It seemed that more than any other show on television, “The Office” had the most fans and followers twisting in the wind during the protracted WGA writers' strike.
Rainn Wilson - © Glenn Harris / PR Photos
"The Office" cast, producers and crew were often spotted in the front lines picketing during the contentious labor dispute.
During the break in production, fans filled blogs, boards and websites with “what ifs” and “when will…” plaintive postings mourning their weekly fix of Rainn Wilson’s Dwight Schrute character and the doings of Angela, Jim, Pam and Michael for their Thursday night television addiction.
Now the show's devotees are already planning their big parties for the return of the huge NBC hit series on April 10.
To celebrate the upcoming reunion with the Dunder-Mifflin crew, Monsters and Critics joined some other onliners and spoke with Rainn Wilson and show runner Greg Daniels to talk “The Office,” lovely Scranton and Rainn’s new film coming up, “The Rocker.”
Greg Daniels
With the sitcom sort of becoming a lost art, what is the key to making a good one like you've done with The Office?
Greg Daniels: Well, there’s the flip answer and the real answer, I guess. But I think it’s a lot about trying to be original and trying to be funny, and not being scared of also, you know, having some emotion in it or being real and taking the characters seriously.
Rainn Wilson: I can’t top that, but I will say that I think the multi-camera sitcom format, as it kind of petered out over the last couple of years, may just - we’re sticking to a - kind of tried and true formula.
And then the shows became more about the formula than about what the show was trying to say or trying to do. So it was more about a group of characters sitting in a common area.
We’ve set up some punchlines and kind of making fun of each other. And it just got tired and worn out. And it just is - it’s the genre right now that needs some reinvention.
Greg, if you could just continue on that for a minute - can you also talk about how you find that line between the British and American humor?
Greg Daniels: Well I think the British version is really, really great and I actually love the British version. And when you look at the scripts for the British version, I think they resemble the scripts for the American version.
But they made some decisions to really go very bleak with the production of it and it matched what they were trying to do which was to be very satiric and paint a very bleak picture of what this world was like.
We had an aim to be more of a character comedy that was less satiric and more about the ups and downs of the characters. And knowing that we were going to be on for a lot longer we wanted to see positive sides to the characters, too.
And I don’t think we really got it 100% right until the second season in terms of the mix and the tone, although I really like our first season.
I think it’s really funny. Once we started to have moments, where Dwight is crushed at leaving his work or stuff like that, it kind of opens the characters up in a way where you feel a little bit more for them and you’re also, I think, uncertain as to what’s going to happen next because he might have a moment where you feel for them and then on the other hand, you might have a moment where they’re really just being played for laughs.
Rainn, I’m sure you’ve been asked this before, but have you ever worked in an office - even if only as a temp, and if so, what kind of office worker were you? Were you a Dwight or a Jim, or a Ryan?
Rainn Wilson: I’ve worked in many offices before in my New York days of being a starving actor. I worked in a major New York charity as Assistant Office Manager and Special Events Coordinator. And I was also…
Greg Daniels: Assistant to the Officer Manager and Special Events Coordinator or Assistant Office Manager?
Rainn Wilson: I was Assistant to the Office Manager and Assistant Special Events Coordinator. Thank you. You got it? And then - thanks, Greg. That was a good setup. The…
Greg Daniels: Just trying to throw you off.
Rainn Wilson: And then I was also a Receptionist from the Pam Beesly mold at Kirshenbaum, Bond & Partners, an advertising agency in New York. I was Pam.
So I’ve done a lot of those things. I guess I was most like a Jim because my heart really wasn’t into it. So - but I was also very capable which is a lot like Jim, too.
But I guess I’m proud of the fact that in my past I was actually a really good waiter. I was an excellent waiter. Like I could have really gone somewhere as a waiter.
A lot of creative people go slightly mad when they’re in office or corporate jobs. What is your opinion about that or from your own personal experiences?
Rainn Wilson: This is Greg Daniels. I’m Greg Daniels. I created The Office. I’m so cool. This is Rainn Wilson. That’s a great question. Yeah. You know, we all go a little bit mad even in the office setting, about eight hours into sitting under those fluorescent lights on the set of The Office.
