Lee Eisenberg

the hilarious Lee Eisenberg. Lee and his writing partner, Gene Stupnitsky joined the show at the beginning of season two. Lee and Jean they were basically attached at the hip, best friends. They lived together, they drove to work together every day, they lunched together, they wrote together. Everything well,

accept this interview, they didn't do that together. But the Office was their first real TV writing job, and as you will hear, they were more than a little nervous to be running with the big dogs, so to speak. And I have to say, it was so funny for me to hear that they felt like that, because to me, like on set, they were always just completely self assured, like these are the brilliant, twisted minds that brought you our cringe eest episodes right Dinner Party and Scott's Totts.

I mean, that is who we are dealing with here. So yeah, it's kind of mind boggling to me. Lie and Gene, if you can hear me out there, just what I want you to do right now is I want you to look into the mirror and I want you to tell yourselves I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and dog on it. People like me. In fact, that goes for all of you. You're all great people like you. So there you go. For me to you, there's there, there it is. Anyway, let's get let's get back on track.

Here without further ado, here is Lee Eisenberg, Bubble and Squeak. I love it. Bubble and squeak on Bubble and Squeaker Cookie every month left over from the night before. You're just like this is like, uh, I think it's like summer camp. It's like you come back and you just like see people and you're like, hey, well I know. I mean I've talked to Jenna Rain Angela Quapas. It's such a fucking like I haven't seen you in so long,

and I love you and I know it's so stupid. Um, this is all recording now right, this is no, it's totally all recording. I bumped into Rain, I bumped into Jenna somewhere. I haven't seen Angela and forever. I never see Kappas. I hadn't seen Kappas in a really long time. And I hadn't seen Randall in a while. Yeah, I saw rand Randall and I would like grab like breakfast like once a year to kind of just like talk about work and trap a nice breakfast. Who paid varied? Varied?

I don't remember who paid for the last I'm trying to think who was reporting who? Yeah, like who was I don't know. That's a really good question. Whenever i'm a doubt, I always pay because then I don't want it to feel like I took you to breakfast, like like like breakfast is like not worth anything. I didn't prepare for this at all. I've never seen the office before. No, No, it's totally fine. I was so what's amazing is no joke. I watched last night The Fight, the Return, dinner Party,

and Scott's tats. You know that there's a there's a Reddit thread devoted to people Gene was telling me it's like people can't watch Scotts Taughts. Yes, this is true. I know. I get this all the time because you know, we are doing colleges and meeting fans at various events, and by the way, the Scots Tats shirts are very prevalent the fans events. Yes, Scott's the other Scotts Taughts shirts.

And then sometimes even the people who are wearing the Scots Tats shirts say it's the one episode I can't I can't watch. And so I started engaging about why, because to me, Dinner Party is equally as cringe e as Scott's Totts. And they're like, oh, dinner Party is my favorite, and I'm like, hold on, how is that one? Okay? Theory, Okay, well you go ahead. My theory is that Dinner Party you're watching him destroy his life, and then in Scott

Stots you're watching him destroy other people's lives. Okay. What they say is that basically in Dinner Party, he's making characters go through uncomfortable, cringing moments, but we know them and we know their relationship to Michael, whereas now there's like other people show out to the world thinking a show to the world. We don't have any connection. We just know it's horrible and oh gosh, so good. I woul't see it, Scott stots in a little bit. It

is so uncomfortable. It is, it really is. And that came from your brain, which makes it even weirder. But we'll talk about that in a minute. Um all right, So you what were you doing before you join the writing staff of the office. I was an assistant to directors and you know, writer's assistant, and then was a nanny.

You were writing together. Though we were writing together, we sold some ideas to Larry David for Curb and then we came up with a pilot idea that was about two codependent roommates with unisex names and it was about me and Jean, and then we decided to make it magicians, okay, and then we and then we changed the names to Lonnie and Gordo. Lonnie for League, Gordo for Gene. Are you following? And then uh, and then that's what Greg red.

That's how we got hired on the office. Okay, So you submitted this spec pilot script that you wrote, Well, we sold it to Fox. The pilot was the first thing we'd ever sold. We sold to Fox, and then it was like this crazy thing. Like the people who liked it were Greg Daniels and Harold Ramos. Those are the only two. I mean, I think other people liked it fine, but like for years it was like, oh, like Jean was Harold Ramos is nanny. I'm not Harold's nanny,

but his kids nanny. He wasn't taking care of Harold, he wasn't taking care of ral okay. And so when you were brought on for a meeting with Greg Daniels, did you know, Well, first of all, did you know the British Office? Yeah, we knew the British Office. And they've been six episodes of the American Office, And had

you watched that? Oh yeah, we're obsessed. We were big fans of the We got the British Office really early because I was working for a guy who had gotten Remember, like the DVD kind of got like passed around, so we watched it. We like couldn't believe that it existed, and it was just insane. And then when they announced the American version. My friend was Kevin Riley's assistant, so we got to see the American version early and we're like, oh, these poor fuckers, and then we saw it was like, oh,

that's really good. We were really into it. And then and again we were like g made eight thousand dollars the year before he was on the office, and I wasn't that far ahead of him, and so I was like, now of a sudden, we're sitting now with Greg Daniels. Was incredible. Yeah, and how did that meeting go? He had read your the script that you sold. He read the script and people warned us that Greg would do long meetings. We're like, okay, and Greg was very serious.

