Brent Forrester

hitters in the writer's room at that point. So how did he survive? Well? With the help of an army survival manual. That's right, he used an army survival manual to survive the writer's room at the Office, and eventually he became a real key part of the team and wrote some amazing episodes, including one that several of the other writers consider to have in it the best moment in the entire show. I'm not talking about the chili scene, but but Brent did direct that scene, all of which

we talked about in great detail very shortly. I am so glad I got to sit down with him, because he is so smart and thoughtful, and he was super candid about the writer's room, both the good and the bad. I know you guys are gonna absolutely love this one. So here he is Mr Brent Forrester Bubble. I love it, bub bubb this quicker cook at every moon lift over from the Nutty. Oh yeah, what's up? Oh my goodness,

it's so good to see you. Oh my gosh. I created the circumstance of office endless office reunion for yourself, everybody from Laverne, you and Kevin Riley and everybody. Everyone has been amazing, how generous people have been. And yeah, we're all hams to talk about it exactly. Ever, never underestimate the power of just untapped narcissism. I would say, how is Base Force going? Oh so fun? I mean how? It stars Steve Correll and John Malkovich as the comedy

pairing at the center. Greg Daniels wrote the pilot with Steve, and uh, you know, Greg's influences is all through it, as is Steve's. You know, he has this interesting sensibility which is not always what you would expect, you know, the direction he went in the office with naturalism, which is so great. He also has a silly side which is appropriate to a show like this. That's very cool.

Now your podcast, by the way, do you guys, are you like Mark Marin level let's get emotionally self revelatory? Are you more history of the podcast? It's definitely neither of those. Um, I mean how I'm viewing it well, I truly am actively seeking the answer to some questions that I have about what went on and how things

were constructed. And it's anything with memory, something's I firmly believe I remember, and then as I talked to people, I realized I remember incorrectly or there's different perspectives on that. So yeah, I I think for me more than anything, it's just conversation. Well we should we should win then, because it's my favorite thing. Every time I've been in this kind of situation, there hasn't been enough time. Weeks,

time we have, we have time. So, um, prior to the office, what were you doing immediately before you got brought off? Um? Well, you know, my career started way back in the in the tailing dying and of the multi caam era. I got my first job on a show called Nurses, which was a multi caam show put

on by with Thomas Harris. They had done the Golden Girls, and you know, there were these factories of multicam in the late eighties and early nineties, and uh, you know, so I come out of there then I had been on the Simpsons is how and you Greg, now was that Susan Susan Harris? I hear it was your first sort of mentor yea time. Yeah, you know. I had

actually gone to high school with her son. And when I came out of college, I had literally Brian trained myself to be a short story writer, and that I didn't realize there was no money in short stories. I mean, if you take it even farther back, I was raised in a house with no television. My mom hated TV and would not allow it in the house. Yeah, and so I had no television and I picked that up as a habit, not watching television. And I continued in

that habit through college. So when I got out of college, I had trained myself to be an expert in a dying art form. Nobody told me that short stories weren't popular anymore, because my mom had prevented me from having any contact with modern culture. Anyway. The relevance is that I suit to college and thought, oh, man, can I be a writer of some kind? It just so happened. I only knew one person who was a professional writer. It was Susan Harris, the creator of The Golden Girls.

I lucked into mentorship of sorts with one of the greatest uh natural dialogue writers ever, Susan Harris. So she helped you get the job on Nurses, gave it to me. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. You know, her son had a lot of friends who wanted to be TV writers. Um, to my knowledge, I was the only one that she ever

gave a job to. And I think the reason was she just told me how to write a spec script and she said, right about what is difficult for you, even painful, and trust that it will come out funny. And I've never heard better advice in comedy writing. And I tried to do that in the form of a spec blossom Awesome. That was my winning spec that got me in the district blossom blossom. Yeah. Okay, so you work on Nurses, then you work on a number of

other shows. Yeah, well I was. I was through with her. No, I was, actually I was fired from Nurses with the entire staff. They just replaced the staff. It was. It was a pretty bad show, even at the height of bad television, and they just said, we have to replace these writers. I'd only worked there about, you know, four months, just long enough to uh see that there was this thing that was the punch up writer, and there was this reverence for the writer who could throw jokes and

comedy into a script and that rewrite process. So I saved my little amount of nurses money and stretched it out for like a year and just tried to teach myself joke writing and display what I learned in the form of a spec Rosianne script. And you know, that's the writer's life is like a lot of time writing what you hope is a spectacular spec script. And I happened to get that Roseanne in the hands of a young comedian who was becoming a producer named Judd Apatow.