And surfing the web, and there’s only so many times you can check CNN.com to see if a bomb has gone off somewhere. We start to go a little bit stir crazy and things start to get out of hand. So I think that is true.
But recently we’ve kept ourselves entertained by doing Brian Baumgartner imitations and coaxing Ed Helms to do all of his imitations. He does an incredible Tom Brokaw and we love to have him say albondigas - the soup albondigas as Tom Brokaw and here’s my imitation of Ed Helms saying albondigas as Tom Brokaw.
Greg Daniels: I think his Tom Brokaw is better than his Greg Daniels. I was going to say…
Rainn Wilson: Does he have a Greg Daniels?
Greg Daniels: No, you.
Rainn Wilson: Oh. And this is Greg.
Greg Daniels: This is Rainn - duh. I’m dumb. There you go. Hey we’re at each other’s throats now. It’s a good thing that we’re not in the same physical location.
Rainn Wilson: I know. I’d be pummeling him.
Rainn, is there going to be any love interest for Dwight that will be introduced right now because right now? Do you think that he’ll have a love interest come in and try to make Angela jealous?
Rainn Wilson: We had an improvisation of me and Jenna, and I told her that I had an ex-girlfriend who was stationed in Kuwait City, you know, as a Reservist.
I want to say that this is something that I love about this show is that every season, every - even every episode - every couple of episodes, there’s always some new aspect of Dwight that Greg and the writers want to explore.
That’s such a rare thing, So many shows have their comic sidekick character and this is - they do XY and Z. But I get emotional stories and comedic stories, and family stories - and lots of different textures. And I really appreciate getting to do that as an actor.
It was a great scene between you and Jim in the hallway where he finally opens up to you about the destruction of Pam and his heart, and all that stuff.
Rainn Wilson: Yeah.
Greg Daniels: That was just lovely. We're going to play with time a lot, I think - like Lost. In the next six episodes. It’s going to get suddenly weirdly sci-fi.
Rainn Wilson: There’ll be a hatch under Dwight’s desk.
Are there any signs that Stephen and Ricky will write more episodes for the show or make a cameo, do you think?
Greg Daniels: I don't know. It’s a really good question. Stephen was going to direct one in December and, we’re hoping to get him back next year. And as to cameos, we haven’t written any in. We - at one point, we had written in one for the character that played Gareth a couple of years ago.
But we couldn’t get him on because he was doing Pirates of the Caribbean or something. But it’s a possibility. But we don’t have any plans right now.
Can you talk a little bit about how you spent the break and what the first day back was like?
Greg Daniels: Well mine was very boring. I just walked in circles a lot waving the placard and didn’t, you know, travel anywhere or do anything. But the first day that we came back was very good for the writing staff because this was the longest break that we had had since the show started and people had time to kind of recharge their batteries in a good way. We had a lot of fun tossing out ideas on our first day back.
Rainn Wilson: I did a little bit of picketing. I played a lot with my three and a half year old son, which was good. I think the strike was terribly painful for the families of Los Angeles - the working families of Los Angeles, but it was also great for the families of Los Angeles.
And I went to Israel and I did some writing. And I worked on my backhand with my Zen tennis coach.
You know, it’s been - it has been a huge love fest. It’s like - it’s kind of crazy. It doesn’t make for great print journalism, but I will say that everyone - it’s like our other family and we - our other family got together.
And - like at a big family reunion and it’s been really, really fun. And we’ve had a blast these first two weeks. It is great to see everyone again and batteries were definitely recharged.
Is it tough after a break like that to get back into being Dwight?
Rainn Wilson: You know, it does - there’s like ten minutes when it’s like okay, wait, who is this guy again, right? And then I just put on the calculator watch and the glasses, and just be all inappropriate. And then it just works out fine. You go right back in the flow.
How did the strike affect any of the larger story arcs for the season?
Greg Daniels: Well, we had some stuff that we were planning for the end of the year and we didn’t end up having enough time to do what we had planned. But we came up with some other alternatives - things which we really like a lot and it’s probably good that way for the creative process.
