is Rain's handwriting.

No, it didn't look like Rain's.

Rain has chicken scratch.

It's probably Phil Shea.

Probably.

But, Mary, the numbers.

I was like, what is this list?

What are these numbers?

I took a picture of the screen.

I zoomed in on them.

Mary, this is what I caught.

Michael Scott, five.

Jim Halpert, one.

Pam Halpert, three.

Phyllis Vance, two.

Andy Bernard, one.

Stanley Hudson, two.

Craig Bratton, four.

Meredith Palmer, three.

Angela Martin, two.

Kevin Malone, one.

Then I saw Oscar, but I couldn't make Oscar and Daryl and Kelly.

I could see their names, but Joe's sleeve was blocking it.

So that's as far as the list I could see.

Everyone is rated between one and five.

Is it their DEF CON?

That's the only thing I know that you rate one through five at this point.

No, but I went digging in the shooting draft because I had to know.

Guess what I found?

What?

The answer.

I can't believe you found the answer to this.

Okay, in the shooting draft, the scene read like this.

Dwight, I don't want to waste your time.

I wouldn't dare waste mine.

It wasn't me.

People who misuse products don't deserve to wield a saber.

Now, I don't know exactly who did it, but I suggest you fire the following people.

Dwight hands Joe some papers.

Joe says, there's a lot of people on this list.

Dwight says, you can fire them in waves.

That's what the numbers next to the names are.

The waves.

Wow, so wave number one and then wave number two.

So now look back on the list.

Who's getting fired first per Dwight's list?

Jim, Andy, and Kevin.

Of course, I can't see Oscar, Darrell, and Kelly, you know.

Second wave would have been Angela, Stanley, and Phyllis.

Third wave would have been Pam.

All by myself.

And Meredith.

Oh.

And then the fourth wave would have been Creed.

And the final wave would have been Michael.

So even though he's number one on the list, he's number five in the wave.

This is the weirdest list.

I love that you got an answer to that.

I know.

It was so random.

Well, also in this scene, Joe asks if Dwight's being smart about his money.

He's had a good year.

And she says that he really should have his money turn into more money and he should buy property.

Yes.

That's what a smart person would do.

Well, Warren and Halstead shared that when they had the idea that Dwight should buy the building, they needed a reason why he would decide to buy the building.

And they loved this idea that Joe would plant the seed

just by giving him some simple advice to to buy property.

So this was their way of planting that little cliffhanger, which is going to eventually pay off brilliantly.

I mean, this little thing is going to grow into workabus.

I know.

Well, Michael is going to ask Andy if he talked to the press.

And Andy is going to, I mean, go overboard swearing on his parents' grave, who aren't even dead yet, that he did not do it.

And then he's going to cast some suspicion on Daryl.

I was very surprised that Michael confronted Andy with his office door open.

Oh.

The whole time, I kept thinking, I feel like Joe could kind of hear this very easily, just right around the little corner.

I also noticed that both Dwight and Jim were not at their desks in the background of this scene.

And I think part of that was to create a line of vision into Daryl's office because they could see.

They move right in there.

And then Michael moves in there.

Daryl is going to confess that he actually did tell someone about the printers catching on fire.

And it turns out that she works as a copy editor at the Tribune.

I know.

He was chatty at the bar.

He was trying to hit on her.

Yeah.

Well, now Michael doesn't know what to do because he swore up and down that none of his employees did this.

And now he's discovered that maybe they did.

Meanwhile, Joe is talking with Toby.

I loved this so much.

This scene delighted me.

She says, you know, we know it wasn't you.

We didn't find anything on your computer except

his novel his mystery novel and she's got a few notes for him my god to which he hears her out and then says write your own damn novel his talking head but warren and halsted shared something kind of fun with us they said earlier in the season was the very first mention of the scranton strangler and in this final episode of season six when jo finds toby's novel After reading it, she says that the protagonist needs to help in hiding a murder, which appears to leave Toby irritated and early egg if you think Toby might be the Scranton strangler.

Did Joe indirectly help Toby figure out how to cover his tracks?

Very interesting.

There really is a lot of evidence pointing to Toby.

I know.

Well, in his talking head where he says, write your own damn novel, I have a background catch.

Did you see the kind of like green foam dog bone thing on his desk that says Toby's troops.

Yes.

Yeah, I looked it up.

What is it?

It's like, what is it?

It says on there also, it says Toby Hanna Federal Credit Union.

