20th Anniversary of The Office with Greg Daniels | Office Ladies

Work creeping into your personal time?

Billie products can turn your daily shower into a digital detox.

Nourishing body wash can refresh your skin while you mentally refresh your resume.

A full body shave with Billie's award winning razor will help you visualize things going smoother tomorrow.

And quick absorbing body lotion can hydrate faster than you can say, let's circle back on Monday.

You've got your reasons, Billie's got your routine.

Shop in store and at mybillie .com.

Every idea starts with a problem.

Warby Parker's was simple.

Glasses are too expensive.

So, they set out to change that.

By designing glasses in -house and selling directly to customers, they're able to offer prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable.

Warby Parker glasses are made from premium materials, like impact resistant polycarbonate and custom acetate, and they start at just $95, including prescription lenses.

Get glasses made Made from the good stuff.

Stop by Warby Parker store near you.

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 BFF 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 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 We're 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 rewatched 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 super fan 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 that Josh made for us to celebrate the 20th anniversary.

Mm -hmm. Some I didn't put in either.

I'm gonna 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. Mm -hmm.

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, 730 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 yeah, it's gonna be very clear.

Ok, so at 7 .30 am 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, the 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 timestamp. New ink.

I'm 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?

Mm -hmm. 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.

OK, are you ready? Final entry from the first day.

My pantyhose 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 Alice and 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. Alright, 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 9 -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 diluted 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, um, Michael we have never worked in a place like this before.

I mean, you are a riot.

it, you get the best out of us.

And I say, and if it's true, awesome.

What is Quesarosa? It's kind of a non sequitur, I've been told, it's kind of, you know what kind of filler words?

Have you ever heard of filler words?

It's kind of like that.

Kasichera. If I had to define what it meant, I'd say, what context did I use at Justin?

Isn't that so great?

I love that you can hear Kin Kwafis.

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 Kacer us?

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 Schrute?

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 personalities suggest an unsocialized loner, a sort of Caliban or golem.

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

I have 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.

Alright 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 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. All right.

Great, 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...

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 likeable 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 haircut.

All right, here is John auditioning for Jim.

I'm a sales rep, 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, uh, I mean, that just sounds like it's from the show.

Honestly, I know that wasn't 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 loudest boss and fiancé to push her around some, but she can exhibit flashes of working class toughness and 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 fiancée.

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 wave. 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, so 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 gonna 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 that halfway up when you don't.

Hmm yeah, I remember doing that.

She's not quoting Roy even yeah, that's right All right, next up.

I have two batches of shorter clips of multiple characters Auditioning we have B .J.

For Ryan Craig for Daryl David for Roy Dave for Todd and melora for Jan Let's hear them Okay, I'm into foreign films. I Read the New Yorker.

Love Shakespeare. Did you ever see the Dunder Mifflin flag out in the parking lot?

It's inspiring. I think I want it on my coffin.

Hey. Maybe you got it here.

Would you mind if I want to drink with these guys?

No. No. This guy here has gone.

It's a gimmick. I think.

Really. you know casual Friday one day you let your hair down that's pathetic Michael go on can we not talk about downsizing oh yeah sooner or later yes but right now what we have to decide is do you full -stamper 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.

Would you watch on TV last night?

I didn't I read through the movie.

I watched that special 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 may mess with my chill and I am if anyone's going to.

Yeah but Michael what if they do downsize here?

Not gonna happen. They could be out of your hands Michael.

Was there anything that you wanted to add it 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 gonna take a break.

And when we come back, we have a fantastic interview with showrunner Greg Daniels.

Hi. So one of the hardest parts about business to business marketing, do I have your attention now?

Yes, you do. What are you going to say?

Well, it's about reaching the right audience, lady.

So I believe a bad example of business -to -business marketing would be when I get served an ad online for something that's clearly not for me.

For example, when I was getting shampoo ads and I had no hair.

Oh, yeah. Right? Not great.

Bad marketing. No. Bad marketing.