Apatao was twenty four. He had uh met Ben Stiller in lined on Elvis Costello concert and they the stories they just kind of hudsput each other into, like selling a TV show. What's your name, Ben Stiller? What do you do? I'm an actor? Yeah? Who are you? Joe? You comedian? Right? Stuff? Oh yeah, that's so the show. Okay, let's do and they went to Fox show Wow. And so you got a job on that through the Rose and inspect Yeah, and then you you end up winning

an Emmy. Yeah. Yeah, it was incredible. I mean it was really Bob Odenkirk is why we won that Emmy. You know, he was the head writer of the show. He uh also created Mr Show with Bob and Dave. You know, for sure, one of the greatest sketch shows ever. UM and Bob was the head writer and under his influence of a group of totally untested writers, won the

Emmy for Best Comedy Writing UH that year. And you know, for me at that point, I had a Emmy and about like a year of television writing experience and then they put me on The Simpsons and that's where I met Greg and was truly tested. So you worked on the Simpsons for what five years? No? Actually I worked two full years to full years. I had a four year contract and I bailed after two years, going to the craziest self destructive moves in a weird way. But

I was young. I was in my twenties. I've worked there for two years. I felt like I've learned everything there is to learn about writing for the Simpsons, and so I quit and uh had a memorable like had to have a showdown with Jim Brooks where they called me into his office and and Brooks, Uh, he said, hey, man, I hear you're on strike. Man, do you know Brooks at all? No? I mean I've met him, seeing him,

but I don't know him. No. Well, I don't think he would know me for sure, but we all worship him. He is like one of the Mount Rushmore guys of our medium. And uh, he's a genius and he's got kind of a hippie vibe. But somehow I enraged him by saying this thing that writers all knew to say, which was, hey, I don't think you'd want to have a writer in the room who doesn't want to be there. We were always told, like amongst each other, that you could get out of a contract if you just simply

said that. So I said it to Brooks. He got enraged. Man, his beard was shaking, and he said, don't go down that road. Don't float that balloon. I've never heard that phrase in my life. Float that balloon, don't float that balloon. It might be like a World War two reference, like, I don't know. If you meet him, please tell him I'm sorry and asking what that means. Okay, but you meet, you meet Greg. Yeah, you meet Greg while you're there, and eventually you start working on King of the Hill

with Greg. Yeah, that's right. So he liked you, he did, he did. Uh. Greg was like one of those um senior writers on The Simpsons, at least in my view. He was one of those Harvard guys who was clearly a genius. The whole staff was Harvard guys when I showed up there. Uh, you know, I was sort of in the second way if there was the Harvard guys who created the show, and then after four years half of them went off to do their own thing, and so all these slots opened up, and I got in

one of those slots. Now Greg was already there, and you know, Greg was obviously just a great writer of of this show. He wrote some of the best episodes ever. Bart Sells his soul is still just I mean, untoppable and very greg. You know, because Greg liked that kind of telling, a yarn sort of storytelling. He was even then heading in the direction of naturalistic storytelling that you see in King of the Hill and then The Office.

It's funny because my perspective is slightly different. I remember, I'm sure you and I had this conversation, especially in later seasons, where we would read a script and we would start looking at it and I would go up to the writer's room or have conversations with clusters of you saying, guys, guys, I am not a cartoon. There are physical things that you are writing right now that my body is incapable of doing. So it's it's I can't go from here to here in no time like

you can in a our tune. I always yeah, there was definitely some Homer Simpson elements. That's funny. Well, you you know, you hit on a key thing that writers have as a deficit. You know, we are not out there physically acting. We're all in our little minds and you know, we're rewarded for what pops on the page, and so you know, we violate these rules whereas an actor, how what are you thinking. We're like, we're just trying to preserve our jobs by making the other guy in

the room laugh. And we you know, if it breaks reality, we just we can't be bothered. Right. And so by the time you came in in season three, were you watching um, were you watching The Office? Seen some although I continued my habit of not watching much TV until recently, where I've really forced myself to become a consumer. So I was aware of it for sure, because the comedy writers were aware of it. The comedy writers and taste makers were aware of the British show, and we were

aware of the Americans for sure. And then, of course, you know, I knew Paul Lieberstein from King of the Hill. He was a writer on King of the Hill, and so you know, Paul and I hang out and you know, we'd go for a for a jog and he would tell me about the show he was working on. I do remember when Paul said to me, all I want in my career is for this show to go on. That was season two. He had that feeling. I've never heard him say that about anything he'd ever worked on. Wow. Okay,

so you came in season three. Yeah, do you remember anything about walking into the writer's room you knew some of the people there about Yeah, Well, you know, writer's rooms are very competitive, right, It's a very competitive environment. We are trying to impress each other that we're smart and talented, and we have a method, which is UH time to say something funny and who can do it? And so I definitely remember the first day I walked into the office writer's room, Mike Sure was there, uh

and uh Paul liebres Gen Silata, and Uh. I knew it was going to be brutal. So I had brought in a prop. I brought in an Army Survival Manual, and I just had it with me. I thought, that's supposed to be kind of funny to call out the subtext, right like, I mean, this writer's room where nobody knows me or wants me on this show that they created.