There's a website, but it's not working anymore.

But I found a post online that says Toby Hanna is a real federal credit union in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

And in the post, this person says, a friend of mine that lives there told me the credit union used to call its members troops.

Oh my gosh, Phil Shea got that from the Chamber of Commerce, for sure.

For sure.

And he put it on Toby's desk because his name is Toby.

Very funny.

Well, we have another whistleblower.

I know.

Apparently, everyone who works here is real chatty.

I love doing this scene.

This was a scene of Pam and Jim in the stairwell.

This was a stairwell right outside of Randy's office.

So that was always fun because I would walk up the stairs and just go chit chat with him when we were, you know, doing different setups.

Pam says that

she probably leaked the information.

And I love her reason why.

Yeah, she just needed something interesting to say to this other mom who had been chatting about her travels.

And Pam's like, well, our printers catch on fire.

I know.

It's so funny.

Pam is going to tell Michael now.

Oh my gosh, whose mind is going a mile an hour?

It really is.

We had a fan question from Shay T in Montana wanting to know if that line was scripted or improvised because it is is one of my favorite lines and Steve performed it so well.

Shay, that was scripted.

Yeah, it's very funny and it made me laugh every time Steve said it.

Michael is spinning now because there are two whistleblowers.

Yes, this is going to lead to an amazing meeting in Meredith's van.

I want to break down the hand gestures, okay?

Okay.

Michael is going to walk up to Pam and he points to Pam, he points to himself, then he points to Meredith, and then he pretends to drink something, then he pretends to drive, then he points to his wrist, and then he makes the number five.

And Pam's like, oh my God, I know exactly what he's saying.

Here are the people who are going to meet in the van.

It's not just Michael and Pam.

It's also Daryl, and then suddenly Kelly.

Yeah.

And Pam says, we're not going for yogurt.

And Michael says, no, Kelly is also a whistleblower.

Well, while they're sitting in this van and they're discussing who is is the whistleblower and what they're going to do, Pam is holding up a bunch of unpaid parking tickets.

Daryl holds up a boot.

Yeah.

You know, that's the thing they put on your tire when you haven't too many parking tickets.

You haven't paid your tickets.

Or also, incidentally, I looked it up, if your license has been suspended.

Did you know that?

that they're called the Denver boot because Denver was the first city to use the boot?

I didn't know that, but my friend, when I was living here in my 20s, her car got booted.

Yeah.

I knew people whose cars got booted.

I had to drive her down to the impound lot and she had to pay an enormous fine.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I want to point out, I found it very interesting that Michael called this meeting in Meredith's van and not the Michael Scott Paper Company, which he is still leasing.

Such a good point, lady.

I wonder if they wanted to call it in there and Randy Corjay was like, I am not cleaning that out again.

Yeah.

I'm not moving.

We just moved everything back in there.

Right.

All of our tapes.

I cannot relocate it.

How about Meredith's van?

Yeah.

There's got to be a storm there.

Well, Kelly is like, of course, she's the leak.

She probably tweeted it.

And this is when she sets up wolf.

Yeah.

She said she spends the whole day talking, video, chat, Skype, text, Twitter, phone, woof.

And then we go to Ryan's closet and he's going to tell us what Wolf is.

I will never get tired of seeing Ryan in that little closet.

no

it's so true ryan explains that woof is a site he's launching and hopes that it will be the last word in social networking it basically links up all of your communication portals and he does a demonstration where he sends himself a woof which then gives him a notification on all of his devices at once even aaron notifies him via intercom.

He gets a fax.

It pops up on his screen.

His phone, like everyone.

goes off.

Everything goes off.

Well, a lot of people wrote in to say this was the first mention of Wolf, and it is.

Warren and Halstead said that this just started as a one-off joke for this episode.

They kind of came up with it in the writer's room, but it is eventually going to become a whole episode in season seven.

Yes, I reached out to writer Aaron Scher because I know he writes the episode Wolf eventually, right?

And he said he pitched the name Wolf, but someone else pitched the idea of it.

But how he came up with the name was he said Twitter was just starting and he thought the sound a dog makes instead of a bird was fun.

Oh, yeah, that's good.

I like it.

Yeah.

Randy shared that they had everything rigged to go off at the same time, but that Ellie does not actually call on the phone.

To time that out, they had her just standing off camera to do her line.

And then in post-production, they put an effect on her voice to make it sound like it was from the phone.