He took a lot of pauses, and my instinct, out of like a desperate need to be liked and like fit in is like, oh, you fill in the pauses and you kind of like make jokes and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, he's obviously very funny. He's not demonstrating any he's not near funny right now, but he's obviously very funny person and he's not trying to make us laugh, and he must think that we're

funny because we're here. So I was just like I went against every instinct of my that I had, and I just was quiet and just waited for his next question, and then at one point Jean said, he said, oh my god, Harold's taught us so much. And I was like, what has Harold taught us? We like smoke weed with him and he hasn't taught us anything. I love him, but he does anything. And Greg was like, what does

he taught you? I was like, fun, fun, fun, fun, And then I was like, um, Harold always says to write from theme, which, by the way, Jean and I don't do. It was just the only thing that I could ever think that Harold had said. And Greg got really excited and flipped through his like UNI bomb or notebook and he held up this page on the top of the page. It's that theme is important in like block letters. And I was like, I think that was good.

I think that was good. And then we met with him for two and a half hours and then our agent was like, don't read anything into that. Right has really long meetings. I was like, who the fox, It's down with people for two and a half hours and doesn't hire them. And then we got a call and just it was like crazy and we had turned down.

We turned on other jobs to get the Office, and the Office was six episodes and the others were for twenty two and we were just like, let's work on something good and we had no I mean, that makes a lot of sense now, but at the time, we just needed money, right. I had a friend tell me as I was in Guest star Land essentially the first twelve and my friend was like, you have got to get out of there, like you cannot keep doing this, You've got it, And I was like, no, I think

this is this is good. And I I've been talking a lot with people who, you know, like what was the special sauce or like what made it so special? And to me, your story fits in perfectly. The actors, Ben Greg, everybody in some way was an underdog, and everybody was just really focused on doing good work. And nobody knew any better. I mean, we've never been in

the writer's room before, so we didn't know anything. And so in the writer's room, if you pitch a joke and people don't like it, they don't tell you they don't like it. It's just you're met with silence, and then you extrapolate the silence to me move on. But we didn't know that, so we thought that maybe like people couldn't hear and so like I remember Jane saying to Paul once like did you hear what I said? And that like stuff like that would happen a lot.

And then I pitched. I I pitched something. And because you thought they were being rude, well I didn't. Well, it's just not the way that people interact with each other. You don't you acknowledge someone you said, like, oh, I'm not sure that's right for me, But like if you did, you know, you're generating thousands of jokes a day. Like if you have every single joke and explain why it's not right, you would get anything done. That's funny, Lee, I don't think it works for this moment. No one

does that. We keep going. It was just weird and we didn't know what we were doing. And then um, everyone go out to lunch together. They would all kind of like run to their cars and like five people pile into a car, and then Jeane and I would like get into like our camera. It just we felt like we were the new kids and we didn't fit in. And so I think our contract was like twenty weeks.

It was ten weeks with an option for another ten weeks or something like that, and we were ten, We're getting close to the ten weeks, and we're we were nervous, but we also kind of felt like, no one's that nice to us. I think we're gonna get fired anyways, can we can we quit? And uh? And we called our agent and we said, uh. He's like, hey, so you're you're almost up. You know you're gonna you know, we're gonna try getting you those other ten weeks. We said, well,

what if we want to quit? They said, well, I understand where you're asking. And we said, well, like, you know, people aren't that nice to us, like we're fourth graders at the New School. And he was like, this is the stupidest question anyone's ever asked me. And he just was Mark Probozaro, who represented me and Bean and Mindy and e J. And he was like, the dumbest question I've ever been asked. And he hung up on us. And then we've stayed on the show for five more years.

Were you close to being fired? Do you think? Or do you Was that just your perception because people didn't seem nice. I think that when you say people didn't seem nice, I really feel young. I think that the you know when you're acting and when you first started acting and you're like, the scene isn't about you, and you're like you want to go up to the director and be like, hey, did you like what I was doing?

And you think the scenes about you even though no one cares about you because the scene isn't about you. That's the way I felt about the writer's room was I was like, they're scrutinizing us every moment and they weren't. Greg had thousand other things to worry about. Then the staff writers happiness or our contributions. We were we were contributing. But I think for us it was like Gina I

would drive back and forth. We lived together, and we have like a forty five minute commute every day each way, and all we would do was just say like, hey, Paul laughed a little bit at that joke I said in the small room, did how did it go with Mike and Gen in the other room? Did bj acknowledge you today? I mean it was like we were parsing out the smallest little things. And then Greg got pneumonia season two while we were breaking the fight, so we

had to outline the fight. Everyone else got to outline the episodes kind of more as a group, and for us it was like me and Jean and Paul and everyone else was off on script and then we had to go meet Greg at his house because he had walking pneumonia, and it was like, Oh, they're setting us up to fail. They gave us this episode that's like goofy and different from the rest of the show. There's like a fight in a dojo, like they don't want us to do well, and then when we handed a

bad script, they'll fire us. This is what we were convinced of. I think we didn't. I think we didn't feel confident that we weren't going to be fired until three years in. I'm not kidding. Every single time, like when we wrote the Secret, we were like, they gave us a secret because there's not a lot of time, and then we won't deliver and then they'll fire us. That's how we went through the first few years where we liked everyone eventually, but we were terrified. It was

like a culture of fear. It was just too insecure. Guys were just worried about yourself. We're terrified. Yeah, wow, yeah, I'm really sorry to hear that. Thanks. I mean, it doesn't surprise me. You're a bit neurotic, But but I've monetized the neuroses. That's all that matters. Why do you think that Greg hired you and Gene. I think it's probably some program that was That's what I think. I mean, that's why they have to hire. Yeah, a certain percentage