And so I'll have this Army Survival Manual and in it there's an acronym that the army has U S U R V I V A L. And each of those letters has a thing you're supposed to do s you know, to survey the situation. You understand the risks. It's impossible in a survival situation you would die. Just try to remember what the second V one of them is vanquished fear and panic. Okay, I mean you never say vanquished in your life. I love though, that's amazing. Well,

it was my It was my way of surviving. I figure, if it gets tighten here, I'm gonna have a whole bit I can do. Right. I never busted that out, but I do remember it got contentious on the first day. It was, you know, just one of those kind of ego things. We were arguing over some plot points. Should the story go this way or shouldn't go that way? And so we just got into some disagreement and I just went into an English accent. Why would you do that? Did it help or did it hurt? Absolutely helped, I

mean it diffused everything. And then on some level it kind of says we're playing a game of comedy performative cleverness, and this is just a move in that dimension. Do you consider Gregg a teacher? Oh for sure. Yeah, he's a friend of mine forever now. And we were in the trenches at the Simpsons ten am to ten pm every single day, so you know, we're all buddies. But

for sure, big time. He uh someone someone told us this exercise that he had something that if you were having trouble breaking stories, and he called it unlikely duos, And there were note cards on the wall with all the character's names, and the idea was to pick two characters that you would not necessarily associate with each other together and then write a story on that. I think that's always a great method. Um Early on, back on Nurses for me, I asked one of the senior writers

there what makes a story? And the guy called me into his office. His name was Bruce Ferber. He closed the blinds, shut the door, locked it, and he said, a story is usually about two people, and then he unlocked the door and made me leave. It sounds so a common place, but it's actually the key. Yeah, that's what's great is what's an unusual pairing. That's how I got my first Simpsons episode was I paired Homer versus Patty and Selma. It had never been done before, so

I got an episode. But for sure, on any show, you know what, two characters have never been in a already together? Do that right? Well, that's genius. It's the small attention to details. When you know the characters and how the characters would behave you almost don't need anything more than this. I was told that during the testing of the show with the Gems and the Dwights, The direction from Greg to the actors was very simply, Uh, Jim,

bring Dwight a glass of water, right, and then what happens? Right? You know Dwight is going to be skeptical, right because you know, you know, he's afraid that Jim has done something to the water. And I felt like you guys did such a great job of of that, of studying the character's behavior and how each character would behave in a given situation. Now you've you've hit it on the head. And if you notice, uh, ask Greg what his favorite

television show is of all time. I remember he was being interviewed and he sat there for an hour trying to think, you know, and asking the write is what they thought? It was? Larry Sanders and uh, Judd Apatao. If you ask him, he'll give you the same answer. I worked with Judd on a show called Love we did for Netflix. I was the head writer there and I remember we delivered scripts to Judd. The first four scripts.

I thought they were good. They were real clever and funny, and he was so bummed and he as he tried to articulate what it was, he said, Wat's the Larry Sanders show. And by the end, we had a a phrase, a motto, and it was behavior over banter. I never forgot it. Man. You know, you don't have to have clever word play if the characters are in an interesting behavior. Now, I can tell you two behaviors that are funny for actors. One is lying, always funny. The other generally his seduction.

Unless the person I suppose is really hot, it's gonna be kind of funny. So I wondered for you as a comic performer. You know, you're talking about the glass of water thing, which is complex behavior. Are there other categories of behavior that are funny for you to perform? Oh, that's a very interesting question. Um. For me, the biggest laughs that I ever remember was when Holly was told that Kevin was slow. That's that was my recollection, and

people went sort of bonkers about it. And I think the reason why is because it was a very simple joke that is set up by years of history and knowing the character. And as soon as you hear the setup of that, you know instantly that she will believe it and that there will be confusion between her and Kevin that could play out as long as we wanted

it to. I think that when you truly, when you have the time to create a character and there's an expectation from an audience on how that character would respond the anticipation of that and delivering that or the opposite of what the expectation is. To me, those things are very funny. Wow, that's gold. Um you at one point said this. It has been said by wiser artists than me that the more personal you make your writing, the more personal it will become. Um, do you feel like

you right? Personally? I aspire to for sure. Our medium is very interesting because it's collaborative, and I am hired to execute the vision of somebody above me. And you know, I've come to think of the writer's room, uh as an art project. The the show runner is the artist of the show. That's the Picasso, and we're all there to sort of make his or her vision come to life.