Well, I have to point out one thing about Ryan in this scene.

He has now officially combined all of his new looks.

Did you catch it?

It's glasses, suspenders, bow tie, orange watch.

Wow.

The only thing missing is his hat.

It's kind of like he's woofed his wardrobe.

He's woofed his wardrobe.

Well, if Michael was freaking out that he had two whistleblowers, now his mind is completely blown because he has three whistleblowers.

His solution to this is that they just smash all the computers, destroy the evidence.

Yes.

But really, Pam says, I think you just need to convince Joe to go easy on all of us.

And then once we know our jobs are safe, we all confess at once.

So this is going to be the new plan.

Meanwhile, Toby is in the break room.

His snack is stuck in the vending machine.

Mm-hmm.

And he starts doing the thing where you kind of jiggle and try to move the vending machine.

Dwight offers to help him, but he he gets a call in the middle.

And then Toby's stuck just sort of holding up the vending machine.

They've tipped it forward.

When I saw that, I was like, wait, was that in the script?

It had to have been in the script because it's such a big prop move.

I couldn't figure out how he was doing it.

According to thepro move.com, vending machines weigh between 400 and 900 pounds when they are empty.

Wow.

And you really can't move them without proper equipment.

So I asked Randy Cordre about it.

He said that Mike Thompson, our on-set special effects technician, rigged the back of the machine with a safety cable and it went all the way through that back wall.

And then Mike Thompson stood behind there.

He said this was the area, Jenna, where our lunch tables usually were.

That, I guess, really is only something we can visualize, Angela.

But just so you know, Mike's standing there.

Yeah.

He's got this cord through the wall.

He had manipulated it so that the machine could tilt at a certain angle, but Mike was actually holding the weight.

And so it could never fall.

Like that cable was holding it.

So it couldn't actually fall on Paul.

And that's how they did it very convincingly.

So Michael's going to go up to Joe and he's going to be like, you know, on second thought about this whistleblower, I think we make them work.

Come in here and they just got to work.

Yeah, they could totally keep their job.

And she's like, Michael Scott, what do you know?

But he's not going to tell her.

No, she's going to bring him into the conference room and they just kind of face off.

He will not tell her what he knows.

There's a great moment where she says, Michael, speak.

Speak.

And then the dog barks on the couch.

We had a fan question from Enoch N.

and Sarah M.

from Pennsylvania and others who wanted to know when Joe says speak and the dog barks, was that scripted or improvised?

Well, I did not see it in the script i have an answer for you oh because warren and halstead told me that the dog barking and joe saying speak were something that they came up with on the day oh and luckily for us the dog trainer was able to get the dog to howl on command well i'm glad because that was a good bit I loved it.

And Randy shared with us that the same great Danes as before were our dog actors, Gabby and Guinness.

I felt like I recognized them.

Did you?

I did.

I knew they were the same.

Gabby and Guinness out of a great

crowd.

I don't know which one is which, but when they walked in the door at the very beginning, I thought, same Danes.

Same Danes.

Well, at the end of this meeting, Joe is going to invite Michael to leave with her, and

she drives him to a small airport.

I love how paranoid Michael is.

He's like, I've got a dinner with chief of police.

Like, what does he think Joe's up to?

Just in case she's like up to something shady, he has some plans to meet with officials.

Meanwhile, Dwight is getting ready to wrap up his real estate deal because he's buying that property that Joe suggested.

But he sees a sign while he's on the phone with his realtor.

It says Scranton Business Park.

He has an idea.

Make him an offer they can't refuse.

Actually, lowball them.

Just get it done.

Yeah, he's going to buy the building.

We had a fan question from Ashley S.

in the UK.

When Dwight makes an offer on the Scranton Business Park, 1725 Slough Avenue, was that a nod to the British show, which was set in Slough?

Yes, of course it was.

Yes, it was.

That has always been our address.

It's even on Michael Scott's business card from the pilot.

Yeah.

Which you and I both took one.

Of course we did.

Of course we did.

Yes.

Randy shared that that big business park sign in the background that says Dunder Mifflin, that was put up just for that scene, and then it was quickly taken down.

He said, we never wanted to draw attention to ourselves.

We did not want to have a sign that said Dunder Mifflin out on the street like that.

Right.

Back in the bullpen, Gabe has concluded his investigation.

Yes.

He says Andy did it based on all the evidence and everyone agrees.