of yeah, Oh, it was charitable, okay. I think that he was just really good at spotting people that fit the tone that he was going for. And I think we wrote that pilot, and that pilot was about underdogs, and the jokes were very specific and unexpected, and before we even understood like how to make an act one, you know, like the way I would talk about Act

one now. I couldn't have articulated it then, but like somehow we kind of knew enough, and I think there was enough promise there that I think he I think he took a chance. Also, we're inexpensive, and we were two people for the price of one. That's really why I thought it was. Yeah, I think that that's not an unreasonable things like both of them probably don't actually equal one great writer, but we get to yea, so we can at least move them around in different What

was the office writer's room? Like, how is it different from other writer's rooms? I think that it was in some ways it was looser. It's like we it would take us a long time to focus. But it's like you're writing a show about an office. You're writing a show about coworkers, and we're working in an office and we're co workers. We just happened to be writing a show about the ing. So you know, we played Call of Duty a lot, and then we did an episode

about Call of Duty or everything is fodder. I remember going into the editing bay one time, uh, and I was having a conversation with Dave Rogers and somebody kind of whizzed by the door and they were like, okay one minute, and someone else is like you ready, Dave, and I'm like, what is going on? He goes It's Call of Duty time, And literally the screens from editing the show became Call of Duty, and you guys were everybody would run to their battle stations and start playing

Call of Duty. No, so I think like it all turns into something, you know what I mean, Like when you're doing a show where it's just about people trying to make it through the day. Everything becomes up for grabs. So you come in and I would talk about my date from the night before, and all of a sudden, that could be you know what I mean, like the

problem with the writer's room. I mean the beauty of a writer's room and the trickiness of it is you don't know what you're doing from day to day, and as experienced as everyone is, it feels like you're starting over every single time because you want to do something

that nobody else has done before. And if you're greg and you're excellent at it and you feel like you have all these great actors and writers and whatever, you just keep you just keep pushing, You just keep trying idea and idea and idea until you finally come up with hopefully the best one. But you're not. It's not like somebody says, like, what if you do an episode about a dinner party and everyone's like yes, and then you just start writing an episode of a dinner party,

Like months or months are spent debating it. There's like there's probably amazing office outlines. There was something that um, I don't think it was already, but we were going to write. It was called the Premonition, and it was basically that Aaron is like, I don't want to say any thing, and everyone's like, what is it, And she's like, I had a dream last night that someone died on the way home from work, and she's like, the only reason I want to say it is because I predicted

something else years ago and it did come true. And so then just like people didn't want to leave the people didn't want to leave work, and we outlined it, like g and I were in the office. I remember working on the Premonition and it was like there's a faction of people that were like it was a bullshit, a faction that didn't and Jim was on one side and Pant was on another. But we like for a day we worked on the Premonition. Their act breaks and somewhere there's notes on it on a long lost office

episode and there's there's probably you know a dozen of those. Well, there there is an there is a script that was never produced. Pet Day was that before you? Pet Day was before me? I read pet Day. There's another script about like new higher, new higher. Yeah, there's gonna be like a new higher in the office. Oh, it feels like that is the name of an episode that actually got produced. Sounds like it sounds like we probably did

New Higher four times. So that's why you exactly, Um, is there a moment that you remember just a great joke that got lost? Justin Spitzer Road a talking head where Dwight explains what happens when you fart is that a million tiny ship particles explode at once, but you can't see any of that. They're invisible to the eye. And I was just like, this is incredible, because what a weird, specific Dwight thing to talk about. And I

have no idea what happened to it. I don't know what episode it was for that might have been NBC, right, just being like, no, if you said ship, yeah it was. That was crazy. There's a thing in Dinner Party that I think must be in the extras where Pam's trying to eat because the dinner is so late, and she sticks upstairs with Jim and she has a protein bar and she starts seeing the protein bar and we basically had jan like a horror movie. She just shows up.

She just appears and she's like, really, Pam at a dinner party just like so disappointed and Jim. It was the beginning of Jim selling out Pam and he's like, Jan, I had nothing to do with this, and she, you know, and then Pam's mad at Jim. And but that was that was very funny based on your recollection, Yeah, what episode came in that was changed the least? Was there an episode that you remember that it was just like it was handed in and it was okay, No, we're

good with that. I mean, I don't want to I mean, Dinner Party is like that. I mean, I think, you know, a lot of the work that the writers did on it in a way kind of happened before. But I think we did a really good job with it. The big big change in the original draft of Dinner Party, Jan intentionally drove over her neighbor's dog. She killed the neighbor's dog, and she claimed it was an accident, but

you knew it wasn't. And then we changed it where she wrote funk on the neighbor's dog and uh, yeah, so that was a change. But I think Dinner Party probably like changed like five and so there. And you know, there's a double edged sword where if you write a very good first draft, sometimes it's like, oh, thank God, and then the room kind of works on it for a day. And if you write a terrible draft, the room was forced to work on it for a week.