So I mean, you know, there - we didn’t have a lot of stuff that we scrapped because we only had the one episode ready to be shot and that’s the one we came back with where they’re invited out to the dinner party. And…
Rainn Wilson: I heard there were plans for a Christmas episode…
Greg Daniels: You know what, we did? We had a whole Christmas episode…No, that’s true. It wasn’t 100% finished, the script. But we’re going - you know, we’ll cannibalize it and use pieces of it, and stuff.
Can you talk about some of the breakout characters and how it affects the writing?
Greg Daniels: Well the problem is that we started off, you know, with Phyllis just being one of the salespeople and we’ve kind of peaked too early by marrying her off to Bob Vance. And so it’s hard to capitalize on the breakout.
Rainn Wilson: There would be nothing wrong with that.
Greg Daniels: But yes, I think that’s a complete quote there. As long as you know that the speaker shifted in the middle of the sentence.
Are there any plans or at least any intention to have the characters see the documentary that’s been filming in their office for the last three years and what kind of reactions you think that would have?
Greg Daniels: We have talked about it. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I definitely love it as a big, kind of game-changing story move. But hopefully when we do press that nuclear button it’ll be prepared for and everybody will be - people will think it’s worth it.
Rainn Wilson: I think it’s hard. Once they see the documentary - I’m just speculating here because I know nothing about those conversations. But I think once they see the documentary and you kind of deal with the fallout of that, I don’t know how much longer you can then continue storylines, you know, with all the characters kind of living in the - being in the public eye and stuff like that.
Greg Daniels: Well there’s certain things that we have, like in our back pockets and I feel like if we ever got to a place where we were discussing storylines and we just had nothing, then we would say all right, time to scramble the world and see what comes out of that. Time to shake the Boggle set.
Rainn, your former lady love -- Angela -- is now pregnant and very much showing. How are we going to deal with that when the show returns?
Greg Daniels: Well it’s possibly in real life a little Schrute or Andy Bernard. I’m not sure. But the actual - the character of Angela is different from the human being Angela, even though they have the same name.
But I think it’s confusing on our show because there’s a lot of people with the same name. Oscar is an actor and then there’s also Oscar the person. And of course, the real confusing part is that Creed is the person. There is only Creed. He’s not aware he’s in a show.
Rainn Wilson: There is no separation between Creed the person and Creed the actor.
Greg Daniels: No, not at all.
Rainn Wilson: And Creed the character - whatsoever. Angela is like - it’s like a little person swallowed a watermelon. And everything about her looks exactly the same except she has this enormous tummy.
And I think all of her scenes from here on out are going to be staged with her behind the copy machine.
Greg Daniels: I think it’s going to be a nice drinking game for people to see if they can see the belly.
Rainn Wilson: Spot the fetus.
Greg Daniels: Yeah.
Do you guys have any special plans for the night of the big return?
Greg Daniels: We should, shouldn’t we? That’s like a really good idea.
Rainn Wilson: I heard Stephen was going to have a party, so maybe we could get all 50 of the folks on the line right now - we should just give them Steve’s address and April 10th. He’s at 1313 Luck Street. That’s Burbank, California - 91401.
Greg Daniels: Second floor in the back.
Rainn Wilson: Yeah, so come on by. Come by early, too - like in the morning even. I’m sure he’d appreciate that.
Eric Anderson: Sure.
Greg Daniels: So April 10th is the date.
Rainn Wilson: Yes.
Greg Daniels: And we’re having four - the last four episodes we run on April 3rd and I think John Krasinski is going to host it and show scenes from Weather Heads. That’s true, though.
Rainn Wilson: Really?
Greg Daniels: Yeah. And then we’re going to do - then we’re coming back with originals - all originals, all in a row starting April 10th.
CBS seems to be having quite a bit of success with their Monday night lineup following the more traditional format. Do you feel like there’s a compare and contrast between CBS’s Monday lineup and NBC’s Thursday lineup?