You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company, role, seniority, skills.

I mean look at all these little categories.

All the professionals you need to reach in one place.

So stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads.

LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself.

Just go to linkedin .com slash Office.

That's linkedin .com slash Office.

Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.

Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns.

Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future.

You don't need to be an expert.

Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals.

You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the spare money you've got right now, even if all you've got is spare change.

You know, investing can sometimes feel overwhelming.

I know it was for me.

There's just a lot of fancy jargon that makes it seem more complicated than it really is.

And here's the thing.

Acorns believes that anyone can be an investor.

You can create your Acorns account and start automatically investing your money in just 5 minutes.

Sign up now and join the over 13 million all -time customers who have already saved and invested over $22 billion dollars with Acorns.

Head to Acorns .com slash OfficeLadies or download the Acorns app to get started.

paid non -client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns Tier 3 compensation provided investing involves risk Acorns advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor view important disclosures at Acorns comm slash office ladies Still getting around to that fix on your car You got this on eBay you'll find millions of parts guaranteed to fit doesn't matter if it's a major engine repair Or your first time swapping your windshield wipers eBay has that part you need ready to click perfectly into place for changes big and small loud or quiet.

Find all the parts you need and prices your love.

Guaranteed to fit every time but you already know that.

eBay things, people, love.

Eligible items on exclusion supply.

Greg Daniels. Welcome Greg.

Thank you. You were on the regular office ladies 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. This interview is not going well.

So what show is this?

In Hot Girl, Michael says that Katie is Pam 6 .0.

Right. Right. So you know what, this is really making me question 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. Isn't it crazy though?

Now here's the thing.

I, 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.

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 or it 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.

Wow. 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 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 missed Dwight yeah yeah I see rain but I don't get to talk to Dwight again I'd love to talk to that guy yeah some weird dreams so you gotta just got to eat like weird cheesy things right before bed no I do have dreams where we're shooting again yeah Yeah and I'm 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 one's a 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.

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

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 know you can ruin it.

And it was such a nice feeling for me when we finally stopped producing new episodes of the show.

I was like, OK, it's safe.

It did, it did. Simply put it on the show.

Put it to bed, yeah.

Yeah. I still remember when I, you know, one of the things, Jen and I did, for this episode is we went and re -watched the pilot, and we went and watched the superfan cut of the pilot because neither of us had seen that.

And I still 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, pass hair and makeup.

And then you were all of a sudden in the Dunder Mifflin offices, I just remembered all of that, how I would walk to my desk in the morning and...

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, when we filmed in Culver City, I think I've told the story before that he and I decided to walk down the stairs 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 that we made these noises and we were being so silly and behind us was Terry Weinberg like the network suits and people we didn't 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

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 that shoot there.

I think always sunny in Philadelphia shot.

They have. Yeah. Yeah, just weird. Do you remember in season one, and 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 and I would come running on to the set to give a note and bash my head against this lintel and then eventually they put a big rubber bumper there that said like Greg Daniel's memorial head bumper Trying to rush in ya.

Oh my gosh I mean, I never had that problem cuz I I never know that's not a problem to worry about 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, this new show.

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 percent working out, and I'll go back and I'll check the original show and I'll be like, oh, that's why we had the blinds that are two inches apart and not one and apart so you can see people's faces yeah yeah I love going back and watch the show and then of course you know I have a fifteen -year -old and she doesn't know what it is and she's watching it so for the first time yeah so sometimes I'll watch it with her and yeah she's just plowing through all that era though

she just finished New Girl mm -hmm she just started Arrested Development she's just like yeah that's a pretty great time and television comedy, actually.

Yeah, we did that. Part of our pandemic watch with our kids was friends, and then the office and Isabelle just turned to me one day and said, Mom, you're so mean.

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

It really improved my experience watching modern family.