And then now all of a sudden you have this like collective rewriting a script from scratch, and sometimes those become the best episodes, whereas like we did Michael's Birthday, which I think is a good episode but not one of my favorites, and we handed a draft that I think was like a A B and I think the episodes of B plus. And so if you're handed a B script, it might go to A B plus And if you hand in if you hand in a C,

we're not gonna shoot a C script. So now everyone has to work really hard and you work really late, and that might become an A minus or in a you know, that's fascinating. Yeah. Um, how much communication did

you have, if at all, with actors about stories. I mean, every so often Jenna would come up to the writer's room and say, hey, I don't know if you guys want to do like there was never never felt I've worked on shows where it feels like the actors are kind of it's a little bit more of an edict or. It's like we've got to indulge them. And with the office, it was a little bit more of Steve would say to Greg or you know, or we'd be on set

one day and say like, oh, this thing happened. You know, I was at my hockey league and such and such happened, and you're like, oh, okay, great, and then you would kind of take it the thing we'd always talked about. It was also because there were writers that were actors that were in the writer's room. The coolest thing that an actor could ever do is if, like Steve would pitch like a Jim and Pam story, He's that's why he's like the all time great Number one on the

call sheet. Is like he just wanted the show to be great. It wasn't about him, it was about the show. We always talked about that. That's amazing. How do you think the writer's room specifically was impacted by the fact that a number of the writers were actors on the show. I think that it all just felt the lines were blurred, I guess kind of in a good way, Like the fact that you guys were kind of stuck in that bullpen. You just kind of were interacting with everyone so much

more than I think on an average show. Like on a normal show, it might be that Kevin's character would be in two days of work, which maybe would have been nice for you, you'd be a better golfer. But but like from the perspective of like interacting with everyone, we became friends from the show, and there's just other people that just kind of felt that connection with and I think b J and Mindy and Paul were also to say like, hey, it feels like we haven't done

something like this. And the one thing that sucked about it was they're all credible writers and then they'd be on the background of scenes and you wouldn't have them. You know, something that a lot of people probably don't realize was it wasn't an accident that Ryan and Kelly and Toby were back in the annex, so they didn't have to be there all the time. They were able to do sort of there I guess main job as writers and be up with you guys while we were

down below. So you talked about showing up every day, and it's feeling like it started over you launched it. What was your typical day like as you were um breaking stories? How did that work? How was the structure of your day? So a writer's room is so tricky, and the office of the same way is there's so many things happening at once. So theoretically, there's an episode being shot, then there's a new episode that there's gonna be a table read in five days or four days.

You're probably doing a rewrite for the table read. Then there's editing happening of an episode or two episodes that were shot two weeks earlier, and then you need to get the next episode because there's a table read the following week, or maybe there's a maybe an episode changed, or you realize that this thing worked really well in editing, so you're like, you know what, let's really carry that through. Like, Okay, we're gonna arc out Dwight and Angela because Dwight angel

is playing so well. I know we've broken that episode already. We need a new b story because Dwight and angel is the thing that people are digging right Well, you just brought up something. It felt like the writers on the office were really keeping their pulse on what people were talking about online, what the fans or online forums.

At the time, or it was so new, like it wasn't you know, there was office tally And I always felt like, if these forty people that are commenting on this office tally thing, if they only knew that as soon as the episode dropped, that the entire writing staff of the office was just crowded around a computer refreshing like crazy to see if they liked the b story, you know what I mean. It was like they had

so much power. I mean, you you have to take some of that stuff in stride and know that it's not your entire audience and that the show is being watched by millions of people. That these I literally think it was probably forty that they are that they are just they're rabid, but you're aware of it, you know what I mean? And you but I never I never

felt like we were running towards that stuff. I always felt I always felt like the writer's room kind of had its own pulse and it's like this was making us laugh a lot, and so that's kind of what we were chasing. And I think also when you look back and you watch it, it feels like some of the choices are so confident and so like inevitable, but

that inevitability. To make it feel like that takes months and months and months of like you go down all these different avenues and so when you finally make the choice and it goes through multiple rewrites and then you have these actors do it, and you know what I mean, everything comes together, it feels like, oh, that was the exact right choice. But like we debated Jim and Pam

in Casino Night for weeks and weeks and weeks. There were multiple, you know, drafts of it and different versions of it and what does he say and what doesn't he say? And what does she you know, and and whatever choice we made or whatever choice Gregg made at the time, that sets off what the next season is, you know. And so it's not as simple as like, oh, we know we're leading to a kiss or we know we're leading to a slap. It's like you're trying every

you're going on every path. Right. Something that is interesting to me was that when people were watching an episode of the Office, they were watching it sort of at the same time that it was happening, right, So, like all networks do this when it's Christmas, you're gonna see a Christmas episode, right, But Greg sort of took that further and to extrapolate that out that if the cameras

weren't there, we weren't airing episodes. That means that we don't get to see that action that happened, and having the audience have to work to figure out what happened brought a really great active dynamic to the watching. No. Look, I think it makes people lean in when you do stuff like that because they have to catch up. I feel like the Sopranos would do that a lot. Yeah,

it's it's cool storytelling. And I think that, uh, having a show where the love story was so compelling and then having a show where the comedy was really high, that's rare, you know, And I think that usually get one without the other. And I think the fact that so many people would watch the show, and some people

would watch it for both of those reasons. And some people are like obsessed with Jim and Pam, and then there's twelve year old boys that don't care about Jim and Pam at all and are just like Dwit's crazy. And I like the way that Kevin talks, you know, was there a favorite kind of story that was your favorite kind of write for for the show. You know, I think different writers had different ways of approaching the show, and I think that Gene and I really liked the

cringe comedy of the British one. That's a comedy engine that we really dug and trying to make it as grounded as possible, but also just like sitting in the moments for a really long time as a character just says the wrong thing and then just you can't get

out of it. The other one that we wrote and we directed was The Lover, which is a real brutal half hour, which is just you know, Jimmy, I mean, Pam and Michael, and it's like Pam finding out that Michael is dating her mom is like just too much for her to take and it just I mean, it's that to me is some of Jenna's greatest perform and John is amazing in that episode. I mean, it's just great. Yeah.