Having said that, when you get an individual episode at a certain point, they send you off, and that's when the art form becomes yours and you really try to pour yourself into it. So on the Office, I always did try to find what was personal about it for me in that episode. Um, So you join in season three, we've got this, uh Stanford story, Jim is away and your first episode that you wrote was the Merger Um,

which was about the branches coming together. Are really them being folded into Scranton, But nonetheless you have new people coming in. Was there anything about your personal experience entering this show or entering the writer's room that mirrors some of the Stanford people coming over? Oh? Yeah, I think it's very common in any dynamic. Uh, if you have a workplace and somebody new comes in, there's gonna be

a feeling of like we're the old guard, right. Um. That was always true in every writer's room I've ever been in. I know it was true. I shouldn't say I know, but I could feel it in the actor's new actors coming into the office. Of course, there's gonna be a period of almost testing. I would think, you know that that goes on subconsciously. I've never met a nicer group of people than the actors on the office. But as professionals, there's this sense of, Hey, we're trying

to do something at the highest level. You can you step in and do this? Um, So I wouldn't surprise me that the the new actors felt really challenged when they when they first came in. Yeah, there's a weird sort of dichotomy that existed on the show, right, So when you think of the office, it's really about the bullpen. It's about the same group of people that exist in this same place over nine years. But of course when you just back up a little bit, it's really not true.

And I feel like you guys did a great job of creating energy by infusing that stasis with new people or you know, even making Jim go away. That creates a different environment. Um, I thought that you guys did a really great job in keeping that energy while still

maintaining the feeling that nothing is changing. Brilliantly said, I mean, I think the lion share of the credit probably goes to Greg and his three dimensional chess that he plays with this line, I remember Greg had figured out that TV shows should have arcs before anybody did you know TV historically you're watching individual episodes that could literally be shuffled in syndication. They were designed to be unrelated to each other. And Greg recognized that arcing out was the

new way of doing things. He was reading Game of Thrones and and the Game of Thrones started airing and he's like, oh my god, they're benefiting from the fact that they know where they're going long term, and suddenly he was applying this very archy mentality to the show. Yeah, one of the other writers was talking to me about um that there were many arcs, medium arcs, and longer arcs. Right, So, like the Charles Minor storyline, for example, that was a

set arcs six episodes or whatever it was. And then some, especially the relationship type arcs, there would be sort of a plan and if that wasn't creating the kind of energy you wanted, then it would just sort of go away, right, or if it was, then it would sort of pick up again. But it was always sort of intended to be at least some sort of arc. Yeah. Well, what's

interesting about those romantic long term arcs. We discovered that you didn't have to advance them every episode, that they could just stick around and then six episodes later they could advance. And then, of course we had this crazy turn in season nine where we were gonna split Jim and Pam up, and the audience hated it so much we just bailed on that, uh, kept them you know together, right, Yeah, how much were you all influenced by what you were

reading or experiencing from fans. I personally never got online. I still am not on any social media. You know, I'm catching up to television give me one medium at the time. But people did, for sure, especially the early years of the Office coincided with the early years of big time internet feedback, and it first sure influenced the show. I bet somebody on this podcast has mentioned that they were reading online comments and it's skewed the gym pam

thing massively because who writes comments online. Apparently it's disproportionately romantic lonely hearts, and that's really what they wanted to see, right, Um, the history of television primarily has existed. It has been pointed out to me as the central characters are the young lovers, right, uh, Mary Tyler Moore Show, or you know, really even Cheers, right, I mean, the central storyline is

Sam and Diane. Most of those shows have the crazy uncle or the crazy boss in the background that comes in, gets a few laughs and leaves, whereas The Office inverted that. Right, You had the crazy boss sort of out front, and the moments between the young lovers existed, sometimes in a gesture or a look and talk to me about how you feel like that that helped the gym and Pam. Wow, it's really interesting what you're pointing out. The office is

structural quite unusual. You know, you have shows that are center and eccentrics. That's Taxi with Judd Hirsch at the center and everybody else is a character actor and that's a that's a conventional structure um the office in an odd way, it splits things totally a little bit. You have a big, powerful comedy star at the center who is not the point of view protagonist. So that's interesting.

