Ben Silverman

chose to adapt it. So Ben's role was crucial. More importantly, I think he appeared in season nine as Jim's athlete coworker Isaac, So I mean there was that too, um all joking aside. Ben brings incredible insights into the business side of things, the biz, if you will, and he has amazing stories about the fights that we're going on with the network behind the scenes, while the rest of

us were just acting like idiots on set. Anyhow, Ben has become such a dear friend to me, and even after all of these years, I still learn so much every time I talked to him. I am sure that you will as well. So here he is Ben Silverman, Bubble and Squeak I love it. Bubble and squeakan bubble and squeaker cookie every month, left over from the nut before. Ye Heyboddy, I don't sound very good. I think you sound really sexy. Oh God, listen to you. How are you?

I'm good, great to see you. Let me kiss. How's your locks? Just get a little locks and some onion and I'm good. I can practically tasting it over here. I'll take one more, but then we'll start your volumes on the left. Is everyone ready for us in the back? Yeah? And the only reason we haven't already begun the interview in a casual fashion it's because you were eating a bagel. Thank you for that. All right, I'm about to start.

Let me chew it out. I mean, it was fun to go back because as well as we know each other, there's so much of your like PREMI history, Like I think that your life didn't start until you met me, but you actually did things before, you know, before I came into your life. So you were the youngest division

head in charge of international packaging at William Morris. That makes you, like, what twelve years old at the time, I was twenty five years old, and I got named into that position and around twenty seven or twenty eight and was in London working for William Morris four years from I left there in ninety nine to go to New York. Okay, so then you're in New York. How did you discover the UK version of the Office. I was at my friend Henrietta Conrad's house. I was not

an agent. I had left being an agent where I had found everything from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? To Cracker Queer as Folk and had translated them into America as the packaging agent. And I left back by Barry Diller to start my own company called REVELI and I had just begun Revenly and went over to London for a work trip and was staying at my friend Henrietta Conrad's house, and we were watching television and I was literally, I think, flipping the channels and I came

on to the Office. This is episode one or two of the UK season one Office, and I was watching at first wondering if it was for comedy or for real, then quickly recognized what it was doing, single camera, no laugh track, fo documentary with people who felt real. And I kept watching and started laughing and it's really hard

to make me laugh. And I was falling in love with it show right in that moment, and then I started thinking about it the next day in the morning, and I asked Henrietta if she knew Ricky Gervais and she said no, but her friend Dan Maser did, and we organized and had dinner with Dan that night. Wait, so, twenty four hours after you after you see it for the first time on television, you're having dinner with someone who could get you to Ricky. Yes. And additionally I

also wanted to be with Dan. I mean, Dan was Sasha Baron Cohen's partner, and Lag was on television, was here in the UK. But so I'm with Dan Maser. Dan is lovely, brilliant and of his own right, and I start peppering the questions about the office and he gives me Ricky's cell phone number. And so the next day I call Ricky around eleven o'clock in the morning and introduced myself on the phone and say I'd love

to meet you. Are you in town? He goes, actually, yes, come meet me in Soho at the Starbucks this afternoon, and I coordinate a meeting and I spent an hour with Ricky talking about the Office, and very quickly we got along because we both love television, and he truly was making me laugh even in those moments over over the coffee at the Starbucks. And so he clearly had chosen the location though of the Starbucks, because he then says to me, Oh, good news, my agent is right

around the corner. Let's go meet with him. So it was almost like he met me confirmed I was okay. The conversation was interesting, and then we walked over and met with Duncan Hayes, his agent, and then Duncan and I began a three month process two secure the rights. And it wasn't until Duncan help me unlock it all that I realized both the BBC and Ricky controlled the rights. I needed Ricky and Stephen Merchant to actually get it done and agitate to get it done, otherwise it was

never going to get done. It. So you you deal with the BBC, and you deal with Ricky and Stephen. You have this partnership in place, and where do you go into the United States. I immediately start making phone calls and saying, are you aware of the show The Office? Do you know what it is? Do you think it would interest you? And this is probably now a month after or so, and the show has started to gain buzz. It's aired its cycle in the UK, it's initial six episodes,

and so it has an awareness. Now it's a thing, not a big thing, but to anyone in England it's in the television industry, you're aware. So I'm I'm back at the States reaching out to people. One of the incredible things about Hollywood, which was a huge advantage for me to do well, was that people in Hollywood are pretty insular and don't like to travel. They think you need a passport to get from Burbank to Beverly Hills.