Yeah, we didn't 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 two 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 alright 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 now 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 then I was like this stuff is absolutely brilliant I didn't feel like American TV but I desperately want to meet the people who made it and just try to 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 US to interview people to adapt it and it turned out that I had written Ricky your bass's 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 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 alright well FX it worked that's pretty cool as an edge yeah yeah kind of edgy it'll do something different and so signed on to Adaptive and then Kevin went to NBC and he still wanted it and then Silvermoon was like yeah yeah let's do it for NBC and I was like uh 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 well probably won't win probably won't be successful, but maybe we'll 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 here 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 gonna stick?

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

Well that'll happen 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 see you on the next job.

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 will probably tank.

Our six episodes of season one are 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 who's going to pick up season two.

And there was a lot of drama before the upfronts for that year where 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 greenlight 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, a 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 Dundies is you know the staff is very irritated by Michael, but if somebody outside the staff criticizes him, they'll defend him, And so it 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 they have some sort of family feeling towards him and then there's 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.

The idea was like there's something called the Peter Principal, do you know that?

Yeah so the idea was he's actually really good as a sales manager, he just shouldn't have been promoted into the general manager or the branch manager.

So 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, then like a evil boss.

Yeah. 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. 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 obstacles Roy and she's engaged.

And then, you know, he takes his his shot and, 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 that 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 a moment that was like a year in preparation because it's getting her to feel enough emboldened, yes, yeah.

Yeah, love that. And 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 under water 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.

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 know you you're like I got a better joke and you switch the the joke to something else that works for the surface plot but it doesn't help the submarine get where it needs to go.

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

Yeah, before came 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 the 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, you know, done some sort of treacle.

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

If it actually works and you actually feel something, then you don't need a little treacle cutter, but it's a lot of underappreciated effort to put all those little beats in.

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

One of my favorites is when they're just listening to the voicemails at the end of the day.

That was one of my favorites.

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

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. Yeah. He did get the name wrong.

He got it right the first time.

He did. And then he was back to Michael.

But he's literally trying to go, oh, no. He was heartbroken for her.

Is there any story line or card that was on the wall that you didn't get to do that you still wish?

We have that whole pet day script.

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

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

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 Subornak 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 gotta go back and look at that script.

I know she had cats You know who knew almost every single Angela Martin's cats was Billie Eilish Yes, she's a huge fan.

She came on the show We played it like 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 huh are there any celebrities that you've met that have just gone on and on and on about the office maybe surprised you well I love that your premises that I'm meeting a lot of celebrities yeah no no I mean I I heard somewhere that Spielberg really like the show like you No way!

Oh my gosh! So that's good.

Jenna has a good one.

Tell the story about Angelina Jolie.

Yes, 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 out of my peripheral vision that she was walking right toward me and I was like who's behind me, 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 And you're like, No autographs.

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 chitchat?

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 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 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 I can write it off.

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

This is 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 may be jumped the shark with when you Oh my goodness.

We almost jumped a horse over Niagara Falls.

Yes. We did it. We did it.

Yeah. Okay, very close.

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 cheesy.

And I think that's not my intention with the question.

Yeah, no, no. it's more like, was there a moment or a decision where you're like, 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 gonna go there.

And also, I think that there's, I learned on King of the Hill, we had an episode, and I know I've been talking a lot about King of the Hill on this Office Ladies podcast, but we had an 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 and then a whole bunch of people were like, that's my favorite episode.

And I was like, 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 your, yeah, let's ask you've been doing the In -Depth re -watch, where do 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.

Remember that episode?

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

It was called the banker.

Yeah. It felt, it felt like a wraparound.

It felt like something, NBC made us do.

I don't remember the backstory on that.

It doesn't well and the thing is is that the the part that was original Where this banker comes in to you, and he's fantastic the guy that played 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 All right 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's it almost doesn't register yes I don't 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 rewatching 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 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, um, 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.

We had 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, but 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 saber page that Joe Bennett loves and and Gabe just covets Joe Bennett's favor So he tries to start a podcast and it's just it just cracked me up cuz 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 that was her name.

have another question for you.