Although Jim does try to make Andy feel better, but then Andy just throws him under the bus.

By the way, Gabe didn't do a very good job investigating because David Wallace pops in for a talking head where he says that he did it.

He's like, he heard from an an old client about their problems and he immediately started spreading the news.

But he's not really here to talk about that.

He wants to talk about suckett.

He only wants to talk about suckett.

Speaking of that talking head, Ange, we had a fan catch from Sarah H.

in Williamsburg, Virginia, who said, as a dog-obsessed person, I always get excited whenever we visit David Wallace's house because he has a dog.

But in David's talking head, this is not the same dog as before.

David originally had a golden retriever, and now it it looks like he has a hound mix or a pointer of some kind.

Sarah says this is not a groundbreaking discovery but I thought it was kind of fun that the Wallace has got a new dog.

Well I have an answer for you Sarah.

I thought I recognized this dog when I watched the episode and I reached out to Warren and he confirmed it.

This was Paul Lieberstein's dog.

His name was Dude.

Wait, this is Paul's dog in real life?

Yes, it's Paul's dog in real life.

His name was Dude.

He was the sweetest dog.

I love that dog.

Oh my gosh.

He was like one of those big dogs who thinks he's a lap dog.

This is so funny because I wrote to Randy about this question and I said,

what is this dog?

Was this Bob Dunn's

animal menagerie dog?

No.

And he said, Jenna, I have no record of this dog.

I can't believe it.

I don't know who the dog is.

It was dude.

Wow.

I love it.

Well, lady, I think we stay in the bullpen because Nick is going to have such a big scene.

Let's let all this play out and then we'll go back to the plane where Michael and Joe are.

I like that.

Yeah, Nick, the I.T.

guy, he's going to say goodbye to everyone because he's going to Detroit with Teach for America.

No one can even remember his name, Jenna.

I know.

And Gabe is like, this is not the time.

I am talking about an investigation.

I forgot how badly the whole bullpen blows off Nick.

Poor guy.

He was just trying to say a nice goodbye.

I know.

Nick is like, you know what?

I've kind of had it.

I've looked at all your hard drives and he starts revealing all these truths.

Yeah.

And then he says, and I'll tell you what, Andy is the whistleblower.

I saw it.

He wrote a note to the press.

Then he gives everybody the finger and walks out.

Yeah, he does a two-bird salute on the way out.

We had a fan question from Kyle T in Houston, Texas.

Did Nick call out other people that we did not get to see?

Yes, Kyle, he did.

He has a dig at Jim and Pam that I remember from when we were shooting.

Yes.

I do too.

So I went back to the script and here's your answer.

He says to Ryan, you are not a photographer.

And he says to Kelly, you are not a size two.

Those made the cut.

Yeah.

Then he would have said to Phyllis, you are sending flirty emails to your stepson.

Phyllis!

And then he says to Pam while pointing to Phyllis, she thinks your kid is ugly.

Then he says to Jim while pointing to Pam, she hates that you can't put up a hammock without a handyman.

A hammock?

A hammock?

My God, Lee gives me trouble about saying hammock.

It has a freaking O in it, everybody.

Hammock.

How does everybody say it?

If you were on vacation with Jenna, you might go lay in a hammock.

It's hammock.

You know it's hammock.

No.

Come on.

You got to let this one go.

Wow, guys.

I can't believe I'm saying something correctly.

Here's the thing.

I bought a hammock for our yard.

And you're not allowed to hang it till you know how to say it.

To put it up.

And the whole time he was like, Jenna,

hammock.

It has an O in it.

H-O-M-M-O-C-K.

There's a lot of words in the English language that don't make sense.

Let's talk about knife.

It has a K in it.

It's not K knife.

I know, but that is a common silent K.

That's a thing in our language.

That is common.

Like the PH is a fuck.

You know, that's we.

Hammock.

Hammock.

Hammock.

My gosh.

Anyway, and then he says to Andy, and you told the press.

Lady, there was another unscripted call out that was not, you know, in our shooting draft.

It's something Nelson said.

And I know what a fantastic improviser he is.

So I had to ask him if any of his improvs made it into the show.

I was curious if this one moment was improvised.

And you know, I love improv.

And whenever, as an improviser, anything you say in the moment makes it in, you are so excited about it.

It's like a little private moment of like, woohoo, victory.

Yes.

So I asked Nelson Nelson if he improvised anything.

And here's what he said.