That is travel. And so many people at this time in American television had no clue or connection about anything beyond l A. And only one exact at the time knew what I was talking about was a guy named Nick Grad who worked at f X, and he knew what the show was and he loved the show. Kevin Riley was running X at the time. I had gone to Less Moonvest he passed. I went to gayl Berman, she passed. Immediately. Didn't get it. HBO said we'll never

do a remake. They clearly have altered that thinking, but at the time they were like, we won't do a format, and Showtime wasn't doing shows like this. I didn't go to ABC because I just knew it wasn't ABC. And I was starting to tease NBC with it, and Kevin then got named the head of NBC and I bring it up to him and I say, would you want to do it here? And Kevin says absolutely. Little did he know he was actually my only buyer by that time, he was the only one everyone else of television. Everyone

else had passed, now are you? And Kevin's like, let's do it, like, let's let's make it. You know, I'll give you a pilot movement. And then Kevin's boss, though, who was very involved in his life, Jeff Zucker, didn't really like it that much because it was a single camera, no last documentary. I got it like it was a hard pill for them to swallow. But I was also like, they didn't want the game show back in primetime. When

I brought Millionaire, everyone thought that was cheesy Daytime. I'm like, no, no, this will change TV. You know, you gotta look at it from how to push the genre and push the envelope so that you can expand versus you know, always play for defense, right, And I was like, this is another level and this is potentially transformative of television and with that can come great reward. You saw that at the time that it could be transformative, Yes, you know,

you have those moments. At that moment, I don't know, like everything was possible, Like I really saw the transformation of television before it was happening. Wow. Okay, So you get a pilot commitment from Kevin at NBC. So now you have to put a creative team together. So where

do you start looking at that moment? So William Morris represented the BBC because I had signed the BBC to William Morris of course when I was there, of course as an agent before I became a producer, and I had done the deal with them, so they were part of the package, so to speak. But they didn't really have many good writers for the show at that at the time. Ari Emmanuel had the good writers. So I called him up and they said, Ari, I have the office.

It's incredible. I will we meet with your guys. But when you set me up with your best guys, I have to organize for Ricky and Stephen some meetings for them to help determine who we're all going to partner with and choose. And Ari was like, absolutely, let's do it, you know, and he set me up with a number of meetings, and I immediately connected with Greg. You know, I just felt his genius and his thoughtfulness and real rigorous approach. And he also was so anxious about doing it.

He kept saying to me, well, people love the British one, you know what, I can't make it better, you know, I'm I don't want to be compared to it. And I had done a show just had aired while I was working on this, called Coupling, which was an adaptation of a British show much more in the kind of Friends vernacular. It was almost as if Friends had been

adapted adapted to the UK. Yeah, exactly, And that show had been perceived really poorly in America, and Greg was worried that was going to happen, and all the comparisons, so the halo of Coupling's failure was impinging his ability to kind of wrap his arms around the office, and the preconceived notion of everyone's saying, why would you adapt that it's hallowed ground, etcetera, etcetera. So then I go to having to defend wanting to remake this great work.

And I was explaining to Greg because he was who I now really wanted to do it, and he suddenly was getting some cold feet based on the concern of adapting something so so now like critically beloved. And I said, no one in America has seen this one. It's too dark, too narrow, and not gonna play to a wide American audience unless we do a more optimistic adaptation, informed by your vision and your ownership of the world. And there are millions of great books that are adapted all the time.

Do you want to adapt the worst piece of ship? Are you trying to adapt a Pulitzer Prize winning novel? And the correlation between a da Vinci code and a da Vinci code is much higher then not, you know. And so having you like explain the history of expanding I p that was successful was rather frustrating, and I kind of was thrown by today. Now everyone if something's great, they want to remake it. You know, it's totally different.