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

I am a character on the show.

I'm Michael's neighbor.

I know. 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 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 in Halloween but still wants to be friends with them, you know what I mean?

That's a real boss point -of -view kind of a storyline and 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 all these things that are like you know we hit exactly right for somebody of that age group so I would I would probably identify with Michael Welcome ladies and gentleman to Mario's Bistro.

Special tonight is the beef carpaccio.

With the Venmo debit card, you can turn the basketball game tickets your friends paid you back for into a romantic dinner that you can earn up to five percent cash back on.

Use your Venmo balance to pay for the things you love to do.

Visit venmo .me .devitt to learn more.

The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the BankCorp Bank -NA.

Pursuant to license by MasterCard International Inc.

term supply. Dash cash back term supply.

We're so done with New Year New You.

This year is More You on Bumble.

More of you shamelessly sending playlists especially that one filled with show tunes.

More of you finding Geminis because you know you always liked them.

More of you dating with intention because you know what you want.

And you know what we love that for you.

Someone else will too.

Be more you this year and find them on Bumble.

You don't wake up dreaming of McDonald's fries.

You wake up dreaming of McDonald's hash browns.

McDonald's breakfast comes first. Ba -dah -ba -ba -ba.

Greg, I'm curious, we never shot an episode in Scranton and I think it was a cost thing.

Yeah, we tried. Yeah.

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 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 short -changed it.

But I did try to shoot there.

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.

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

I don't know, 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 I go to Hawaii they have gone to Hawaii they have I believe they've gone to Australia they're going a lot of places yeah we went to Long Beach and well you got to go to Niagara got to go to Niagara and that was actually really cool I mean That was, I don't know if I would've gone to Niagara Falls otherwise in my life and it's

one of the wonders of the world so that was pretty cool.

Steve went to New York with the skeleton crew.

We had that. Yes, that was super fun.

I was in the van for that.

That was a crazy thing because our permits, 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've directed that episode.

And so I was out there, just sort of guerilla style, it would be guerrilla 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 jumped back in the van and we go to someplace else it was extremely exciting shoot and I kept telling the line producers afterwards no matter what you know situation it was in I was like why can't we just jump in a van and go shoot it like you know like New York yeah 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 gonna 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 wanted to be yeah we got to shoot it like in August or something or and you told me that move their parade to August for us and I was like the whole city is gonna make a fake parade for us.

That's pretty amazing.

Yeah. The city is super cool.

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

Oh yeah, of course.

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

Oh that's fantastic.

Museum in Scranton.

Yeah 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 gonna 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, no, I was like, I'm gonna hang on to all of the stuff.

And they were like, And I was 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.

Oh! You have my desk?

No! I bought your reception desk online.

Wait. You bought it in the auction?

I bought it in the auction, yeah.

It's in my offices.

No way. Yeah. Greg are 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 you have to go sit in it Jenna I don't I don't know if you want to go sit.

I don't know you're 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 was I'm considering sending it to the Everhart Museum for this exhibit But you'd have to ship it like on a big truck might fall apart I don't know 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 yeah back of it There is and also it was very narrow like there.

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 a camera though.

It did. Yeah, no. It was a really well -made, you know, piece of furniture because it's very iconic, fit the space perfectly.

It was unusual. I want to come see it.

I can report back Jenna, I think on it.

I have another question for you Gregg.

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 would 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 on the talking heads.

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

Like for some reason Creed would 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 gotta go use the bathroom, you just keep going with the DP or whatever and I'd walk out and 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 but.

Well I love the bloopers so much and they're...

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 in his talking head.

Yes. He's all over the bloopers.

Yes. His brain goes ahead of the material like searching for alternates and stuff, because he 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 could say that he knows is terribly wrong.

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, that's weird. Isn't that that they're all out there?

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

You know, 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.

That's right to just, like, leak the audition tapes, but...

No, no, no. You're right.

They're there on I forget what season it is.