It meant that frequently we'd have a more comedy storyline in the A story with Michael and Dwight, for example, and then a more straight romantic B story with Jim and Pam. Greg used to say a thing I thought it was very interesting tonally, he said, separate out the scenes that are dramatic tone from the scenes that are

comic tone. He called it the mc d LT. They had this hamburger that was served hot in half the styrofoam container, and then in the other half of the styrofilm container was cold lettuce and tomato, And the gimmick was that you buy it and then and they put it together. In the hot he's hot, in the cold, see is cold? That was what he used to say. Keep the hot side hot and the cold side cold, the funny side funny, and the drama side dramatic. Interesting. Yeah. Um,

I talked a long time with Rain about this. I was probably too nice to him. But I think in the history of television, you are hard pressed to find any comedy duo that was better than Dwight and Michael. Um what what do you think was special about their relationships and the and the way they were written that

brought such comedy gold. I remember asking Rain one time about his view of Dwight, and we came to realize that we were writing a character that was, you know, the nerd, the weirdo that you make fun of for comedy, but that the performer was doing something much bigger than that. He was not making fun of this guy. He was celebrating him. And it just seems so obvious to him that that's what one would do. He said, Yeah, you can't go around judging your character, you know. And you

could see how much he loved Dwight. So he's bringing this genius that's very rain this adoration for the marginal guy, and I mean Steve Correll, known in the improv community is one of the greatest of all time. So it's really those two in combination. And yeah, the dynamic between them is something extraordinary to what did what did you put? Could you put your finger on what you thought was

their essential dynamic? I think that they were two characters both through the writing and the performances and their intention that were so perfect. All Michael wants is to be loved, right. Dwight loves him, and all he wants is Michael's approval

and acceptance. And it's almost as though, because because that's the person that he really has, he's somewhere deep inside doesn't trust him because you know, like like not on the conscious level, but that like so he shows disdain for him for loving him, even though that's all he wants.

But Michael has to play as though he doesn't care for Dwight because there's other cooler people that really he should be friends with, right it It kind of attaches to that schoolyard schoolyard I'm I'm in the nineteen fifties all of a sudden, but like you know that like grade school thing where it's like, Oh, I want to be I want the popular kid, right, I want Ryan, I want Jim. You know that those are the cool kids. Maybe it connects to that. Oh, I think you're right,

that's exactly right. That's the funny irony of it is you can't accept the adoration of the one guy who worships him, right, but you, Brian, I think if any of your guests just pause to kind of analyze what was great and is great about you as a comic performer, that's unnecessary. But what is that coming? I don't know. I mean, please go ahead. If there's something, I can't stop you. Anybody who watches you perform, you know, can

see it. But I thought that you had this tremendous collection of gifts in that you're obviously able to do real acting at any time. You know, you've got the big time dramatic chops, but in addition the comic chops and the physicality, which is not easy. Um. I remember they allowed me to shoot a webisode of a little four partner that we got to do where Kevin's Alane, where you're gonna sell ice cream from a truck, and

it was all fantastic. But the moment that stood out for me was we just had this bit where you had to walk out of the building holding a suitcase, a briefcase, and you know, the instruction was, can you kind of just stumble on the curb and the briefcase flaps open or something. I don't think we had it planned at all, but you did. Four takes. Each of

them was just great. They were so real and the and the way you would turn back and try to close it and give up, and and I was so impressed by that, especially when later I had opportunities to try to get physical comedy from other actors, and I found most of them can't even begin to do physical comedy. Well, It's interesting because this had never occurred to me ever

ever until this moment. I remember very specifically the moment you're referencing um from Kevin's Loan, and I wonder if somewhere in the back of a writer's mind that led to Kevin's spilling the children as possible. I'm glad you brought up Kevin's filling the chili, as you recall, I directed that scene written by Aaron Sure, a great collaboration

of artists there um boy, it's possible. It was a cold open, and the joke in the cold open really was this contradiction between the air edition of and in a way kind of foodie arrogance of this recipe that you're delivering, contrasting with as as you know, guttural and lowly visual as we can create. I'll tell you I remember with Kenna's chili. I was so proud of you, Brian that we were like, Okay, we're gonna build a chili tureen with a fake bottom so it'll look like

it's filled. But then Brian won't have to carry seventy four pounds. You said. You looked at the expensive proper we created with a slanted bottom so that it seemed to be filled and wasn't, and you were like, I'm going in real, bring me the big tren you carry that incredibly heavy chili container. That was amazing. We only got two takes, I would call because one I did that in one time. It is my Yeah, for whatever reason, it has become the thing for which I am known.

Now I own a T shirt with you carrying the carrying the filly. Yeah, it's uh. It has become the thing for me for sure, and people always ask that, and I remember, um, I haven't told this story on here, but someone came to me before and we did it. Obviously at the end of the spilling part, at the end of the day, everybody else was gone. It was just all the other actors were gone. It was just me.