So I go through all this work, and not only that, I then I have Ricky and Stephen come over to l A to my office on the universal lot of the time in our little bungalows, and I have them in the office and we're going through the meetings and at the end they they're like, yes, you know, Greg Daniels is great. And then from there I then have to get NBC to sign off, and Kevin says, has Greg done any live action stuff? You know, he's great in animation, but who else he got? And I'm kind

of like, well, he's who we got. He's really good, and Ricky and Stephen like, and so Kevin said, okay, let's meet and talk and immediately understood and connected with Greg on him adapting it. And then within that meeting even it immediately turns to casting because that is such a key sitting across from the beloved Kevin Um, that is such a he to this show's architecture, which also, I mean, telling the story just reminds you how many millions of elements have to come together to create any

thing meaningful or successful. Right? So who who Who's discussed in that meeting? Me right, it's all about Brian Baumgartner. Okay, all right, now, So in in the meeting, we're just talking about archetypes and whether we cast famous people or unknowns to play with the faux documentary. Did you have an opinion about keeping the integrity? I just wanted it right, but I knew that the characters and who we cast

had to be real and not too pretty. And that was another leap of faith from the broadcast network, because everything at the time was friends, right, everybody looked a certain way. It was not just friends. It was friends and bay Watch. It was like it was friends and

it was friends and bathing suits. That was like, that was the landscape of TV be in that moment and heading on a town where spiral of beauty and superficiality at that time, and so talking about those actors, we immediately brought on Alison Jones to be our casting partner.

We loved what she had done. And Judd Apatao and his world and model was kind of the one other framework we were looking at as we were building out the show, and the actors he was casting and the stories he was writing and the comedy he was creating had a similar energy and feel and a sense of discovery.

The other thing that we talked about with Kevin and that Greg agreed with me on is one of the things that television used to do incredibly well and still does do, but less people give it the opportunity to is create stars. It's a place you have someone in your living room or in your bedroom, and you're watching and connecting with them every week, and you can fall in love with them and in a way you want to have discovered them. It's not just a movie idol

coming into your kitchen. There's like this sense of ownership. I see it when I walk around with you. Obviously your characters beloved, Brian, but you know, the way people treat a television star who's kind of grown up with them is so familial, totally and natural. So that was part of what also was the pitch to the office, like we can create those stars here, right because it's it is different than, you know, than film stars, because

people are watching you in their bedrooms. They're watching you, they're they're not high on a huge billboard. Absolutely, Um, what do you remember about the casting? So so we brought on Alison Jones and we opened up in our bungalow, turned our conference room into a casting room, and we began that process. Our immediate shortlist for the actor lad and lobby by him was Bob oden Kirk to play the Michael Scott character. And we were into him for it. It was a real thing, but we weren't fully there.

And then we started casting. We and we found started collecting talent. Krasinski. We found it on a tape out of New York. I think he had literally just graduated Brown and characters like yours and your arrival into the show, and Fullness and Leslie and you know, all these wonderful character actors, Craig Robinson, you know, just all these brilliant people. And obviously there's Jenna Fisher. Jenna had such a accessible sweetness and sadness to her. And I think of it.

I mean, I don't know how old she was at the time or John, but they felt like children, you know, they felt like kids. I was a kid, but they were younger than me. I mean I was only thirty at the time and they must have been twenty, you know, so it was like, really you really felt all this innocence and warmth and life coming through them. And then obviously we all grew up together. Okay, so we we

still don't have We still don't have Michael Scott. I am panicking and I get a call from Stacy Snyder, who was head of Universal Pictures at the time. And Stacy calls me up on the lot and says, Ben, I love the Office and she always would talk to me about it. It's so brilliant, it's so awesome. And she said that she absolutely loved it. And she had an idea for me. What about Steve Carrell four the lead?

And she said, have you seen Bruce Almighty? Watch him be the anchor in and do this fifteen minute thing during the show. It is the most brilliant comedic tour diforce I've seen. And we're developing a movie for him, forty year old virgin and I think he's going to be a major star. I had seen Bruce Almighty, it was great. I knew exactly what she was talking about. So I start to educate Greg and Greg goes, yes,

I know Steve Carell. He's on TV, he's got he's got a series Come to Papa, which he was like the fourth lead of a short lived NBC sitcom. And I call Kevin Riley and I'm like, you've got this guy in your show, But he has to be our guy, and he goes, you didn't hear from me, but I don't think I'm to Papa will come back. But I can't tell anyone. So he told you that at the time. Yeah, he basically let me know, but no one else kind of knew. It was only like Kevin and I who knew.