But there's there's one DVD box set that has a whole bunch of extras.

There's 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 Reveley was based at that we've had all of our editions 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, the for the Universal Studios tour Yeah tram the tram goes past it and you you know Every like 12 minutes you hear someone go in and here is where they're gonna find the stars of tomorrow and Everybody No, I remember.

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's not doesn't seem to really be doing anything and yet she's a hundred percent 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 -ending you were like negating all the suggestions for improv I was do you remember that yeah That was a conscious decision.

Yeah, it was brilliant.

And 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 Alison 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 1 -800 -DENTIST. Yes.

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 knew who Angela Martin was because she was 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 ways right I mean we we were listening to everything that you related to in the character and often that would turn into script ideas.

Yeah it's true you know we talk about this so much Greg because we've never had an experience like we've had on the side 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 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 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 like actually I could 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 I when I think about it you know, the original show was cinema very te style, very kind of hang back.

And a lot of very low angles I noticed in re -watching the pilot, which really low like when Jenn and … our pilot was different DP, that was Peter Smoker.

I know and I think he was borrowing from that way that the British show was shot because they are very similar and then when Randall came on I noticed that camera went up on his shoulder and it was a different look.

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

On a 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 1 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 bulls**t 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 sort of started to boil and into something.

And part of the sales pitch was that in a 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 finished interviewing all these writers I really was like had a strong like philosophy behind how the show should look.

And Terry Weinberg, who mentioned, I remember her, I'm not sure exactly how she and Ben, right?

Like came into contact with these reality show camera operators.

But I think they were also doing reality programming, like Biggest Loser right?

So that's how I met Randall.

And it was a terrific, you know, 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.

It's slightly different with phones Yeah, I think at least the way I hold the phone But if you're really good at phones they have little handles and stuff.

Mm -hmm. So the phone doesn't wiggle around.

Yeah Yeah, well now you're working on the paper, but you finish shooting We finish shooting the first season.

At the moment at this point we've locked a picture on six of the first 10.

That's exciting. Yeah yeah and it is exciting.

You know there's a lot of our old crew on the show.

Kelly Cantley and Kasha Trojak and Rusty Mamoud, 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 money?

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

And he was like, Yeah.

So I mean, that 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 at one point, he came to me.

He was like, this isn't right.

You're not doing it right.

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

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, and there was a section of people.

And so I thought, oh, 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.

Oh, right right 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 works.

I mean the cast first and foremost but the spirit of the cast and crew being in it together.

Yeah 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 huge show for me.

Yeah like when I'm 12 my Python comes out in the US and I'm just like you know when you're a 12 year old Yes, so we would always do that but I mean the thing about my 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 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, you know.

And we were missing our our rat party, if you remember.

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

Yeah, cuz the party was doing the show, so nobody wanted that party to end.

No. And the party where you're drinking ginger ale and some rented warehouse was not gonna 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 of comradery.

And that feeling of camradery is really special and there's that amazing picture and I don't know why I'm tearing up, but I think just cause 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 1 again and start watching again yeah yeah I get it I really get it in 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.

We changed, 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 gonna end up as you go back and watch the second time.

Did you ever have you ever seen a documentary that was called seven up when it started?

Yes 14 up, 21 up. Yeah, I don't know what they're up to now they're like 63 up or something it's but it's it's every seven years they check in with this group of British people who started 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 It was kind of like people summing their lives up and, you know.

Yeah. When you go back and watch the pilot in this super fan 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 re -watch, 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?

Right, right. 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 and my car is five years old and I'm just like then I think about like all 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 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 was had all the beats in it.

But a lot of those little grace notes were nice.

Well the Superfan episode is It's 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.

Is aiming it. 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 know? And I appreciate it.

and then 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 helping with all of that.

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

Oh, that's such a beautiful phrase.

Yeah, he just knows everything about it.

As opposed to me who's like, Mrs. 6 .0 joke.

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 there was extreme secrecy around.

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

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

showed up in the finale.