I watched the one on a plane. Actually, I think I was with Jeene years after the office and I was just laughing the entire time, and she was like, you're just watching, like you were like, what is this guy watching? And then it was our thing. I was

tickled with our words. You you wrote it. Yeah, there's maybe this is too like weird and esoteric, but it's interesting when you start really looking at specific episodes, my guess is it wasn't all right, guys, we need something really cringe e here, right, But it's more like the way that you write it, the way that you approach it, it just sort of becomes that that's fascinating to me. You start to see your own personalities within it, even

though it is a collaborative process. Yeah, I think, I mean, that's what was so great about the show. And again, I think that it wasn't that me or Gene was only capable of writing jokes where the audience want to

cover their eyes, you know what I mean. And I don't think that Mike sure only wrote jokes that were like this, But I do think that everyone's kind of coming at it from a different place, and I think that, you know, I think that Mike kind of saw the best in them, and so a lot of Mike's episodes like kind of almost added an optimism to that, yeah, which is great. And like, Mike's one of the greatest comedy writers I've ever worked with. He's amazing. And I'm

not saying one's bad or one's good. I'm just saying that. I think everyone kind of just took the same idea and maybe puts their own little spin on it. And then a lot of times it goes into a room and things get rewritten and reached, and like, we didn't come up with Scott's thoughts. I think Paul did, but we we have a large hand and what that final version is and dinner Party was not our idea. God bless you, Oh my god, God, I was trying to hold that in because you were sounding so good. Should

I come back tomorrow? No? No, But so anyway, so I think like Dinner Party, there were a million jokes at the room generated and then Gene and I went off and added tons and tons of our own stuff, took things from the room, didn't take things from the room, put spins on it. We spent usually you get a week, you know, some episodes three or four days. We spent three weeks on Dinner Party. And so like we were just determined to make that great. We just loved it,

and we were competitive and petty. We just we you know, we want to hit it out of the park, and so we just spent way more time on it than we would have usually how much were you thinking about Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf when you were writing it? That was always the template for it, But I mean, you know, from that it was just like, okay, let's just bring this cast of characters, and also like who

would Michael bring to the dinner party? And you know, how do you kind of keep ratching it up in in one location that episode unfolds in a way where you feel like something bad is going to happen, even when bad things aren't happening. Just it feels uncomfortable. You just you just know that it's not great. But Michael presents very well, like Steve is so handsome, Laura's beautiful,

they look good, the condos like well decorated. And then it just slowly, slowly, slowly, you start seeing these little things well and just the time things take it adds to what you're taught. You're like, you just it's that, oh man, the shark is about to bite the ladies leg right. There's certain episodes, and comedy in general usually

has a real pace to it. It's like you get to the jokes and the office existed in the in the reaction shots like John is a brilliant reactor, and that's why Jim gets tons of laughs and why he's

the audience surrogate. But it's not like writing jokes for him was not the easiest part of the show in the way that writing for Dwight or writing for Michael is, because those characters are more inherently comic, but you can still get the laugh on the reaction you thought of Jim as a surrogate for the show, Well, did you think you were this errogate for the show? I didn't. You just looked at me. No, I don't think I think that whenever. Yeah, I think he was the everyman.

He had the crush on the girl. So I feel like, at least as a guy, related to him the most. And I think John has kind of every man quality. It's almost like a little bit of like Lloyd Dobbler and say Anything or something like that. And when he looks to the camera when someone saying when Michael saying saying inappropriate, you felt like, yes, this is me. No, it's it's great. I mean, so you're film I have an anecdote. Okay, go ahead, we want an anecdote. I

want an anecdote. I love anecdotes. So we wrote Dinner Party. I just thought of this when. So we wrote Dinner Party and we were proud of it. And I can't know if this is before after the right Track. I think it was before. And Greg pulled us into his office because we were getting notes from the network and they said, hey, so we read the scripts very funny, and Gregg said thank you, and they said it's it's

really dark. And Greg goes yeah, and they you know, just the thing about it is it's it's really dark. And goes yeah, and they go just it's it's really dark. He goes yeah, and then he says is there anything else and they go no, but he goes, okay, great, thanks guys by and hung up and I was like, wow, that was fucking cool because it was just they were basically saying to Greg like, we can't shoot it like this. This is way too dark and depressing. And he was

very polite. He said about three words and then that was it. And then I mean, Greg had so much power at that point with them, and the show was successful enough, and I don't think if that was the pile of the show that it would have would have passed, but at that moment that was it. And then we and then we didn't change this. I mean we changed things out of necessity, but we didn't change anything based on the network's notes. I always think about that though.

So he just felt like such a gangster. And if you know, he's not a gangster. No, not at all, not at all, but it was a very gangster move and it was just really he had earned, he had earned the right to do that. He was he was totally polite about it, but he just he also backed us up. That's amazing. He backed up a lot of people. Yeah, you know, you only know what you know. I've only worked on one show that wasn't mine. It was The Office. So the only frame of reference that I have for

running a show is Greg. So the way that I try to run a show is like Greg and you empower writers and you like is solicit advice from everyone. And by the way, Greg has really strong opinions. And it wasn't like the show was done by committee. But a lot of people don't give you those responsibilities up top um. You and Jane wrote the episode that is considered the most difficult to watch in the Office, which is Scott's Todds. Are you proud of that? Incredibly? Yeah,

nothing makes me happier. I mean other things make me happier, but no one wants to watch it. You're really pleased about that? Well, I think that it's the comic premise is so strong, and then it's like, what can you do just to like keep turning the screw and just make it feel worse and worse, like when they start dancing. Michael just sitting there and he also loves performance and he loves Dan, but he also knows that like he can't get out of this. I mean, it was just