And it was very stressful, unbelievable. So how did you decide on Ken Kappas? So Ken forget who recommended him to us, But he had done the Bernie Bernie Mac show and in the Middle. He had a good reputation and Malcolm in the Middle had a lot of the energy stylistically we were going forward, but I still was worried that we didn't have enough of the reality show

architecture and how we were going to produce it. And so I introduced Greg to Randall Einhorn because Randall he had come out of Mark Burnett's camp, and I had hired him for other shows or worked with him on on other reality shows, and I knew we needed somebody from that world stylistically to shoot in that way, but also so that we wouldn't set everything up as slowly as traditional scripted comedy was produced, and Randal ended up

staying with us for five years. Five years, but he helped four jar style and it was an essential element. So putting together Greg Daniels, can co office, Randoline Horn, getting bad cast together, and now we got to shoot a pilot. How much of the pilot were you around?

I was around for the whole pilot, right. What do you any anything specifically you remember about the shooting of that Once the team was a ssembled, I remember finding elements of it really funny and believing wholeheartedly in the cast. I think the storyline we chose ended up being not necessarily the best one to set it up. All I remember, Visavi. The decision to go with the underlying pilot script is we had spent so much time with Ricky and Stephen, and had studied with them in the UK at the

Groucho Club for two days. Because I remember us going over and and spending time with them as they downloaded this about all things British Office. We not only fell in love with them, we fell in love with the

British show. So I think we thought it's brilliant. Let's stick with that brilliance, and that was our initial feeling was to respect the underlying almost too much and not allow our ability to breathe the air into it we needed to do for the amount con adaptation maybe, but I think ultimately every pilot has its problems, right because

you're trying to set up so much. But what that pilot did was set up that a documentary crew is coming in to film the employees at this paper company, and ultimately, in order to start there and to end where we did with the documentary coming out and everybody seeing themselves on camera having been followed for nine years, it had to start there. Now. How it was written or if it, you know, directly translated from from the British version, I don't know, but don't you think that's important.

I like a set up. I think cinematically most movies you get the bill to get to the finale. In television there's always a debate do you enter a series midswing or do you started off with a inception story? And so I agree with you in that setup, but I feel like we could have open in a little bit more of what is specific to Scranton in America

and to those characters. If you end up discovering what the actors enjoy play too, and become as you know them over nine years and two d plus episodes, and so the writing becomes easier and better, and the performances become more in tune and character based, and that takes time, and it's part of what's great about the new wave of television is the straight two series and putting them all out so that they have a chance to breathe and be discovered. At that time, you didn't have that luxury.

This was a day and time when the heads of the networks read the ratings at like four in the morning of what happened the night before, and I had a phone number in my phone as an actor, and I would give the weekly reports on Friday morning at like eight am. I would be in the makeup trailer going okay, four point seven last night, guys, And that put this blah blah blah exactly exactly that process, and that was reactive programming. Decisions were definitely fear invoking. And

then we launched the show. When we finally got a series picked up off the pilot, it was for five more episodes. It's crazy what we got a six episode run that didn't happen that is total We're only doing this because you're torturing us to do it. That is not we We wholeheartedly believe in your show. But they then put us on after the Apprentice, which was very strange. At the time. We aired later than normal because they thought the Apprentice, set in a workplace environment, was like

the right match for the show. Did you agree. I like that the Apprentice had a larger circulation of audience, and The Apprentice, actually, like all of NBC shows, had a slightly higher concentration of urban dwelling fans. It was always the history of NBC versus like the history of CBS, which had been traditionally a little more role, which is probably why you got Dukes of Hazzard on one and Hell Street Blues on the other, which only reinforced it.

But I kind of thought The Apprentice maybe was a good leading because there wasn't a lot else on the network to draw from. So we launched out of that and we did well in the beginning, but then we started to go down every week for the whole six episode run. Okay, so going back a little bit, but we shoot the pilot. You know, what was going on behind the scenes from your perspective and dealing with a

network to try to get a pick up for the show. Well, I I was doing everything I could to get it picked up, and I was begging, borrowing, and stealing and literally walking the hallways of NBC cajoling any executive there to support the show. And I'm getting resistance. I'm getting it's a small show, it's a quirky show, attested horribly,

and I'm able to get some creative help. I work with a guy named Bill Carter who's at the New York Times, and Bill and I had grown to know each other and he had featured me in a couple other spots, and he was a fan of the office and was aware very early on that I was working on it, and I was personally excited about it, and I knew he liked it, and so he became somebody inside the press corps who was willing to champion it.

And that became a valuable asset for us as we went about trying to get this quirky comedy, this unique peace picked up. So how did you find out that NBC was going to order more show? So I get an invitation from my friend David Bennie off the co creator Game of Thrones George Martin and Dan Ice, and he has written Troy, the Brad Pitt starring film Eric Bannah.