And they had cut a piece of carpet right that extended forever, like into the hallway around reception desk, over to Jim and Dwight's cluster there. Because if the chili spilled on the carpet, they would screw up the carpet forever. So they came and they were like, Brian, we have three piece of carpet, that's all. Well, that's all we can do, so we have to just to do that.

But I yeah, it was it was one take and I and the reason I remember so well was I think in retrospect, despite three piece of carpet, we didn't have three of me. And how stained I was from even the first take, I don't think that I could have been reset. Moment when you chose to take like printer paper and try to mop up the chili is so brilliant. Everybody knows printer paper doesn't absorb it all. It's just this siss of being doomed effort to clean up.

It's so great. Bran Well, I think of any thing that will live on for me way after I'm gone, that that that meme or whatever will be in Greg yes, yes, and Mike sure yes. All told me that their favorite or the best episode of the Office was Business School. Wow. I'm humbled. Um. I mean, it's just so beautiful. I

have been asked about this episode before. I always say that it's one of these very lucky coming togethers of the experience of the writer and the experience of the actor in this case Jenna, and maybe of artists in general. I mean, if you think about what we're trying to do, uh, it involves dreaming big that we could be special, and inevitably we must encounter failure because none of us is

great every time. And to get greatness you have to put so much heart into it, you know, writing spec scripts. For me, that's really what it's about. And and there are moments in everyone's career I imagine when they go, oh my gosh, I'm not going to be one of those people who tried and and make it. You know. Of course, yeah, we all have basically almost been that person,

and we know the feeling. Jenni Fisher for sure. I mean she audition for seven or eight years before she was able to support herself, and so she really knows that feeling. That's what this is all a metaphor for. Is there anything personal for you? Oh yeah, oh yeah, big time. You know, uh, I really feel the relationship between um, a young aspiring artist and a father. You know, she feels like she has failed and her art has been called motel art by somebody whose tastes she might respect.

And here's a guy who she doesn't respect, like you do with your dad, who's saying, honey, you're great, and that's so beautiful and meaningful. Yeah. Um. Gregg talked about something apparently called truth and beauty and wanted to find like stark truth and reality and small moments of beauty and connection between people, like the end of business school. Sure,

well that's fundamental for sure. You know what's interesting is you gotta also remember it's a comedy, and I remember there were times when you could drift out of it. I specifically remember early on when I was a new writer there, they did a screening of an episode and everybody loved it. And I remember saying the notes afterwards, guys, you have three scenes in a row where you're not even trying to be funny. And this statement was met by silence from the writers, by the way, to the

point where I thought, did they not get it? And I repeated it multiple times, and then afterwards I went to Paul. I liked Paul. What happened? Did did people hear what I was saying? Because yeah, bright, we heard it the first time. Stop pounding it into us. But they had realized I guess that, Oh yeah, ship, it's not a drama. You gotta put comedy in there as well. That balance is so interesting in this art form. Yeah, um, do you remember? So you know, we have the writer's strike.

We also have a huge recession that happens during the show. Um, I'm gonna reference a few of your episodes here, but the economy started tanking? Were you writing those outside realities into um episodes of the show? Business School obviously as an example that you specifically wrote Michael's lack of touch of business and where business was going. But there's also money where Michael takes a second job because he can't

make ends meet. There was also you know, the storyline of Saber came at a time Comcast was coming in and taking over. Was that an intentional think? You just got kind of a glint in your eye. Bj Novak was very kind of aware of these trends in technology, you know, with Wolf, I always thought was so prescient. It's such a perfect takedown of the internet startup. And Greg to you know, Greg is always way ahead of trends.

I don't know where he finds the time to read The Economist or whatever he's doing, but I mean he did. We did an episode I remember at the time it was called China, but I don't know what it ever aired as that was that was one called China Okay, good good? Yeah? And that was that was you know, Greg realizing, oh ship, China is going to take over the world economy and what if Michael reads an article about this in the dentist's office. Um, but yeah, trend awareness.

Some of those smart writers were all over that, and Saver as an example for sure. Um, do you remember Comcast taking over? No? I don't do you remember? Was there? Yeah? Well, one of the things that paul Um talked about was timing that Comcast came in and took over, and there was no history with the show. You know, the ratings

were declining. We know now it just kept declining on every show everywhere because people were starting to watch streaming, but the office was declining, and so they were confronted with this new entity. Here's their biggest show, and Steve Correll is leaving, so we need to bring in another star. And that was that was Paul's take on which I didn't know, like that somebody else needed to come in. I don't know where did you net out on that

as an idea moving forward? Well, what you're saying makes a lot of sense, because there was an obvious consensus creatively that yeah, we don't need to add anyone at all. In fact, as I recall, it was virtually unanimous that people felt Dwight should become the new uh Michael and to take over the office just seemed obvious to us, and the fact that that there was pushback to that was contentious creatively for us. So I do remember that I didn't realize that it was coinciding with this takeover,