it was incredible. There's something else that she and I talked about a lot in our writing, which is we love jokes where you get an insight into the world, like that you're creating canon for the show that you actually don't see on camera. So the end of that episode, the kind of book ending of Scott's Taughts is Michael doesn't like Aaron. He misses Pamas as assistant and they're driving back and he says, you know, you're really good at your job or whatever. He says, I have an

instinct about people. I don't if you remember this, and he says, Kevin, when he first came in, he was actually applying for a job in the warehouse, and that I made him an accountant, and it's just like, you are a terrible, terrible boss. And he's kind of saying in his way where it's like I I see people, I can kind of tap in, and it's like the idea that like, Kevin came in for a different job and he was like, you know what, I'm gonna pluck you out of the you know, the the warehouse. I

see You're good with numbers, aren't you. And then then all of a sudden, Kevin is as happens accounting, Like, we love moments like that where it just it's just like for the audience of the you know, the fans that watch every episode, it's like, so in the backstory of these two guys, there was an interview where he's like, hey, you know what, what do you stick up here with the Oh that's so good. While you were writing, you mentioned it before there was a writer strike. Yeah, what

was your relationship to it? Were you in support of it or how difficult was it? Well, so we had written Dinner Party, we did the table read of it, and I mean, gine I talked about it to this day. The opening of Dinner Party is is good, it's not great. It's basically that Michael tells everyone they have to stay at work late, and they've clearly created this thing so that Jimmy Pan will have to come to his house for dinner party. And so the cold opens pretty funny.

And so we're doing the table read and it's just like it's a good table where it's not a great table where it's good. Then you get to the apartment and you start feeling something like it became explosive and like people are looking at each other and it was like it was electric in a way that I can't I'm thinking about it now and like it makes me emotional about being swept through his shirt, and it was just like it was the greatest moment of our career.

And then there was this writer's strike and the studios have billions of dollars and they're always trying to roll back these things, and it can come down to health insurance and it can come down to residuals and the way that writers are getting paid and things were changing, and it's like that's all the backstory for it. But as a writer, we're there and they started shooting dinner Party without us, and the actors didn't know what to do.

And we're picketing with the other writers outside of the place that we work, that we spent, We spent all our time. You guys are all our friends. We're friends with the crew. The crews walking past us, some of them are kind of looking at us like fuck you because they can't afford you know, the writers are among the highest paid people. And all of a sudden someone's gonna not work for three months because we're complaining about our DVD residuals and is the show going to come back?

What's gonna what's gonna happen? And we're literally picketing outside of the place where we work. It's a really, really weird thing. And so then it was like, is this episode that we wrote that we're so proud of, is it not going to happen? And then and then we ended up shooting it and we and we got it different director and Paul Fiege ended up directing it. He wasn't gonna directed initially, and it became what it became.

But it's a really complicated thing where on one hand, it's like the writers look like assholes because they're striking, and it's like, well, they're striking against the studio, so it's all it's all people that make hundreds of millions of dollars, who control billions of dollars, and it's like they're crying poverty. And then the writers, who some writers

make a ton of money and some writers don't. They're crying poverty and saying, we want what's fair, you know, in the studios are saying we're we're trying to do what's fair. Every day there's negotiations. I mean, it's really confusing, and it's really hard to say what the gains are for all these things. Sometimes, do you remember what the context was of us stopping production? Oh, well, there were

no writers on set, and so then what happened? I think Steve Steve was in the Writer's Guild and then Steve started striking, and I think when Steve said he wouldn't act, then I think it kind of became okay, well Steve's not going to do it. Then John and Jenna wouldn't do it, then, you know what I mean, and everyone just kind of stopped and there wasn't enough to do. If Steve didn't act, you could shoot some talking heads, but you couldn't go to the condo, and

so then it just went away. Right, Um, talk about your transition to directing, how was that for you? I mean, having a new relationship with these people you've known for so long, right, right? Yeah, I mean we did. The first thing we did is we did webisodes and Greg kind of said like, if you do these and do a good job with them, then we'll give you the shot. And and you're just kind of you're just approaching a little bit differently, like you're really thinking about composition and

how you're telling jokes. Visually, you're talking to the actors in a different way. And I think when you're a writer producer on the show, you say something to the director and then directors deciding how to convey that to the actor. And as the show went on, like you know, the shorthand between you and me or whoever changed, and the directors were usually the ones are kind of coming in, but the director still had like, Okay, I need to pull off this shot. I want to make sure that

I get this, that we go tight here. And so they have an agenda and that agenda does include my notes, but like they also have their agenda, and as a director, it's like it's just mine and genes and so it's like you could kind of cut through it a little bit more. But it's fun I mean, and it's scary and you're like, we're like, you can't. The only person

you can blame is yourself. That's exactly what I was going to say, because I you know, I directed as well, and I remember the feeling of like it's just me deciding when we've we've shot enough, and then it's good enough and the camera's off, it's like, well, what wait a minute, what about no? But at every other time there's like there's endless possibility right and kind of right forever kind of or you can edit indefinitely. But shooting is just kind of like this is what we got.

Like I don't know why Brian's not funny in this scene. I thought it was funny on the page, Like what are we doing wrong to not? You know what I mean? And you just and you have to think on the fly, and that's scary. I remember also when we first started writing on the show and the script was finished and it was like, okay, all right, so we're gonna shoot this, and there was no fanfare. It was just like, okay.