Brad Pitt and Troy is going to premiere at the can Film Festival, and would I want to be his guest because his wife, now Amanda Pete girlfriend I believe at the time maybe you have girlfriend at the time, is unable to attend with him. And I immediately say, of course, and I am so excited about it. And then he adds another element, which is and then from there we're going to go to the premier in Tokyo,

where I've never been. After we pick up Brad Pitt in Amsterdam where he's shooting one of the first Oceans movies. So we're on this giant plane with Eric Banna and Brad Pitt and Wolfgang Peterson and Dave and I are just like watching Brad sleep like we're not even you know, just like looking to breathe. You know, we're totally movie star stupid ide And I remember we land in Siberia.

You cannot make this up. Land in Siberia. I remember getting off the plane and just a layover up to get gas because it's such a long trip from Amsterdam to Tokyo. And as we get off, I'm literally looking at a guy with a collection a cough in a in a fur hat and a red star on it. And in Mother's Siberia and my phone works, and I'm checking in and I'm looking down and I have like a bazillion messages and I reached them and they say we will pick up the show, but we're only picking

up five more. Wow. And we got our five episodes pick up on top of the one episode we'd already made for you know, probably the lowest price in the in that time, in the history of modern TV. That's unbelievable. One other thing you spoke earlier about you felt the show was transformative, you know, to share with you my experience of shooting the second episode we ever did, Diversity Day, and being in that room and saying, if America gives

this show a chance, we could do something really special. Yeah, now we You're absolutely right in Diversity Day is still one of my favorite episodes of TV. Let alone in the office and is so funny and dangerous and different in real and in a non PC way. It was

just laugh out loud funny. It was undeniable exactly. And that's you know, all of the sort of issue episodes where we tackle healthcare in a culture of no gay marriage and don't ask, don't tell, we do gay witch hunt Like I'm just so incredibly proud of that legacy for our show. Oh absolutely. And the smartest guy in the office ran the house. And I always loved that dynamic of Darryl and Michael because you knew Darryl should

be running that office if he wanted to. And it was so important to me to have that in the show because that's America. And I feel like the show, through comedy, really pushed all of that around. And I have cared super deeply about all of that my entire life as the son of a gay woman and grandson of a civil rights activist and union organizer, specifically the

Pullman Porters Union. A Philip Randolph and my grandfather, Max Nelson built up the Pullman Porters Union, the first black labor union in it in America, and we looked at Archie Bunker as the parallel, and we're informed by Archie Bunker's bad behavior and all of the family and what it did to open up doors for people like George Jefferson in television land and that meat had relationship and everything that was within that we were now doing in

the workplace. That's amazing. So we've talked about the pilot. We finished season one, we finished a whopping six episodes, and then we wait for the upfront. What did you think about our chances to be picked up? I was incredibly hopeful and obviously passionate about the prospects of the show, but it was still not by any means a sure thing.

And if anything, there was a sense among the senior management and a lot of the more tradition sationalists that jeff no, but just in general like it's it was more institutional rejection, like because there were people in the marketing department, the promo department, like they didn't understand it. How do we market it? How do we promo it? How do we sell is it? Is it a documentary? Is it a reality show? And no one was a star. There was no star at that point, so there were

a lot of challenges to its second season happening. And were you having to fight, like were you going into NBC and and fighting to get that second season or was it more you were just waiting to see what happened. There was a beyond fight. And I do remember going into Jeff's office with the nod Day brothers, who we're going to be making the nine eleven documentary, and I

used that meeting to also push for the office. And I remember in the Nowadays can tell You we had a good meeting, and then I brought up that they had to pick up the show, like it had to happen. It was too good. They please pick up the second season. You have to do this, and from that I was thrown out of his office. But I remember being called and I looked down on my phone and I get a phone call and says, we will pick up not

twenty two episodes for next season. We're only picking up six and you have to make it for half the price. And I needed everyone to take less money on these episodes. And so I remember my first call was to Ricky and Stephen because I thought they would say fuck you, like I you know, we like. But I was like, we have a chance to do this, and everyone said yes. Wow. Now when did you make the deal with Apple to

get the show on iTunes? The Apple It was made by NBC right at the beginning of Apple with Eddie Q and the team and Apple, and they came to us about it and we just said, yes, please. Well, we didn't expect would be that Apple would then educate a whole new audience but also market to us. They got behind the show. They kind of treated it as their own and they also then began rolling out later

their own stores, and we were the poster set. For music, it was YouTube, and for entertainment video it was The Office. I remember walking into Apple stores and seeing the Office on billboards before really we were a big hit and and going like, wow, this is awesome. Apple treated us better than our network and maybe better than we deserved at that moment, but they saw something in the show too. Apple totally embraced the show and they loved it, and