Greg Daniels: I feel intensely competitive with the Girls Gone Wild series of videotapes, myself - not so much the CBS lineup. But I don’t know. If you were to look at the numbers and stuff, there - we might have different demographics.
Rainn Wilson: I think yeah, the more comedy the better, you know. The more quality comedy, the better.
How do you think your comedy differs from the comedy that’s on Monday night?
Greg Daniels: Yeah, I don’t - I mean, that’s something that you could look up. I don’t have the numbers in front of me. I don’t really know…
I watch some of the stuff that’s on our night. I like 30 Rock and My Name is Earl, and stuff like that. But I actually don’t watch a lot of other - I’m usually - when I’m watching other TV, it’s like weird, you know, shows about Meerkats or something.
Rainn Wilson: Well I think they got really strong ensembles of really well-defined characters. And I think that’s important in a comedy. You can’t just have one funny person, you know, the great comedies you always remember everyone from Mary Tyler Moore, you know, not just Mary.
And I think that’s one thing that’s in common.
Greg Daniels: Yeah and they’re - I think they’re kind of adult in the sense that they’re not family shows - all those, usually except for Cosby Show. And,you cared about them.
Rainn Wilson: Yeah. And you heard about the characters. You wanted to see them do well. I don’t know about Seinfeld, but…
Greg Daniels: I think, you know, there - they didn’t do anything to make you care about them, but you did care about them. Because they did stuff that you did secretly in your own home and they were so appealing. I don’t know. I love those shows. I mean, I also liked Roseanne which was on ABC. And - what are some of the great CBS shows?
Rainn Wilson: Well I think All in the Family, which was a British…
Greg Daniels: Yeah, All in the Family was awesome.
Rainn Wilson: That was a British import as well.
Greg Daniels: Magnum P.I., I think, was CBS.
Rainn, what does your son make of your career?
Rainn Wilson: Yeah, you know, he’s - occasionally I’ll be up on the TV screen for whatever reason - if I’m like watching myself from some talk show appearance or an episode of The Office is playing, or something like that.
And he says, that's dada. And then he goes back to whatever it was that he was doing, playing with a train or a ball - or, you know, or hitting one of our dogs with a golf club.
But yes, it seems - it’s pretty normal for him. There’s also a Dwight bobblehead up on the shelf, which he used to really be into. Now he just - he couldn’t care less about it.
What about your wife? Does she like your persona as Dwight?
Rainn Wilson: You know, she’s - my wife has a great, absurd sense of humor and she really appreciates me, you know, playing weirdoes and oddballs and she…
Greg Daniels: An accomplished novelist, I may add.
Rainn Wilson: Yes. And she is a novelist.
Has she ever expressed interest in like writing for The Office or anything like that?
Rainn Wilson: Yes, she has written a 400-page spec script. Greg, I forgot to give it to you.
Greg Daniels: It’s all prose - very densely textured prose.
Rainn Wilson: Very prose, yeah. It’s very prose-heavy. It’s really - it’s written from the perspective of Oscar’s boyfriend, Gil. And yeah, he’s - and in it he’s suffering from emphysema. It’s very moving. It’s very, very, very sad. Greg, I’ll…
Greg Daniels: Sound like Frank McCourt’s spec that I passed on. The author of Angela’s Ashes.
Rainn Wilson: Yes. He wrote a good spec like that?
Greg Daniels: It was just pretty good. It wasn’t great. But it was about the same length.
Were you able to kind of recapture the energy at all when you guys got back from the convention in Scranton?
Greg Daniels: Sure. The convention was very fun and, it was a wonderful experience to see how many thousands of fans came from all over the world and there were people from Ireland and Oregon.
People came from a really great distance. This was my first time in Scranton although we’ve done so much research on the Internet. And I was really struck by how beautiful Scranton is, which is not what we really have been portraying in here.
There’s a lot of weird kind of Scranton-specific things that we saw, that will I’m sure come into different episodes. And the entire writing staff was there and they all had different experiences at driving around and going to Scranton bars, and meeting the policewomen. Stuff like that. So I think it was very good for the creativity of everybody here.