The scripts done from the writer's room, and I was always like, it can't be our script that you're just doesn't Greg, like take it for a week and make it good, Like what do you mean like that we wrote something that now is going to be shot in air because we've never done it before. It just seemed like absurd. It felt like, well, we're the professionals that are going to fix it, and then it becomes very

scary when you realize that you're the professional. Yeah. So a lot of the writers were actors, but none as famous. You're you. You were an actor on the show as well. I was what was your character's name because an actor near the show? Well, you were a delivery guy. Yeah, we worked advance refrigeration. Gine and I obviously had to do everything together on the show, and so we were Leon Gino. But we thought it would be funny. I

think it was my idea. It was a terrible idea that I'd be Gino and that Gene would be Leo, and so it was incredibly confusing, and I remember me Laura hardened, having no idea. She knew that she knew that we were named Lee and Jean, but couldn't for the life of her no which one was which, And Jeane kept saying that he was gonna walk past mclaura and say, hey, Jean, are you ready? Are you ready to go to the writer's room, so that she would never know, and then occasionally he would say, Lee, that

was the thing that we did. Oh my god, yeah, but we were in Um. If you talk about cutting room floor, no characters in the history of the Office were more consistently on the cutting room floor than Leo and Gino. How many episodes did Leo and Gino do? I think I was in five? I sold Michael Weed Ginea. I saw Michael Weed in whatever that one's called. We're like, Sama, I can know. Um. Then we're in Cafe Disco. We dance in Cafe Disco. I had a real made of

my acting I really needed. I spoke at my college and I basically I said, like, my passion is acting, and then I write just so I have I can perform, which is not at all true. So I cut together like my two minute real and it has me. I mean, I've acted opposite Jack Black, I've acted opposite Cameron Diaz and Steve Carrell and then obviously you and me. You And why did I get mentioned after those three? Um?

I was doing a reverse alphabetical order. Okay, And no that's not true because Jack black Ship he has Correll Bomb Gardner. That's very good, almost like on my feet. But um, yeah, it's about two minutes long. I can only remember about three lines at once, so I can never do more than that. Yeah. Um, how do you think the Office has influenced who you are now as a writer? Again, it's just like that's all I know. It's possible that another you know, had I worked on

Jake in Progress starring John Stamos. I was on that show. By the way, we would have we would have met under different circumstances. We have known each other for a day. Um, I can't believe you just pulled Jake in Progress out of your head. Well, well, the reason I say I'm true when Jane and I got hired on the Office, no one had any interest in us for years, and we got an offer on the Office, We got an offer on Jake in Progress, and we got an offer

on American Daday, American Dad was twenty two episodes. Jake in Progress I think was thirteen or maybe it was twenty two, and the Office was six was seven backup scripts, and we chose the Office, and then we ended up writing the first of the backup scripts. So there was a version where they would have shot six episodes and then the fight was going to be the seventh one shot, and if they didn't decide to pick up the seven backup scripts and tournament the episodes, then we would just

would have had like an office spec. Wow, yeah, crazy, No. But I think like every writer or every show runner has their like their ways of like there's this number of scenes in an act, and what every scene needs to accomplish these three things. And I think the things that I think of when I think of greg Or like comedy engines, and like what makes a character inherently funny? And so I what does Michael Scott like at a funeral? What does Michael Scott like at a wedding? What does

Michael Scott like at a supermarket? Or Dwight or Kevin? And you think about these characters and clear clear comedy engines, and when you like you can say what Dwight would be like at the supermarket, it's like, because he's a fully formed character. And when you start writing your own ship and you are like, what is Edward do at the supermarket? You're like, well, he buys the groceries and maybe he argues, and you're like, why does he argue?

Is he loud? You know what I mean? Like you start questioning these things, and that's how a character becomes a character and not someone who just delivers lines, because Edward is the cop that needs to solve the murder, you know, any um. And then the other thing you used to do is strange pairings, so always thought was so fun. So we have all the characters up on a board and be like, what's a Kevin Creed story? What's an Oscar Michael story? And some of those were

great stories that just never went in. But like that's how you get weird stuff like Dwight spuying on Oscar in the secret and they become friends and you know what I mean, Like you start thinking about so it's not just like if all the stories are just the accountants together, then that feels like, oh, I know where the office is going. But if Kevin and Dwight form a band together, which is something that we talked about

at one point. Then it's like, okay, well now right, Kevin's musician and Dwight's musician, and now you have a different thing going. Oh that's interesting. Was here Is there an episode that you were most proud of writing? I mean, I probably Dinner Party is the one I'm most proud of. I think that's probably the best thing that you and

I have ever written collectively. We wrote The Secret, and that was where Jim tells Michael he told my later crush on Pam, but Michael reveals it to everyone, and then Jim assatel Pam and that I remember in the break room and says, hey, like Michael, I told Michael that I said a crush on you, and I don't anymore. And I just it was kind of the first time as a writer that I've written anything that just didn't

really have any jokes in it. And it was just the way that I think everyone's been in the situation where you have a crush on someone and they find out, And it was just Jenna and John just acted it so so well. There's tiny things like Jenna like her eyebrows froud for like a nano second and like every time I saw it in editing, I just I got choked up because he says, I don't like I don't have a crush. Don't worry, I don't have a crush

on you anymore. She's like, oh, okay you, And just it felt real in a way, and I think we tried writing it that way, and like, I just was really excited about that, you know, And so I think that felt more challenging to get that right than it did to get a Dwight talking head about you know how delicious like the different parts of a possum are, which was probably written several times. Um, the show was

a success, it was a hit. Why, in your mind, why has it become the number one show on television now? Why have people become so invested in it? I think that it feels I think it feels nostalgic. I think that the jokes are timeless. I think there's a really strong love story. I don't know what that show is now that has that compelling love story and has the jokes like Friends or The Office. Um, so I don't

know what would be the equivalent of it. So I think if that's the type of thing that that you're excited about. It's like, where are you going for it? And I also think that Netflix is this thing where people just have it on NonStop. Now you can watch five episodes in a row and you start kind of getting addicted in the twenty one minutes long and you're not watching with commercials, and it just feels like you can just devour it. And then the other thing, like