Eddie Q loved the show. You know, they actually liked the show, and we did a trade out with Apple. We did a whole episode, the Christmas episode, which is one of the great episodes of the Office and one of my favorite favorite episodes, and the trading of the iPod it was incredible and that was a huge thing for them, and they didn't pay for it, but it was like the connectivity, and then they ended up giving us all the computers and kind of investing in the

show as well as an advertiser and supporter. And then they did the iTunes thing, so they were always leaning in and so it really had that fun give and take. So then the end of season two, moving into season three, we're nominated for a slew of Emmy's and when the Best Comedy Emmy, what what did that? What did that mean for you and your feelings about what the show could be from the from the beginning, it was the greatest. It truly was, and the Emmys at that time were

even bigger than they are now. And it was just an amazing, amazing night. It was a celebration for all of us and everyone involved. We were so joyous, we were so young, we were so happy, and it was a dream come true on every level. I remember holding that trophy on that stage and I don't think I let go of it for the entire night. And now I would think, oh, it's not it's so material in a way, but at the time it just was so we made it, Like mom, we made it. Yeah, that's great.

The business model of TV you talked about because you believed in the show, doing the show for less and trying to find a way. How did that change? How did the business change? Once the show became successful, it became a darling of the network and important, and through that not beyond important. It was still not at the level of other hits in the history of broadcast comedy. Its ratings were good, but they wasn't the number one show on TV ever, But there was really nothing they

wouldn't do to support it. And Universal also was building a relationship on the movie side with Krell and other actors in the series, and they worked with us to accommodate everyone's schedules, their desires to make movies and how that would impact budget and where they would find the money for the show. But the show in and of itself never spiraled out of control costwise. It was a very contained show in its invention. We were never going

to blow up a building. What we did do is we opened up our storytelling and we started to do We started to exit the building a lot more. Right, What was the logic behind doing the hour long episodes? Why were we doing those? Well? The show had a cinematic story telling feel, if not look, which was based on, you know, a real narrative satisfaction in every episode, and within that we could use more time to tell more story. And we also had so many characters who could be

utilized across that length of time. But I think the main reason was we were the number one show in the network, and if they could have had nineteen hours of it, they would have had nineteen hours of it, let alone one hour of it. And clearly the show uniquely was both drama and comedy. It was part soap opera, you know, workplace soap opera with all these characters, part drama with the emotional depth, and then obvious celerity and comedy.

So in May of two thousand seven, year named co chairman of NBC, Why why did you take that job? I thought it would be a fantasy to run a network as it had been five years earlier when my mentor, Brandon Tartakoff had had the job, and I really did see where the business was going, and believe I knew how to turn this ship for the future, because it was obvious to me that the future was coming hard and fast, and technology was going to enable an absolute

transformation of how people consumed content. And I was eager to lead that transformation. I was rudely awakened to the reality that no one wanted to change the status quo because have been working so well for so many of the people who were part of it, And there was real fear in the decisions I was making. What do you mean you'll go straight to series and an idea? How could you shoot something overseas? How could you do a game show here? How could you do shows that

are multiple days in a row. What was particularly challenging was having to disconnect from the Office, my beloved show and The Biggest Loser, my other creation on the network at the time, and not be able to connect in this as deeply as I wanted because of a perceived conflict of interest. And I kept saying, those are the only reasons I got hired, along with Ugly Betty and Tutors, and how I was able to bring them in and grow the two biggest nights on the air by far.