Rainn Wilson: Really it’s a lovely town. Like there are big old buildings, 100 years old, all over the downtown - big brick buildings that have a really cool industrial look, and a lot of iron work. And stuff like that.
And there’s beautiful hills all around Scranton. It’s like down in this little valley and there’s lovely trees and hills all over the place. A very green city…Brought to you by the City of Scranton Tourist Bureau.
Greg -- do you have a favorite Office character that you like to write stories for? And I know it’s kind of awkward with Rainn right here, but you can be candid.
Greg Daniels: Well I do love the Dwight character, I have to say - and especially writing the Talking Heads, the interview segments with Dwight. when I was - when that book, what’s that survival guide book?
Basically I look at every survival guide as it’s published. I get multiple copies because my friends all go - oh, Greg would be great for this. He’d love this, you know.
My wife just got me what would MacGyver do - some book about that.
Are those talking heads segments - are those mostly scripted or improvised?
Greg Daniels: There’s usually a script to start from. And then the directors ask questions. And some of the actors - like Rainn, for example, will sometimes write stuff on his own and come in with them.
Rainn Wilson: Mostly it’s, you know, it’s just a wealth of riches and the writing is so good and so funny. There’s so many times I go in and I can’t imagine doing - even changing a word.
Greg Daniels: And yet you do.
Rainn Wilson: Recently I’ve just been taking to saying them because they’re just so spot on and you can’t really improve on it.
Greg Daniels: There’s probably the same amount of improv.
Rainn Wilson: I think the writers would like to write for Creed a lot more. I think - my sense is that, you know, Creed works best in some little doses here and there. But I think the writers really get off on how crazy that man’s brain is.
Greg Daniels: Yeah. That’s definitely a thing about comedy writers - it’s like, you know, if you were to see breakdancers and then they all take turns, you know, spinning more wildly or something.
And like what the comedy writers try to do is say the weirdest thing that they possibly can, that makes any sense.
Rainn Wilson: Cool.
Greg Daniels: People do like Creed.
How would you guys imagine a Dwight spin-off?
Greg Daniels: Well we just joke around upstairs. We talk about the detective agency. Have you heard that, Rainn?
Rainn Wilson: No.
Greg Daniels: Yeah.
Rainn Wilson: I think it would be like - in the Seventies, what was the one that was at - Dennis Weaver was on a horse and something… McCloud.
Greg Daniels: That’s great, I love it.
Rainn Wilson: Yeah. McCloud was a fish-out-of-water cop in New York City and there’s something appealing about that.
Greg Daniels: I like that. That's perfect.
Rainn Wilson: There's something appealing about just watching Dwight going in an opposite direction, not having it be a comedy or a sitcom - but just having it be a reality show about a beet farmer. Kind of like Ax Men - it’s this new hit reality show about lumberjacks. You could just watch a beet farmer.
If Dunder Mifflin went on strike, what would Dwight do? What would Dwight be doing all this time that Dunder Mifflin was on strike? And when they came back, what would life be like for him again?
Rainn Wilson: If Dunder Mifflin went on strike - you know what Dwight would do? Dwight would join the Pinkertons and he would immediately try and bust the strike. And he’d work for management.
He’d go to corporate headquarters and figure out a way to bust up the union - maybe kind of join as a secret - under a different identity and rabble rouse, and be a counteragent. But he would love to join the Pinkertons, wear one of those hats, maybe carry a derringer and be a badass.
What would the first day of work be back - be like for him?
Rainn Wilson: He would be all about sales - all about sales.
Rainn, how did you find writing the Dwight blogs?
Rainn Wilson: I loved writing them. As I said, I kind of passed the torch off to one of the writers this year. I just was getting too busy and too much on my plate. And, you know, there’s a lot more press obligations and I’m working on some screenplays and stuff like that.
But it was really fun. I - what I would love to find out is I remember Greg, when we were doing that pilot I was kind of writing a Dwight blog on the set and that was a long time ago now - 2004.
Greg Daniels: Didn’t that become the first Schrute space?