Angela is asking me if I improvised anything in this episode in Whistleblower.

And yes, I did.

I'm so glad you asked me that.

It was a great moment for me.

As you remember, I sort of, you know, my big final bow is that I come out and sort of hostily quit my job and start calling everyone out, you know, blowing the whistle.

I blow the whistle on Andy for leaking the, you know, the printer video.

And then I start blowing the whistle on everybody.

I'm talking to Kelly and

Ryan, blah, blah, blah.

But the one I improvised was when I turned to Daryl and I say to him,

Daryl, why haven't you told anyone you're on Facebook?

People want to be your friend.

And it was this really weird, little weird thing.

And just for the kids back home, back then in 2008 or whatever,

Facebook was like Instagram.

It was the good one back then.

Now they're all terrible.

But

I didn't have anything to say to Daryl, but I'm a big Craig Robinson fan in general.

I think he's insanely funny.

And so I said that line, which seems sort of inconsequential, but it was really great because of his reaction.

You know, they cut to Daryl and he's sort of looking like really ashamed of himself and embarrassed.

And that made it all worthwhile for me just to get that.

get that out of him.

I mean, that's the whole point of ad living stuff to get an interesting reaction out of your scene partner.

And Craig is an incredibly good actor and I loved it.

I love that.

I love that so much.

Oh, it was so funny and so quick.

And he's right.

Like Craig's reaction was perfect.

Well, you know, when he flips everyone off at the end,

Randy told me that standards and practices made us pixelate his middle finger.

Both of them.

Yeah, exactly.

And Randy said quote, which was absurd because it made it even more obvious.

We fought this note, but unsuccessfully.

Should we go back to the plane, lady?

Let's go back to the plane because these scenes between Kathy Bates and Steve Krill are so awesome.

I could have watched them for an hour.

Me too.

Yeah, it starts off with

Michael kind of confiding to Joe that he's had just the hardest year of his life.

Yeah.

His favorite restaurant closed down.

Yeah, his second favorite sucks.

Yeah.

He bought a video camera to film, I guess, special moments, right, throughout the year.

And he only had 12 minutes that were worth taping.

Most of that was just birds in his condo complex, which you would like to watch.

I would actually.

I would watch that.

And then he sort of says he misses Holly.

And she says, who's Holly?

Yeah.

Well, then Joe tells Michael that, you know,

She's bummed because she thought that as a businesswoman, she'd be breaking the glass ceiling, that she'd be a hero to little girls.

Yeah.

That they might even make a Barbie out of her.

She says that the thing that she's really dreading is having to go in front of the press and make one of those apology videos.

Yeah.

And Michael said, I'll do it.

Yeah.

He offers to make the apology video.

She's like, you don't have to do that.

Lady, we had a fan question from Kim C from Langley, British Columbia, Canada.

In the plane scene, what do we think?

Was Joe manipulating Michael so that he would take the fall and make the video?

Or do you think she was really just sharing that she was upset that they sold cheap printers?

What do we think?

Well, I think she absolutely knew she was manipulating Michael, but I also think she did share a little bit.

I think there's some half-truth there.

But as soon as she said, Mama Joe, you know, and she was like, Mama Joe thought so.

Mama Joe knew.

I was like, she's doing her thing she does, where she kind of compliments you, but then like kind of pulls you in to get what she needs.

It's really interesting because I really thought it was just a genuine moment of sharing and that she was completely surprised that Michael offered to make the video.

I never saw her as manipulating him.

Clearly, if Joe invited me to her plane, she could get me to do anything because I just bought it.

I thought that she did share some truthful things, but the minute she referred to herself as Mama Joe to him,

that was like that was your clue.

Okay.

I hear that.

Now that you say it, I hear it.

But

because they're not buddies, she doesn't want him to come visit her in Florida.

Why is all of a sudden she's Mama Joe to him?

Clearly, something.

I want Joe Bennett to like me just like Michael.

I am very Michael Scott when it comes to Joe Bennett.

I'm like, please invite me to Florida, Joe Bennett.

Please take me on your private plane.

Please, I'll do whatever.

Well, a very smiley Michael ends up making a statement to the press.

Yes, he does.

And he says there will be no questions.

Are there any questions?

He's so excited

about this role.

I will say this, Jenna.

Maybe I didn't think she was sincere on the plane, but when Joe thanks Michael at the end for making the statement, I think she meant that.

Thank you.

She was happy.

She didn't have to do that.