which makes a lot of sense. When did you find out that Steve was going to be leaving. I thought that it was sort of known. He had a seven year contract, and I remember early on Hang with Steve and him saying, apropos of nothing, this is the greatest television show that I will ever be a part of. I remember being struck by that, because us he was not an old man at the end of his career. I've never met somebody who, in the midst of doing something great says this is as good as it will

ever get. And he didn't mean it pessimistically. He meant it exactly opposite. Just look how incredible this show is. So him leaving, to me always felt like he had intended to do seven seasons. That was what he had portioned his energy for, and he had made his artistic statement that he had always conceived of doing and we're always going to move on. So it seemed to me like the most undramatic thing in the world, but of course, creatively for a TV show, the most challenging thing in

the world. What do you do when your star leaves and you're gonna try to continue doing the show. I love the way the show responded, by the way, it's such a series of lessons in uh TV making so you weren't concerned about the show moving forward, but you were more excited about finding out what comes next. Well, I was oblivious to what was going to be the big Allen is there. Greg was not. He Greg sat the writer's down at one point and said, watch what

will happen? He said, criticism comes in cycles, and so you know, it starts out the Office isn't getting ratings, but look at this champ from coming from behind and now it's great. And he was the next stage of the narrative will be the Office has lost its mojo. So he prepared us for that. He said, it happened on Saturdaynight Live. And then he goes, if you stick around long enough, then the narrative becomes the Office is back, Saturday Night Live is back. So it seemed like that

was inevitable. Um, I feel like the last season and then certainly the finale, but but really the whole last season is grossly underappreciate. I feel like one thing I'm very proud about the show is that it was a show that had a beginning and had a middle, and then it had an end, and and the reveal of documentary crew was such an important element to telling the full story and having the characters see themselves exposed in a way. Um, it was very interesting as an actor,

quite brilliant in its conception. Pure Greg he knew from the very start. He came into season nine saying, here's how we're going to do the finale. Um, the documentary will finally air. And he also had in mind this idea that there would be a reunion show in the finale, and that the word reunion would come to mean two things, as Pam and Jim would have split up and would

have a reunion in that episode. As I mentioned earlier, it was so painful for the audience to explore the breakup of Jim and Pam that we put the brakes on it. Basically, you can see them getting to separation and then it just was unpleasant for everyone and we bailed on it. They come back together sort of off screen really, and they are together in the reunion. They

don't have to have a reunion in that episode. Uh. How did Jenna and John feel about them potentially splitting up, Well, they seemed very much involved and on board for everything. You know. It was really cool in season nine the way the actors were invited into the writer's room more than usual. Tell us everything you've ever wanted to do on this show, because this is our last chance. And and Jenna and John, my recollection is they both are EPs in season nine as well, and we're invited to

have serious creative input. I remember John saying something very cool and interesting where he was like, this last season is for the fans. Imagine them as your primary audience. We don't have to build an audience now, this is it. Let's give them the thing they most want. And that informed a lot of creative decisions. Yeah. Um, are you happy with how the show ended? Yes, very much so. Yeah.

I remember going to the screening and the the emotions and I felt watching it with everybody who was involved were were so warm and positive. Now, just even saying that shows you how completely non objective my experience of the ending is. You may have noticed that Greg, who wrote the episode, Um, he cast into it tons of people who worked behind the scenes. And you you is

that your acting debut on the Office? It certainly is. Uh. And you know what Greg was doing was creating a kind of yearbook for himself where he managed to photograph all these people that he cared about, so when he watches that episode, it's an emotional reunion for him too. I want to point out, Brian, that before I went on camera in that finale episode, I turned to you and I said, Brian, how do you act? I have to deliver a line? What is acting? Two minutes for

you to tell me how to deliver a line? And I'll never forget what you told me. Okay, here's what it was. The line I had to say. It was something like I had to say to Jim and Pam, Um, now you've seen you got yourself on on TV. You know what was it like after all those years watching yourself on TV? And I said, how do how do I do this? And you said okay? So Brent, so Um, you know these guys have just seen themselves on TV, right, So just asked them. That's asked them. You know what

was it like to see themselves on TV? I was like, okay, and that was it. You just you just kind of translated into just a massive it's really happening. That's pretty brilliant. So when you think about the office, when a fan is watching the show, obviously the actors are the face of that show, and the actors have gone to do many things afterwards, But I started thinking about you and Gen Salada and Mike Sure and all of the great writers that came out of the writer's room, the tree