Rainn Wilson: I think it did become the Schrute - first Schrute space. And I think I was the first person to ever do a blog in character from a TV show. I could be wrong. I don’t want to take credit for something that I don’t deserve.
But it was very - it was interesting. I think the blog was the perfect outlet for Dwight because blogs are - is probably the - it’s the first terrible creation of the 21st Century.
You know, as people write about what movies they rented and what happened when they went to the drycleaners. And I think Dwight would - just loves to hold forth with a captive audience. So blogging was a perfect extension of the character.
Greg Daniels: …before the writers’ strike, the Writers Guild was doing some kind of outreach to the members and they were saying one of the things that we should ask for is that all the character blogs need to be written by the writers.
And I was like no thank you. You know, please continue to let the actors do their character blogs. But I don’t - I think it is a very rare thing to have the actors do their own blogs.
You can’t do that on every show. One of the things about this show is hiring very multitalented actors who can improv and can write, and can play seven different comedy clown instruments. That’s how you get somebody who can who you – to me as a show runner -- would be very comfortable off on his own blogging in character without me really looking at it.
Rainn, how fine a line is it for you to walk because to keep Dwight from being too ridiculous, then the comedy kind of falls apart?
Rainn Wilson: Yeah, I was - just the other day I was shooting a scene with Steve and I just had - Greg, you saw part of that scene. You were watching it for a different reason.
But all I had to do was like run into Steve’s office and then I ran into Steve’s office - into Michael Scott’s office as Dwight. And I turned to Steve and I was like wow, I just ran into your office like I was a cartoon character.
Greg Daniels: I’ll tell you one thing, though…I was in the other room listening with all the writers and I don’t know exactly at which run, but (Jen Salata) said, "Oh my god, just - Rainn just did the funniest run." And she was saying that was her favorite part of the whole scene.
Rainn Wilson: … that’s probably the one you’ll use. But it’s - yeah, you always have to - I always have to - we always do that. We kind of check in with each other and we’ll go oh right, we’re not doing a comedy.
Like we can’t - let’s tone down the broadness here and make it more real. And of course, the editors always use the broadest takes that we ever do.
Greg Daniels: Well the thing is - I also think when you look at the show when you look at a real office, once you get to know the people who are in the office, you realize how bizarre they can be.
People can be very bizarre. And I think that it certainly has been my experience - like I hear, I don’t know, I probably shouldn’t say this. But I remember finding out just about these women that used to work with my mom who were also bikers. And you couldn’t write some of the stuff that they were doing because it would just seem too implausible.
There was a businessman who came in to watch The Office being filmed and I think he had won it at some auction. It was a friend of a friend of Steve’s or something like that.
And this guy was like, he - it’s like Michael Scott came in to watch Michael Scott being filmed. And he was like - he was giving Steve notes. He was giving Steve acting notes. He was giving Steve Carell acting notes.
This was guy was like an investment banker who works in an office. And he’s like hey, really great to meet you. I heard you had some stuff - hey, I really liked the take when you did blah, blah. That was funnier than the other take.
When John Krasinski - the very, very beginning of the show to do a little method acting research, he took some friends to Scranton and they filmed the footage that was in - is in our opening sequence and they also filmed a lot of interviews. He went to paper companies. One of the salesmen at one of the paper companies just started doing some of his voices, his impressions for John. And he had…
Rainn Wilson: And we have it on videotape.
Greg Daniels: Yeah, and he had like the most politically incorrect impressions. He was just doing, you know, for this videotape. And when we saw that, we were like oh, okay, so this is very, very real, you know.
Greg, you made a couple of interesting tweaks for this season - one, putting Jim and Pam back together. Did you know that that was what you were going to do all along when you broke them up?
Greg Daniels: Well I don’t really see much more than about a half a season ahead. That’s how far the headlights go on this bus. And so when Jim and Pam never were together before. This is the first time that they’ve gotten together.
What about Ryan?
Greg Daniels: Yeah. Well, that’s - I thought of that some time in Season Three. He seems like a funny statement about corporate America - just how the guy with a business school degree manages to rise.