Yes.

And she does say to him, is there anything I can do for you?

Yeah.

And he says, Yeah, you can transfer Holly back from Nashua.

And he sort of just says that off the cuff.

But then she looks at him with all seriousness and says, I'll see what I can do.

Well, lady, we had a fan question from Sophia M in Louisiana.

Something I didn't think of.

In Whistleblower, Michael asked Joe to transfer Holly back to Scranton, but in Secret Santa, David says that Scranton is the only branch that will be kept in the Sabre buyout.

So technically, there is no Nashua.

Oh, that's such a good catch.

I thought so too.

I didn't think of it at all.

But yeah.

Yeah.

So now we're doing this rewatch in real time.

I'm very curious, where does Holly come from when she comes back?

We will see.

I'm sure you all already know.

Well, at the end of the episode, everyone's kind of filing out.

Andy can't find his bag.

Phyllis says it's in the ceiling.

They're like hazing Andy.

And Phyllis is like, you deserved it.

I know.

Randy told me that putting Andy's bag in the ceiling was a huge ordeal.

He said, you know, our drop ceiling, we had a real ceiling with lights,

but it was like, you know, it was suspended from the very high top of our warehouse.

And if you opened up the little thing, you would have like seen this just cavernous.

Yes, it was like we were in an aircraft hangar.

Right.

And we had this low ceiling over us.

But if you peel back the ceiling, it was like a catwalk Yeah.

Like little railings and bridges and things suspended in the air.

Yeah.

So he said our production designer, Michael Gallenberg, had to design like a fakey attic, which was basically a black box.

Tim James, our construction coordinator, suspended the box over the drop ceiling so that the camera couldn't see all that empty space that went up above the ceiling tiles.

That little gag.

That little tiny gag.

That was many meetings and much construction.

Andy is going to get his bag and then he's going to receive a calf rub, a lingering calf touch.

Yeah, from Erin.

Yeah, she says she thought he was really brave.

Yeah.

And that is Whistleblower.

Yeah, that is the end of season six.

You know, lady, we did have this fan question from Natalie F.

in San Antonio and Grace V from Philadelphia, who were asking,

but who was the real whistleblower?

Because there really were a lot of possibilities.

There's Pam, Daryl, Kelly, Andy, and David Wallace.

I mean, Nick says it was Andy, but really, I feel like it could have been all of us or any of us.

What do you think, Ange?

Yeah, any one of those people could have spoke to the right person that then ended up somehow coming back on them, right?

They were all being pretty chatty about it.

I think Andy is the one who, with great intention,

wrote this email to the press.

He said he didn't want, you know, people's houses to burn down or people to be injured because of these faulty printers.

I also thought it was interesting when I spoke to Nelson that Nelson said Nick the IT guy was also a whistleblower of his own because he went around and called out everyone in the office.

He sure was.

Well, listen, a big thank you to Randy Cordray for all of his great facts this week and also to Nelson Franklin for sending in those great audio clips.

Nelson was most recently in the miniseries Gaslit, and you can find him on Instagram at Nelson Mode Squad.

And Jenna, before we go, I have one last audio clip from Nelson.

It was so sweet, and I wanted you to hear it.

Thanks so much for having me, guys, again.

And I want to say a special thanks to Jenna.

As I mentioned several times, the job fair was my first job ever as an actor.

And it was on my favorite show, and I was very, very scared and stressed out.

And my scene was with Jenna, thank God, because, you know, she's the sweetest, greatest person.

So you made me feel very comfortable and you let me thrive.

So thank you a million times for starting my acting career on a good foot.

I really, really appreciate it.

And thanks for having me on again.

Love you guys.

Nelson, is that so sweet?

That is so sweet.

I want to say again, I would have never known that that was his first acting job.

I

was so calm, cool, and collected.

I learned that here with his audio clips.

He was great and is great.

Nilson, thank you so much for sending in your audio clips.

It was so great to catch up with you.

And you guys, we will see you back here for season seven next week.

See you then.

Thank you for listening to Office Ladies.

Office Ladies is produced by Ear Wolf, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey.

Our show is executive produced by Cody Fisher.

Our producer is Cassie Jerkins.

Our sound engineer is Sam Kiefer, and our associate producer is Ainsley Bubico.

Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Ratton.

For ad-free versions of Office Ladies, go to StitcherPremium.com.

For a free one-month trial of Stitcher Premium, use code Office.

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