We're from the two projects that I had on the network. Being chairman of NBC. Was that a dream of yours from your childhood? Yeah? I always had wanted to run NBC specifically, it was a network I had grown up watching I love Cheers, Hill Street, Blues st Elsewhere. I

love the idea of Dirty Rock. I didn't realize that I would have to basically just service the corporate part of it, because that was the only way that we could keep it moving without real pressure, and it took me away from the part I love, which was the

creative part. But we I was still able to green light parks and recreation and community and all these wonderful shows, and do as good at work as I could, and break down walls like make deals with windows with direct TV, and do the straight to series and bring an advertise, do everything needed to keep it profitable and running, but without the momentum of being able to choose all my own content because the strike happened, so I couldn't get

any development going, which was such a bummer because that's the only fun part of running that job. And so then you're in that job and not even able to do anything truly creatively lead. Everything has to be kind of engineered, and so it takes a lot of the fun way and all of that together, plus the entrenchment at the time of the rest of the system. I learned in that moment it's not always best to be

first at doing something. You might want to wait for someone else to do it, and then you can do it second and learn or have the constituents or the entrenched be a little more tenderized for the moment. Right, Um Parks and Rock You Green Let in April two

thousand nine. Now, it was this show from Greg and Mike Sure was originally planned to be a spin off, right, Yes, we were talking about having Amy Poehler and potentially her husband at the time will our Net be seeded into the show to do a family like spinoff, and then Mike Shure came up with the dig out of that, which was set in that world of small town politics.

And I had made an overall deal with Amy Poehler, who I was pursuing to be part of the office originally, but then she leaned in and went into that and Greg helped realize it and partner with it with Mike got it. Were you concerned about Greg that he was going to be too split? Were you concerned about that?

I felt like Greg had built a bench on the office that included people like Mike Sure who wanted to go create their own shows and to keep connected to that and at the time running the network to keep those talented people connected to the network. It was really good and valuable. And I wish we could have converted the Office like Dick Wolfe converted Law and Order and been the whole night of comedy, because I do think the Office is like a universe of characters and style

choices that can map out many more narratives. Right, did you have anything specifically to do with Jen Silata and Paul Lieberstein, Paul and Jen and everyone that we had hired, But Greg had then really nurtured and mentored on the job. Even though they were accomplished as they arrived, they were

trained by Greg in Gregg's methodology and process. And our editors, who were such an important part of that show, also brought a lot of dexterity, and you know, became directors of episodes, and cameraman became directors, and actors became directors, and writers became actors, and so you had this great matrix of people who knew how to do each other's

jobs and support each other. And to keep the talented people connected to you, you have to either promote them or give them more responsibility, or they go do something else, or maybe they'll go do something else with you if it makes sense. So that's all part of it, right. Did you feel like anything changed with Paul and Jen leading the show or did you feel like it kept operating? You know, with Greg's everything about the show changed when Steve Correll left the show. When Steve left, that was

the seismic shift in its progression. And I think the early energy of the show was just so fresh and ridiculous that it has to me some of the highest comedic hurdles and delivery and funny because then you learn to actually know these characters are going to go as far as they went in the beginning UM, and then it becomes more soap opera and familial, but something different, And I think Jen and Paul loved the characters and knew that. I feel like with UM Steve's departure though,

there was just less son in the room. When did you find out he was leaving? I was shocked that they couldn't work it out. And when I the story of how the network went about its process with him after the fact, it made me so depressed how they had kind of blown something that they could have saved. And I think in that moment. Also, Greg not being there to drive that also meant that we would lose Steve. Yeah, Um, did you have any doubt that the show could go

forward without him? I knew the show could continue. I think it didn't own its best stride and lost steam. But had we used it to force even further reinvention or different casting choices, I don't think we did anyone a favor by bringing in James Spader. Neither James nor the show. Um. And he's so talented and clearly had the blacklist one second later, but that feels custom made for him. You know, the way he played that character on our show didn't breathe as well and didn't work

as well in our format. Right, What did getting to hundred episodes signify to you? It was validating to reach that milestone, but when you're in youth, you don't think of things that way. It's interesting to reflect on that number today and appreciated as an accomplishment, But I'm very much today and tomorrow, And so while I was in it, I wasn't thinking about it's hundredth episode. I was thinking

about its next, the next hundred more. You left NBC shortly after that in the summer of two thousand nine. What was the context of you leaving? I just knew I didn't want to remain at NBC anymore. It wasn't my cup of tea to use our our britts expression. I didn't enjoy being part of a organization was just purely focused financially at that time, and needing to get so much money out of our part of the business to support other parts of the business like ge capital.