Regarding Karen, will she be making any upcoming appearances in the next six episodes or beyond that?
Rainn Wilson: Well I think that she’s coming back as Dwight’s love interest for the finale, right? Yeah. Please write that in. Thank you.
Greg Daniels: I think she’s…
Rainn Wilson: I think that’s right.
Greg Daniels: …fantastic, too. And we’ll see what happens. We had a nice deal with the people that did the show that she’s currently on to use her in the beginning of this season. And I think we have one more ability to use her as part of this arrangement that they made.
Because the season was short, how did you guys shorten the storylines to fit into the six remaining episodes? And were some of the stuff - maybe, do you ever carry it on to next season?
Greg Daniels: Well, you know, like we did - in the very first season, we did six episodes but they ordered seven scripts. So I had written an episode called Pet Day that never aired.
And what generally happens is whatever was good from Pet Day got chopped up and used in other episodes just because the ideas were there. We have a really fun Christmas episode that we wrote that is fun right now. But by the time, a year from now if you look back on it, you’ll realize that pieces of it are going to be used, I’m sure.
That’s okay. The process is like very creative and kind of churns, and bubbles and everything until it actually hits the air. And then that’s what happened to this group of people. But there’s a lot of other footage that the documentary shot that they just threw out for one reason or another.
What would you say to people who haven’t watched the show or who aren’t sure they’re going to get back in - what would you say to entice them to start watching on April 10?
Greg Daniels: Well I think that you don’t have to have seen the beginning because it’s really about life in an office, and the characters are pretty much based on, you know, real kinds of people.
And if they tried it in the very beginning and found it too cold or something, that problem has been addressed. I don’t know. What do you think, Rainn?
Rainn Wilson: I would say just buy the Season One DVD, it is really cheap because it was only six episodes. I would say go ahead and buy that.
Greg Daniels: Also, it’s a character comedy and usually to really appreciate a character comedy, you have to know who the characters are. So you really - most people have to watch it one or two a couple of times before they go oh, that guy is not supposed to be the normal guy. That guy is saying these weird things because he’s the weird guy, or whatever it is.
Rainn Wilson: Dwight may look totally normal, but he really is an oddball.
Rainn a quick question about the movie, "The Rocker." Can you tell us about it? And also, do you have a musical background yourself?
Rainn Wilson: Oh, gosh. Well thanks for asking about my movie. 'The Rocker' stars George Clooney as a heavy metal singer. No it doesn’t. I don’t have George Clooney in my movie.
'The Rocker' is a very funny movie. I saw it and it’s where I play a former heavy metal drummer from an up and coming heavy metal band. And I get kicked out of the heavy metal band right before they make it really big.
And then 20 years later, my life has kind of gone nowhere and I get a second shot at fame by joining my high school nephew’s garage rock band. So I wear a nice heavy metal wig and I reveal a lot of my butt crack and my torso.
We rock out and I actually learned to play the drums for the movie. I do have a musical background. I played a lot of musical instruments in high school and in college - and still do.
I really enjoyed learning and playing the drums. And it’s a really sweet - if there’s such a thing as a sweet family rock and roll comedy, this is it. It’s kind of like School of Rock with teenagers.
What were those instruments that you grew up playing?
Rainn Wilson: Well I started on piano and then clarinet. And then saxophone and bassoon. And then xylophone or bells and baritone in the pep band. And then guitar.
Greg Daniels: No tuba?
Rainn Wilson: I played a little bit of tuba. We played baritone. But it was - tuba was too hard.
Greg Daniels: Like every comedy instrument there is.
Rainn Wilson: Pretty much - yeah, every comic - every clown instrument, I learned - anything having to do with getting a laugh. And then the recorder, oddly enough, for the show The Office where Dwight is - plays recorder and guitar whenever they need some musical accompaniment.
Rainn, what research you did to prepare for your role and how much hair metal was actually in your collection before you took on the role?
Rainn Wilson: Well I - you know, I had a lot of hair metal, you know, growing up in the Eighties. It was kind of inescapable, although I was more of a - kind of punk and new wave fan than a hair metal.
