"The Office" interview

Men behind 'The Office' open up

Alicia Ritchey

Issue date: 5/11/06 Section: Arts



When "The Office" crossed the pond in early 2005, fans of the original were skeptical at the level of success it could possibly achieve. For one, it was a remake of the highly popular BBC show, and two, the failure of the U.S. version of "Coupling" was still fresh in many minds. Twenty-seven episodes later, "The Office: An American Workplace" has proven its clout by outlasting the original version and becoming one of the most popular sitcoms on primetime. The Lantern had the opportunity to speak to B.J. Novak, a co-writer of the show who also plays office temp Ryan Howard, as well as executive producer Greg Daniels about the finale, nearly burning down NBC and the future of the show.



The Lantern: Since you have become a writer on the show, what kind of impact have you had on the development of your character?



B.J. Novak: I wrote the episode "The Fire" where you get to see more of Ryan and I think that at that stage I tried to help establish him as someone who is seeing where he fits in and trying to politely stay out of trouble, sort of in a more innocent way than he would later become in the season when he was a little more frustrated and had met a little more resistance to have his own thing and stay out of the rest. But I think all the writers are pretty much of the same mind and work together on all the characters so I wouldn't even say I have that much more influence on Ryan than the other seven writers or so.



TL: Have any of the story ideas come from real office situations?



Greg Daniels: Yeah, definitely. Probably everything has come from something whether we knew it was real or not. For example, we got an e-mail from somebody who did a booze cruise in January in Chicago on Lake Michigan and they sent an e-mail saying "Oh my God, we did this in January in this frigid cruise at our office." It was something we didn't know, we just thought what a terrible time to do a cruise in January.



BN: We also went through our own sexual harassment seminar that NBC put us through as employees of NBC Universal or General Electric.



GD: And you burned some cheesy toast in the toaster and almost caused a fire.



BN: Oh my god, I did. That was after we came up with the episode. So as an actor that influenced my performance greatly because I had known the humiliation at ignited cheesy toast. So that was my real life office experience.



GD: And "The Office" Olympics was something that my office at "King of the Hill" and writers, held (an office Olympics) very similar to that.



TL: The show is scripted but how much of it is improv?



BN: My estimate is 5 to 10 percent of what makes the show and 20 percent of what is shot. I think there's a lot of improv at the end of takes led by Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson and then the other actors in the scene improvise to keep up.



TL: I should ask about the finale - you're probably not allowed to give away too much, but I know it's "supersized" which is exciting.



GD: And that, by the way, came about because a Chicago newspaper had printed something that I said in an interview ... I was kind of being a little facetious in saying we ought to supersize it because we need extra time and I don't want to have to edit it and these fans started a Web site called supersizedoffice.com and anyway they really looked at that.



TL: What can you give away?



GD: Well, it's going to be big. The basic story is they're having a charity casino night and everyone's dressing up and Michael has invited his boss, who he's carrying on a weird, unhealthy relationship with that she doesn't really want to continue but she hates herself and continues, which is playing with fire because that's his boss and the branch isn't going great. She rejects him and then he invites someone else and she decides to go anyway. It's also getting quite close to Pam's wedding.



TL: Is there going to be some crazy cliffhanger?



GD: Yeah, I can't get into that. But I'll say this, that's putting added pressure on stuff.



BN: Can I interject the funny elements of the finale? You can tell a few of the characters have noticed America's poker craze.



GD: There's a Texas Hold 'Em tournament.



BN: Basically Michael and Dwight sloppily adopt strategies they've seen on television.



TL: When developing "The Office" what measures were taken to make sure the show wouldn't follow the footsteps of what happened to "Coupling?"



GD: Well, the existence of "Coupling" was good for us because that had just happened and you can learn from some of their mistakes. One of their mistakes they did, I believe, was they didn't start writing their own episodes right away. They did verbatim British scripts for a number of episodes and they ended up getting cancelled before any of their orginal episodes aired. And I know that some of the people that worked on the show felt they started to hit their stride with their original episodes and so we went straight to original episodes.



TL: As far as longevity goes, you've already surpassed the amount of episodes that the U.K. version had. But some people are worried that if Pam and Jim get together, that will signify the end just based on the original show. I know there's a third season but how long do you think it will run?



GD: It depends, you know. I think that you can look at it as the sense of it's an office place and the people who live there are a certain type of story; or the fact it's a documentary, and if people get interested in other characters maybe that will sustain them if this other storyline drops out or something like that. That's one way of looking at it.



BN: We don't have to do anything I think based on what the British show has done. We have to tell geat stories with great characters that are very funny and we know Jim and Pam are great. We can do more with them and or more with other people. I don't think there's a specific endpoint that has to do with any one thing like the British show does.



GD: But I think it's great people care about that, the thing I like so much about this show and the English version was just it's rare you really care what happens to a TV character and it's a great compliment people are really anxious about what happens.



For fans who need their "Office" fix this summer, NBC will be offering 10 Webisodes that will be released on its Web site. In the meantime, catch "The Office" season finale, written by Carell, tonight at 9:20 on NBC. For more information visit nbc.com/The_Office.