of Greg Daniels. And here in the last let's say, seven years, Um, these are the shows that have been headed by old writers of the Office, Space Force, Love, Parks and Wreck, The Mindy Project, Brooklyn nine nine, The Good Place, Master of None, Superstore, news Room, Hello Ladies, Four Weddings in a Funeral, Q Force, Little America, SMILF, People of Earth, Bad Teacher, Trophy, Wife Champions, Guys with Kids, Central Park, Ghosted, Platform, Never Have I Ever Champions, Sunnyside,

and Abbey's. I mean, that is an incredible list of shows and shows. Really, you, guys, um, were the all stars of this creative ensemble. Well, Greg Daniels is really good at picking writers. I've always said the guy who's best at picking actors is Judd Apatow, and the best at picking writers is Greg. He's great at it. He reads scripts, and he can tell from reading a script whether a writer is good or not to a level

that is unusual. And so he's brought up some really really great writers and then brought them up in a process you know that dates back a long time. We're all trained up in these rooms, and then we we bring our wisdom to new rooms. And so the office is this distillation of quite a lot of TV running wisdom, you know that that Greg brings and was shared amongst them, and then now is you know, dissipated amongst these other Yeah, it's crazy. I also heard Greg takes really long meetings.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, No. The meeting with a writer for Greg, oh it's crazy. I mean Robert Pattnick may have been the longest writer's meeting ever. I think he was there for twelve hours or something, the kind of thing that you can only do to something in their twenties. But Greg really like to observe the writer. And Greg felt that he could not effectively observe the writer while

talking to that writer face to face. So what he would do is he would call some other writer in jents, can you come up here and meet this writer, Robert Patnick, And so Jen Salata would have a conversation with Pattick, and Greg would sit at like a forty five degree angle and just staring Robert Patnick, you know, and then you would do that with eight ten writers. Uh, and

take it very, very seriously. It's a very wrenching thing to get rid of a writer, So you want to hire one with a lot of confidence when you go in, right. You know, people talk about what the legacy of the Office is. Certainly these shows and the good work that's done on so many of them is a legacy of the show. Yes, I know that Greg and others hope for more of a legacy in terms of of tone.

You know, Greg thought that maybe The Office would change the tone of television a little bit more in the direction of realism, grounded acting, um unhurried plot telling, and all of those things that we think of as the platinum qualities of the Office. But it doesn't seem to have been that way. That even the next mockumentary show, Modern Family, is structured much more like a traditional show than than The Office. Why do you think the show is bigger now than it was when we were NBC's

top scripted show. I have my theories. One is just the quality of the show is is truly something different? Uh? For sure, the sense of family that radiates from a great TV show, of the emotional attraction a great writer named Mike Reas original Simpsons guy told me that the secret to every hit network TV show is subtext of family. I believe that's true, definitely true of the Office, and it's it's true of the actors of the Office as well. You can feel that love that they have for each

other and the respect they have for each other is performed. Uh, that's part of it. I also think though, that there are certain shows that make you feel good about liking them. People liked Frasier more than they actually liked it because it made them feel smart. Those little you know, it goes to black and you see kind of a written title for this little chapter of Frasier. Boy, am I smart? That I like? Frasier is the feeling that gives you,

and the Office has a little bit of that. You know, you can tell there's something taste making about This has to do with behavior over banter, priority on realism, small real Uh. These are phrases that flowed through the writer's room and are the hallmarks of good taste in drama and comedy. So the young people know that they have good taste by liking it. Yeah, what are you most

proud of about the show? Oh, gosh. I watched the whole thing from beginning to end with my daughter when she was fourteen, and that gave me an emotional connection to the show that was even greater than what I had when I was there. And it makes me very proud to be part of that. It makes my daughter look up to me just a little bit, which is extremely unusual and rare. Take it. Yeah, that's nice, um, Brent, thank you so much. It's been my pleasure to talk

with you. I mean, you're writing, your contribution to the show, you're directing, and all of the heart and soul that you put into it, um is awesome. So thank you, Brian. Well, as you know, it was a great pleasure doing the office with you, and I can't wait to see what we do next exactly. Thanks buddy, Thank you. What a pleasure man. Thank You're such a great actor. I love being around great actors. Well it's a pleasure. Well, what a delight that was. Plus he called me a great actor,

so there's that. But in truth, Brent, just as a way of putting a smile on your face, or at least my face, I can't see your faces. I'm just gonna assume you're smiling too. Brent, thank you so much for coming in. I am very glad that you were able to win over the writers with your British accent and survival guides. The show would not have been the same without you. And to all of you listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe, follow,

leave us a review. It's so important and I so appreciate all of you who have done so so far. Until we meet again, which I'm guessing is next week, I hope you all have an exceptional week. 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 producer is Adam Massias, 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 Olansky