But I went to high school at a hair metal high school in Shorecrest - suburban Seattle, and I heard a lot of Rat and Cinderella, and Whitesnake. And, you know, my research was - we had a drum coach who had been in a hair metal band.
It was about how a metal drummer sits behind the kit on the throne and how they interact with the crowd, and get the crowd going. And kind of how they used the double bass drum - and, you know, a lot of specifics of - that speak to, you know, a metal drummer.
I went and saw Rush. They’re not really a hair metal band, but I got to see them on their warm-up for their tour and got to meet Neil Peart and - who is probably the greatest drummer of all time. And he let me sit behind his kit and play it. So I was initiated in the world of drumming.
Greg, can you give clues to anything that’s coming up in the upcoming 'Office' episodes going forward?
Greg Daniels: Well I mean, that’s a very - kind of a charged situation where Michael has been asking Pam and Jim to come have dinner with him and Jan over and over, and over again.
And he finally manages this - through this kind of scam, to destroy all their excuses. And it just happens to be after the previous episode which is when he went to New York to try and help Jan with her deposition and he kind of blew her sort of wrongful termination lawsuit.
There’s a lot of tension between them in that episode. And then coming up we have some episodes that follow off on that.
Some of them involve the character of Ryan whose website initiative started the season off and is kind of crumbling underneath him and has gotten - for some reason has become like infested with sexual predators.
And - which is just one of the problems his website has. And we have episodes coming up where Dwight and Michael are going to have joined Ryan in some of his club-hopping New York partying and try to - I think get involved in his life a little bit more. But there’s some cool, weird things happening that I can’t talk about and, you know, you’ll just have to see it to truly enjoy all the twists and turns.
Is there any hope for Dwight and Angela? Could there be reconciliation?
Greg Daniels: Where there’s life, there’s hope.
Rainn Wilson: Good answer.
A question for Rainn - What do you think of having your own bobblehead?
Rainn Wilson: I walked by the NBC store in New York and there’s a wall of Dwight bobbleheads in the windows. It’s the number one selling thing in the history of NBC Universal merchandising.
And it’s pretty crazy. I feel like Mr. Potato Head, you know. I think in the future the - I will be known not for the character of Dwight, but just for the bobblehead.
Greg Daniels: Yeah, we’ve actually made them out of a special titanium alloy. It’s more expensive, but we want them to last so that aliens…
Rainn Wilson: Going to last for any kind of apocalypse or anything like that. Well someone could put him in a time capsule - that would be awesome. How do I find someone who is going to do a time capsule? That would be a good episode, Greg. Dwight does a time capsule. Yeah, let’s talk to NASA.
Greg Daniels: We’ll work on that. Yeah, we should try and get one of those bobbleheads on the next, mariner space program.
Is there another British project or series that you might have your eye on that’s right for adaptation for American audiences?
Rainn Wilson: East Enders, right Greg?
Greg Daniels: Yeah, Footballer’s Wives. I think it’s probably not for me to do just in terms of my growth as a person. But when Extras came out, I thought that was such a brilliant concept for a show.
It was very big here on HBO and everything. So I don’t think anyone needs to do an adaptation of it. But what a good follow-up, I though.
But I don’t know, I mean, I haven’t heard any great shows from England that are - I’ve heard some great - I’ve heard about some great sketch comedy shows, but I haven’t - I don’t know what the next big English half hour is.
Rainn, your director Peter for The Rocker is British. Did you ever have any conversations with him about particular shows that would be really cool to adapt or work on?
Rainn Wilson: No, I didn’t really talk to him about English comedies. I’ve heard some - god, I’m forgetting the name of one, recently someone told me that I had to watch, that’s really great.
Greg Daniels: Was it sketch or was it a half hour?
Rainn Wilson: I think it was a half hour on BBC America, but I’m forgetting the name of it. But I’m sure they’re all gobbled up. People, with the success of 'The Office' there’s like anything on the England, you know, airwaves - international air scoured now. I mean, Reveille just bought a show from Peru for god’s sake. You know, they just were like hey, here’s a great idea out of Peruvian television.
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