I did that movie Good Boys. It was three twelve year old boys and one of them was obsessed with the Office, and I think like they're watching it through a totally different prison, and it's like Kevin's your favorite character, it's their favorite character. And I think all of a sudden, there's elements of the show that appeal to an audience that doesn't really care about Jim and Pam, do you

know what I mean? And so I think that's the type of show also where a family of four can watch it and everyone's kind of getting something else out of it, but they all love it. And I think that the show feels lived in the texture of it. The audience appreciates the texture, even if that's not the way they would articulate it. It feels like everyone's been

in that office. And then I think the other thing is and this is again the genius of Greg and Alison Jones and everyone is I cannot think of a show, a comedy that has a roster of like I mean, how many actors were there, fourteen or whatever. That's a crazy thing to service that many people. And so it doesn't feel like a sea of extras. It feels like wherever you turn, you're delighted by what you're gonna see.

And as a writer, where you're like, oh, great, we're gonna do a Stanley talking he had next perfect, we have b J coming up in a scene with Phyllis Okay, excellent, Like you know what I mean, Like there was no place where it was like, oh ship years a week link, we have to write around this thing, or we can't shoot this way because you know whatever, the ensemble and the specificity of that ensemble in the small moments and in the big moments was what kind of made the

show the show too. Like as a writer, that's what I'm delighted about, Like I I don't write political satire. I think like the only thing I'm good at in my life is kind of just watching people at restaurants and at dinner parties and on subways and then like I'm a student enough to like write it down in my iPhone in the notes document, and like that's how I have a career. Like I think writers approach things and I think you're just delighted by those small moments

and it's it's what feels real. And I think if you can write anything where either the joke is resonant as like I've experienced this thing with my friends or this lame, this lame thing, like I remember we did the thing where everyone you know, bumps fists and then explodes it and that was based on a friend of mine did and I thought it was the dumbest thing,

and then for years like that's just something I did. No, I didn't do it, but I'm saying I brought it to the office the exploding hands did because like my friend did it and I thought it was really lame, and I was like, oh, you know, you know you should do it, or the lame characters on my show that I work up, and you know that's what she said, is like that, And I think these things like Jeane came up with um Andy goes to Cornell like he was able to tap into this weird insecurity where these

really smart people go to a school that is an Ivy League school, but it feels like a less than Ivy League school. And it said everything about a character, And I think when you can come up with those things, you know, interacting with the warehouse guys or anything like that, where it's like these small moments where it's like everyone

just trying to get by. Everyone wants to fall in love, everyone wants to make more money, everyone wants to get the promotion at work, and everyone just wants to feel like they're connected to something. And in a weird way, all these people that in any other circumstance would not be friends, you end up having to work with them

and you create these bonds. That's the beauty of everything, right, It's like when all these people can kind of come together and it's like you spend more time with the people that you work with then you do with your own family. And you know, and again, we did a show about it about the thing that we were right, so you spent more time with Angela than you did with your significant other or whatever. And I think that I think that's cool. I think that's really worth exploring.

I do think it's beautiful and I'm a great writer. I can't remember who I was talking to somebody associated with the show the other day. Who was it, Oh, you know it was It was Ben Silverman. It controlled me to be on this podcast when I should be working out other things. Um, and he said, you know this is gonna be for all of us. This is the kind of the thing that people will talk about in your career. And it was like, okay, Like that's cool.

I mean, you know, it's not doesn't mean I stopped working and I don't want to beat it, but if at the end of my career, for five years, I worked on a show that's considered one of the best comedies of all time, and I feel like I contributed quite a bit too it and I met all these great people, and I remember like summer camp and summer camp you would go back every summer and like you would kind of intend to keep in touch with people over the thing, but then you kind of have your

school friends. Then you come back and like for those four weeks you would just be like my best friend Brian and I were doing this and then and then like like we have to keep in touch. We have to keep a touch, man, and then you wouldn't, and then you'd see them again the next year. It'd be the same thing. And it's like I see Greg for lunch once or twice a year. It excites me every single time I do it. I see Paul. All the relationships matter to me, and it's like it kind of

in a way like transcends frequency of seeing someone. You just I just built. All these connections in my entire career can be traced back to Gregg reading a pilot about two codependent magicians, you know what I mean, and saying like, yeah, I'll pick those guys, and then everything else that's happened came from that awesome Um You're contribution to the show. I mean, I don't have to tell

you you know how important it is. But your friendship is so wort to me, and I respect you and I think you're one of the most talented people I've ever worked with. So thank you so much. Thank you, dude. This is so fun. I love that so much. It's I truly learned so much from Lee and I am so glad I got to share it with all of you. Lee, my friend, you can buy me breakfast any time, Okay, any time uh. And to all of you listeners, thank you. We will be back next week with another hilarious, strange

and brilliant mind from our writer's room. It's gonna be great. I don't know who it's going to be, but it is going to be great. In the meantime, all of you have a fantastic week. The Office. Deep Dive is hosted and executive produced by me Brian bum Gartner, alongside our executive producer, Lang Lee. Our senior producer is Tessa Kramer, our 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.