We also, when I was running NBC had come into the greatest recession of our lives. And that recession, you know, cause General Electric to panic and freeze and caused every advertiser to stop spending and caused us to not get to make as many episodes of shows and other projects at the time. Also, so I was starting to think, Oh, my goodness, how much is out of my control in this job at NBC with five zillion employees and General Electric and all of these elements attacking and driving me

crazy into daily places. And then the top grass just wants you to, you know, save as much money as possible, and the writers are striking and a war with you, and none of it is in your control or where your choices and so I knew I didn't want to do it anymore. And so I remember quitting and being just so excited to quit and uh and telling Jeff Sucker, I just don't have a stomach ache when I'm in here. I don't. I don't want to be here, you know, And I said, I'll help you manage it, but you know,

I gotta, I gotta. I can't be here anymore. And I've delivered you a lot. Right um season nine, did you think that it was time for the office to end? I felt like people were losing some steam and there was a little bit of the first time a little friction that was this season eight or season not like the lead up the lead up to season nine, and I think there was just like a collective kind of lack of focus and so it all just kind of

it didn't there's no friction point. It just kind of was starting to not have the momentum that it had previously. And then the way to almost reignite that moment and was around its coming to an end, and that was like a way to reinvent and re light it because it gave everybody purpose. Well my understanding, Greg essentially confirmed this that the documentary is revealed and we see the characters responding to that um that from there there was

there was no way to go back. Yes, we broke the wall, and he had planned to break the wall, and then he had planned to finally blow the wall up and pull back, and that projection became the inevitable result. Right. Do you remember being on set the last day? I remember being on set at the end and just thinking, why wasn't I on set more? What an idiot to have not been here and present, to have enjoyed this ride and instead to pursue unfulfilled dreams of network domination

and ambition. I could have been here a part of the greatest comedy in history, but the coolest people around, and I'm like an absentee landlord coming to visit. What are you most proud of? I'm so proud of the show's natural diversity and it's success with so many different groups, and its ability to tell stories that kind of celebrated the true America, which is what we see in real workplaces,

which is everyone represented. And I love that about the show that it did in the truthful, honest way through comedy, and that made me so happy about it. And I always returned to the fact, as wistful as I am talking about the soap opera of the show, it was so fucking funny. The Office is genuinely laugh out loud funny, and it is immediate, serious, high pitched comedy. It is a lot of people sitting on an airplane giggling at

the same time, watching their own monitors. Why do you think, why is The Office right now, five years plus after we've shot our last shot, Why is it the most watch show on television right now? I think that The Office is so textured and deep, has so many characters who appealed to so many different people because those characters represent so many different people, and it literally had a larger ensemble. There were more actors and more characters for

people to connect with. But it also meant there was more depth of story and more stories that could be told because you had a richer ensemble to service and who could service the show. And I think that people kind of you know, understand that that world so well that it makes them really connect to it and they're living it in their own way, and through this they can find escape and comedy and joy. There's something anachronistic too,

a warmer time, and I missed that time. And it must be one of the reasons our show is so resonant with the new generation, because they are in search of this kind of family and this kind of warmth and truth in a world that's just filled with bad noise and bad news. But the main reason is because of its quality. And you have to have now seen it or watched or discovered it because someone is going to bring it up, mention it, wear a T shirt, send you a gift, and you have to now be

part of it. You can no longer hide well. Everybody who worked on it owes you tremendous thanks. You're the person respond posible for bringing this to the United States, and basically everybody who was involved with it owes you so much for that. What are you thankful for? The Office is the greatest gift, and I am so happy I was one of its principles and architects and got to work with such fine people, but got to connect

with a permanent piece of culture. And I'm excited that I have something I can share with my son and daughter without even knowing where they end up. I know they're going to like that show, and it brings me great joy and brings me some calm to know that that has been entered into the book. Awesome, there you go. Thank you, Thanks Buddy, love you great work. God you got me all right, Bud, love you so much. I thank you. There you have it. The man, the myth,

the legend, Ben Silverman, Ben, what can I say? I appreciate you so much. I cannot even imagine how different my life would be if you had not taken that trip to London, flipped onto the Office and stalked Ricky Gervais to a Starbucks all those years ago. So thank you, and speaking of all of those years ago, Tomorrow is a very special anniversary for the Office. It's the Office is sweet sixteen, Yes sixteen, glorious years since our very

first episode premiere. So as an anniversary gift to you, our listeners, we have we have a special episode with some exciting guests and much much more. So come on back tomorrow and listen to our sweet sixteen anniversary episode. As always, thank you for joining me and have a

great day. The Office. Deep Dive is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Lang Lee Our senior producer is Tessa Kramer, our associate producer is Emily Carr, and our assistant editor is Diego Tapia. My main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton, and the episode was mixed by Seth o'landski