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

How? How did someone snip 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...

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 getting your cars!

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 publicity was, yeah, blogs and stuff, is just gonna 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 gonna 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, Robbie Amell, he's you know a digital person.

Right, yeah. And there's...

At some point, he was illegally copied and there's two of them in season 3 and then we sort of ended on this cliffhanger of one of them has been destroyed and anyway so we're like, Oh cool.

It's gonna be such an exciting beginning to Season 4 and you know when you find out which one and now I'm realizing like, I don't know how to promote this because, you Yeah, you know, any clip.

All of the footage is very clear.

It's gonna 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 is 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 the 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 accountants and truck drivers into reporters to 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 gonna air?

Do you have an air date?

I think probably in the fall like a back -to -school kind of a thing.

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 yes 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 gonna ask you the office call sheet questions okay ready question number one what was your first entertainment job ah 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 Managers' Meeting for all of the other station managers and he entertained at the meeting.

He had a Karnak style act where he would put a envelope up to his head and you know read the answers and then open up the 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. Yeah, and Michael doesn't.

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 guy Mike Reis, who was one of the show runners 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, 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 a hundred percent 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 I remember that episode.

Do you remember what the staff said?

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 tell my mom to make him dinner and bring it to the parking spot.

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

So I feel like I've taken enough from him Uh -huh.

Where I'm happy to have given him, you know, jokes for for his manager act.

I love that I love that so I will 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 Hmm back in the day as writing partners.

Yes, we were writing partners.

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...

Both! Portuguese and...

Oh my goodness. What?

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 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 gotta learn how to play the mandolin before I die.

I really wanna to learn that but I have really no musical ability.

Creed plays the mandolin.

Does he? Yes. I'll bet he's great.

All right, next question.

What's the 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 Lizevnik 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.

Cause they had a newspaper there.

So I had a little fantasy of living in Santa Fe and working for whatever their newspaper was, my in -laws live in Santa Fe.

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

I love the 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. Question number four, what do you like to do on the weekends?

Well you know I still have kids who can't drive.

My weekends are mostly driving her round.

Yeah, I get it. I say something, I'm just parent Uber.

Yeah. That's what you do on the weekends.

What do you like to do on the weekends?

There's no. There's no point in having dreams. He just let it go.

He's also got her driver's license.

That's going to change her life.

All right. Last question.

what is your favorite midnight snack?

Oh man, I just, okay, so Paul Lieberstein, his son, 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 hot pocket.

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

You whip up a from scratch dough.

It's not very nice.

That sounds really good!

Yeah. I'm gonna hit you up for that recipe actually.

Oh you just heard it there's no nothing new.

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 you could just put in a teaspoon of baking butter to a cup of flour and then you knead it up and then you just stir it up in it and you can you press it into the tray that comes with the the toaster oven and then you put whatever filling you want on top of it.

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

How long do you bake it for?

25 minutes doesn't matter you can't really over bake it that much 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 it's always so fun.

You know obviously I'm very interested in the content of your show.

Are we doing okay? 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. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Well, you know, we so appreciate to 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 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 to it.

Yeah, and a great cast. Fantastic cast and writers.

It's a marvelous cast. And crew that we all know.

Yes. We're in the world.

Alright, Greg. Well, we love you so much. Thank you so much for being here.

okay have a great rest of your broadcast I started that and I didn't know how to and whatever like we said we joke about this like when we don't know how to get out of something we they're singing I turned into an old fisherman thanks Greg thank you Thank you for listening to Office Ladies.

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

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 Burman and Leah Rhys -Dennis.

Office Ladies is mixed and mastered by Chris Basil.

Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton.

Mm -hmm.

[Celebrating 20 Years of The Office with Greg Daniels]-[20th Anniversary of The Office with Greg Daniels]

📋 Summary

The 20th Anniversary Milestone

The Original Character Breakdowns

Greg Daniels on Crafting the Show

Legacy and Future Projects

Final Reflections

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript