Rainn Wilson - Pt. 1

very big deal. It is the largest regional theater in the country. It puts on incredible shows, world renowned, etcetera, etcetera. Well, Rain was starring uh in a production of Philadelphia. Here I come. And I went to the show. And I have said this many times. Rain's performance in that show it was the greatest performance that I ever saw on the Guthrie stage. It was brilliant. And so the show was over and I was like, I've got to meet this guy, Rain. This guy is brilliant, and so we

got introduced, we met and we became friends. And when I showed up to work on the first day of the office. There was Rain, and I could not have been more delighted to see him. He is He's a special one, that's for sure. I am so excited for you to hear this interview. You're going to hear Rain in a way you have never heard him before. I love talking to him. You are going to love. Let's sending to him. So, without further ado, here is Rain Wilson.

Bubble and squeak. I love it. Bubble and squeak on, Bubble and squeaker cookie every moment, lift over from the nut before. Oh, there he is him. Buddy, Hey man, how are you? I'm good? God see you? Yeah? Yeah? Are you? We? Um? That felt really inappropriate? Why? Um, we have some salty nuts for you. I saw just a giant, like five pounds of salty I was requested, what salty nuts? Nothing is requested? What does that mean? I don't know? Um, all right, let's do this. Let's

do it. I'm all yours for two hours. Really so exciting? Are you excited? No? Why not? It's fun to see me. I'm excited to see you. Yes, that's that's what. That's that's where would Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna talk about a lot of things. I also am excited about talking about the office in terms of like some stuff that you don't normally here. Yeah, like the the longer, more detailed stories of some of the intricacies of how stuff was arrived at and some of the choices that were made

along the way and stuff like. Well, that's what my goal is with you, because you're a thoughtful person. I'm gonna try to do that. You're not gonna get that from Creed. No, I know. Well I think we've scheduled him for twenty two minutes. Okay, so that's fine. Um No, but yeah, I'm excited to talk to you. What. So we're starting, we're rolling. Yeah, we're just we're just chatting. Good. What were you doing before the office? Um? Before the Office? Well,

going way way back before. So I did theater for about ten years in New York before I did any TV or film, so early was a theater actor. Some A lot of people ask like, how were you an improv or were you and stand up or something like that, But I didn't do anything. I'm similar to you. Yeah, theater theater person that kind of found that we were well suited to kind of comic character guys. Despite our

ravishingly good looks. So yeah, So I came out to l A and and then started doing commercial auditions and voiceover auditions and little guest spots on TV shows. I was unlike Charmed and yeah and C S I and I did c S I. You did see s I too? Or you I was a furry you're a guy who gets sexualification out of wearing a big furry suit. I was creepy guy in Supermarket. I'm not getting creepy guy in Supermarket. I think I was dog. I think literally

that perfect. I think that was my role that was perfect. Yes, so I did a lot of that stuff and some pilots, and I did some decent movie roles here and there, and um, what happened for me that really led to the office is a lot of people think I kind of waltzt into Dwight. But the big role that put

me on the map was in six ft Under. So after a lot of slogging around the casting people Libby Goldstein, um, they brought me in multiple times to six ft Under, and finally I got the role of Arthur and I did ended up doing thirteen episodes on that right when HBO was heating up, and that was kind of revolutionizing what we think of as television. You know, Sopranos the Wire were on at the same time. It was Entourage and a lot of really amazing shows, including six ft

Under and Uh. All of a sudden, I popped onto people's radar. Um. It was really incredible how that happened, because that was one of those shows that everyone in l A watches. There are the shows that people watch all across the country. They watch n c I, s l A or something like that, and it's fifty million people will watch it, but no one in l A who are like taste makers watch it. So this six ft Under was one of those kind of shows, and

that's what put me on the map. And all of a sudden, I was in kind of pretty high demand for movies and stuff. I know, you want a SAG Award for that, the Ensemble Ensemble SAG Award. Yeah. I might be the only person who has been part of winning an Ensemble SAG Award for both drama and comedy because I did it for six ft Under and then twice we won I think twice we won UH for the Office and now so so you're in high demand, yeah, and were you aware of the British version of The Office?

I was. I was so my friend Sam Catlin, he had heard about it, and he had seen a couple episodes and somehow gotten some like British DVD or something like that and had like even like an English DVD player or something somehow had advanced copies, and like, you've got to see it. Groundbreaking, amazing, And so we went over like on a special occasional We've got to watch The Office, and we were blown away. So I was really truly one of the first people to see it

in the United States. It might have been one of the first couple of thousand people to see it in the United States, and just we loved it. And then he would get his hands on a couple more episodes and we'd go back and have dinner and watched like two or three more episodes. So I loved it. And what happened was I got cast in a pilot with Janine Garoffalo for ABC. Mark Marrin was in it and Bob oden Kirk was in it. And this was this infamous pilot that we did the table read and they

pulled the plug after the table read. So they had sets built, we had locations, we had cast, we had plane tickets. We were flying out the next day, literally the next morning after the table read, start shooting and uh did the table read? It went terribly, but I

guess what, I still got paid. And that was the same pilot season as The Office, kind of the Office didn't really follow a pilot season when it was first casting, right, So what happened was Vernon Sanders, who's one of the executives and executives right, And I ran into him in the parking lot on the way to this infamous table read, and He's like, hey, we got good news and I was like, what's that is? Like, we got the rights

to make the American version of the Office. And I was like, outside, I was like, oh great, And inside I was like, motherfucker, goddamn it, that's fucking sucked. Because I love the British Office so much. I didn't have an idea of like even what the American Office would be, or what role I would play or anything like that. But I was just like inside, I was just kicking myself.

And then the plug gets pulled on that and then I called my people and I'm like, hey, I hear about this office, and they're like, yeah, well it was a few months to go on that. So fortunately that the space was opened and the door was opened. The universe works in mysterious ways, Brian, That's right, it does, and so you eventually get a call to go in and meet correct. I was the first audition for the office.

I have in my office at home, framed the audition sheet of Alison Jones the first day of the auditions for the office, and I was number one on that list. So other people on the list, or Jenna Fisher, you can find. It's on my Instagram somewhere. It might even be in my book in the in the photos included in my books, you guys can find it. But uh, I think Adam Scott audition. I think there were, um,

there was a lot of great talent that auditions. My story about that I'll share with you really quick was when Steve left, Alison Jones came to me. He had a little party, a little reception. She came and she goes, I was looking for stuff for Steve that I thought it might be cool. She probably gave that to you, Like when she was searching around and she hands me a sheet and it says Kevin and it says Brian Baumgartner, Eric stone Street and Jorge Garcia. No kidding. So that

was like the final three. But oh fantastic. So you and Helo. Eric stone Street is way richer than you. He is now he sorry shoot sorry. So yeah, So on that first audition, I auditioned for both Michael and Dwight, and my Michael was just terrible. It was just simply a Ricky Gervais impersonation. And I knew that I had more of an affinity for the Dwight role. Uh, And I knew that I could really deliver on that. I just felt it in my bones. I'm like, oh, this

is me, this is that is exactly my kind of weird. Yeah, well that I mean, you're but you were so different also than Gareth in the British version. I mean he was much yeah weasily and and Dwight way more authoritarian and trying to derive power, whereas Gareth seemed more backstabby. Yeah, we're different in a lot of ways and similar in

a lot of ways. And it was this incredible luxury to go, Okay, here's Mackenzie Crook, brilliant actor, really strange looking dude, and he killed as Gareth and was so interesting, and I get to steal all of his best stuff, and then there's maybe stuff that I can add that's more of my own, so it's win win all around. So one of the things that Dwight is most known for is saying absolutely ludicrous, preposterous stuff with a total straight face and a dead pan, without any knowledge that

what he's saying is ridiculous. And really, Mackenzie did that so be to flee, and I I really just frankly stole that from him. Another thing I stole from him was the haircut um. I read an interview with him where he said he went to like just a local barber shop out in like Slough or some you know, suburb of London, and he kind of got the haircut that would be the least flattering for his head and the most ridiculous haircut. And I read that I was like, oh,

I want to do that. So I spent time in the mirror figuring out what the haircut that is going to make me look the most ridiculous. I have a huge forehead and I was like, I'm going to frame my forehead perfectly with these little draperies of hair that will highlight the enormity of my carapace. Is that a word? I think it is a word. I think these guys aren't even listening. Um and then like really short on the sides, and then intense, and then it evolved over time.

But interesting now, so we're not going to talk too much more about the audition process. But at what point did you meet John and Jenna and Steve in the callback sessions? Yeah? So the callback sessions were months later, mostly for for those listeners who don't know the way pilot season used to work, at least less and less so. But all the scripts would start getting released in December January, and then all the auditions where this is called pilot

season January February. They'd shoot in like March, early April. Decisions would be made in late April or May about staffing up for the summer and if something was going to be on the air in September. So it so always a very narrow kind of window. It's like this, this is how this nine month window worked. So the office was outside of those bounds a little bit. I think my first audition was like in September October, and then the callback was like December, and then we shot

in like February or something like that. So I had to wait months after that first audition, and they had a callback situation where they brought everyone and their mother and anyone they were considering for the role over a weekend, and Greg was incredibly thorough and I spent maybe I spent seven or eight hours on one of the first day there, and I met Jenna, I met John um Steve was shooting some other stuff, but he had a little bit of time, and we improvised together and did

a couple of scenes together. We were given scene, oh here, tried this scene, tried this scene, not much time to prepare, stuff we've never seen, and just like just just shoot it, you know, and then we'd improvise, you know, like Jim brings Dwight a glass of water, and it's like just improvised Jim bringing you a glass of water, and Dwight as immediately distrustful, like as he poisoned it or something like that. And and that was not really my gig.

I didn't do, you know, upright citizens Brigade or Groundlings. I wasn't really an improv guy. But I'm good at improving kind of in character. In fact, later after I was cast, Greg came to me and we had a coffee and he gave me kind of a little bit of a warning talk, and it kind of scared me. Essentially, he said, in a very diplomatic way, you improvised better than you act when you're on the script. And I was like why, He's like, yeah, more, it's more natural.

It's more when you're doing scripted stuff, it feels a little heavy and a little forced. And I was like, oh, and this was before we were going to shoot the pilot. So I begged my manager. I was like, I want to see the audition tapes. I want to see my audition tapes. And sure enough, he was right, because somehow, when I improvised, it was just a little looser. It's a little more off the cough. It was a little weirder.

When I was doing scripted stuff. It's I don't want to say it sounded like a theater actor or something like that, but it sounded a little more scripted. It didn't have that kind of documentary feel that the office had to have. And it was a really great learning experience, like, oh, I need to just kind of let the script, let the script go, improvise around the script, let it be much lighter. That is fascinating. I did not know that story, but it kept me up at night. I was like,

oh shit, what does that mean? I improvised a good improviser and a terrible, terrible regular actor. So I want to talk about, Um, you creating the character of Dwight, how you went about that? Like what elements you chose that that you brought into Dwight? How did you approach that?

So um, I always say that in terms of like when people ask me about playing Dwight, I always say that I think my goal was to make Dwight very specific, you know, having you know, Dwight have a pager, stand a certain way, like drive a certain way, sitting in his chair a certain way, have certain attitudes about certain things that are very specified because no one had done

like combination muscle car nerd. You know, when you think about it, there's a lot of disparate elements that go into the creation of Dwight, like heavy metal muscle car rarely equals Battlestar Galactica fan, And I do think this is true. As an actor, the more specific you make your character. That made him more human and then more relatable. Um so muscle car nerd um heavy metal, you know, amish. Of course, Greg Daniels always said that the beat farmer

thing was his grandparents. I think we're beat literally beat farmers in Poland and they grew beats. Um, I think like before the Holocaust, and uh so he put that in from that. I did not know that. So the beat farm was from yes. And then the glasses, which, by the way, I really do think that Dwight has influenced popular culture because now all the hipsters were the Dwight classes. You were the first hipster. Yeah, I really was. I was like the hipster nerd who took those glasses.

And and now everyone who goes to Intelligencia Coffee and silver Lake or Brooklyn or wearing those same glasses. Um. Free commercial for Intelligencia Coffee. Thank you, I'll take my gift card please. Um. Was there anything for you as a theater actor like myself, It's a loaded question. Was there anything physically, any physical manifestation of Dwight within Rain. That's a great question, and yes there was. And I've never really talked about this before, but I went to

theater school. I was an n y U grad program, did a lot of like clowning, and did a lot of a lot of physical work and physical theater. You were involved in physical theater in Minneapolis, And I'm not trying to sound pretentious at all, like mr Theater, but when you get that kind of training, a lot of it is physical, Like how do you find a character in your body? You know, that's part of clown work

as well. But there were certain elements of Dwight that if I needed to kind of get into character, I could just put my attention, put my focus in certain parts of my body, and I would immediately be Dwight, like a really like a straight neck, you know, and uh kind of hips forward and kind of thinking about like like big hips Like I don't know if you

noticed that Dwight always stands too close to people. If someone's sitting down and he's standing next to him, like his hips are like really like big next to their face kind of and there's kind of a ramrod neck, a little bit of a swagger and the shoulders thrown back. Those were some of the elements of Dwight that if I was ever feeling like do I really have him early on. You know, after you do two seasons, you

can just do the character in your sleep. But but early on, there were some of those physical choices that really were like clown kind of choices that I could go to to just help me get into the world. What about you for Kevin? Did you have something for Kevin too? I mean too that I can articulate. I'm sure there were more. For me, it was my jaw. I knew there was a specific place that I could put my jaw that was him. And also I imagined him for the jaw thing. You had a weird mouth.

You would make like a little mouth like this, so it's like a little jutting it for your lips should be a little a little like pursed, Yeah, exactly. And also I had the ideas as he moved through the space. There were two things. One is he wasn't aware of his size within the space right, which to me was always hilarious when I would come against Angela right because I just wouldn't see her there and knock her around.

And the other was that there was something about my torso that it doesn't move agilely from side to side. It's all sort of just all connected down at my hips and that there's yeah, yeah, yeah, so the whole body turns at the same whole and maybe even shuffle my feet to turn to one. Um, hold on one second, that is not your ine, that is water speak for yourself.

Of Um, why do people love Dwight? Well, we talked earlier about the specificity of Dwight, and I think that how his glasses are and how his beeper is, and that the certain colors that he wears in the car he drives, and how he sees the world. Um. But you know, the thing I hate the most about comedy, and I have been known to tiptoe into this land, but the thing I hate them most about it is

that when someone knows that they're being funny. And that's one of the I think keys to the comedy the Office is that none of the characters thought of themselves as being funny. I think the documentary element helped with that tremendously, And I tried to play Dwight as outrageously as possible and as grounded and realistic as possible at the same time. So look at any scene and what's happening, as matter how ridiculous it is you can always tell

there's a child, there's a big hid in there. Yeah, he could do just preposterous things, but I always tried to motivate them internally with some internal drive, like this is how Dwight saw the world, This is how you always knew how Dwight felt. I guess that would be my number one answer is like you can always tell what Dwight is feeling and what he's going through on the inside. And he thinks he's hiding, you know, people think, oh, is he you know, is he is he on the spectrum?

Does he have autism or something like that? But his heart is on his sleeve. You can always see what he's feeling, you know, is even if he's being haughty or even if he's being arrogant, like, you always see what's going on in the inside. And I think that that allowed people to relate to him. So in those moments when Dwight was sad or hurt, or or put off or disappointed, like, people really felt for him. What were your initial thoughts of the Pilot when you first

saw it? Um? Are you proud of it? I thought the pilot. I think if you look at all of our episodes, the pilots one of the weakest. I think it feels a little labored. It's not as funny as when we find our own voice in a few episodes, the healthcare and basketball episodes a few ones later on. Um, I liked it a lot, but because I knew the British Office so well, I just felt like, oh, this is this is feeling a little bit like a Paler

imitation of the British Office. So I wasn't the hugest fan, But at the same time, I really knew the potential of the show that we had right um So going back and watching some of the stuff that I want to say too, and this story has been told before, but that first season, for you listener is out there who don't understand this, Like we did six episodes. That's never done. No one does six episodes of the first season,

especially back in those days of network television. Network television only makes money when they hit syndications and they have to have over a hundred episodes and they want to shoot as many as possible. So it was really weird that they like found some money in the budget to kind of shoot six under the radar episodes of the Office. But I mean, we barely hung on for the first year and a half, and and then we were you know, a moderate hit for a while, and then we were

kind of fading. You're so fired. Whoever, that was so fund I hit you with my five pounds and mixed nuts. So who would have ever thunk that fifteen years after shooting the pilot, this is when we're having this conversation. The office would be bigger than ever, two hundred episodes, you know, defining roles for for all of us. Do you remember after we shot the first six episodes of season two, you and Steve and I We're sitting in Steve's trailer and Steve said, well, at least we got

to do twelve mm hmm, and we thought we were done. Yeah, And wasn't the next order for like four? Two? Yeah? And then there was four and then like one, like hey, we're doing four? How they ordered one more like it? It's like it's just like just dribs and drafts and this is just not done in that world of network television. Exactly. Yes, what I remember is six, four, two, one, seven, and

then they said, okay, you can do twenty two. And then a week later we got a third season m and it was like, oh we're rolling, Yeah, we're off to the races. An NBC hung that big bulletin board

up No excuse me, what's it called? A billboard word over by its offices with the Office on it, like from out of nowhere, all of a sudden, we were like their prize new show, and we were going from like almost canceled too, because the numbers just started to shoot up dramatically and the interest in the show started to shoot up dramatically. I mean there was forty year old Virgin, Yes, that certainly contributed to it. My Name

is Earl. We followed My Name Is Earl, which had much stronger numbers right out of the gate and really helped us. And I talked about this in my book, But what happened around that Christmas time was that the first video iPods came out and they were preloaded with the Office Christmas episode on it. So basically all of the you talk about like influencers, like I view it

as like who got video iPods for Christmas? The first year they came out, rich kids, So all the rich kids around America all of a sudden had an Office episode and it was young people with their iPods who knew how to set up an iTunes account because their parents didn't. And that was the amazing thing. And I don't think I think that blindsided everybody, including NBC, that we would be so popular with young people, right, um, iTunes,

the video iPod technology. I mean the show were you on my Space very briefly, like for like two and a half months, because that was Jenna and myself and Angela and b J really used my Space in that first season season and a half when we were trying to cultivate viewers. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. So we were the kind of the first show that went hand in hand with technology and social media. Yes, and then you became kind of king of Twitter. That

was later, but yeah, two thousand nine. Early on in Twitter, I joined early because I was founding the company sol Pancake and they kind of insisted that I do it. And young people, young nerdy people that were starting out on Twitter and comedy people. Um, I was like the big cheese for the first like nine months of Twitter

that were hardly any bigger celebrities than me. So I immediately like had a million followers on Twitter early on, Yeah, what um so the cold opens the show kind of started finding itself and also finding its form, right, Like having the cold opens that we're separate from the regular episodes, right, what do you feel like those allowed us to do well?

I think they discovered early on. Greg is one of the people I've worked with the most who has this ability to ride this line of like real instinct, like he'll just throw something out like try this, I think that will be really funny and it's weird and it's out there and it's not related to anything, but also like really almost spocklike precision about like what works about

characters and what works about storylines. And one of the things they realized early on is that like you know, Jim pranking Dwight, which the British show started obviously, but audiences loved that, so that was a really great way to have cold opens. They weren't all pranks, but a lot of them were pranks, and the audience just love them. I still to this day and people like, what's your favorite prank? When he did this prank, when he did

that prank? Do you guys prank each other? I always get that, like do you prank each other back say she's like, no, we don't. It takes too much work and effort to prank someone. You have to plan it and think it through. We were just they're shooting a TV show, like you know. The only thing that I

could think was and it happened like eight times. I remember there was a period probably when the computer started working, where we had we could send I M s to each other, so it would be like what are you doing, like what while someone was doing a scene like that's kind of the only like yeah, But so I think the cold opens really helped hook an audience in. Remember this was not streaming. You're gonna have a commercial between my name is Earl and then the office is going

to start. You gotta hook him. You got that ninety seconds, two minutes. You want them to sit through the commercials that come right after that and stick with the show. So I think Greg was really canny about that too, kind of like we got to hook him in and those things became swiftly kind of one of the strongest aspects of the show. Well, and one of the other things that happened, which was a purely business decision, right. I don't know if you remember this. This was when

the DVR. You would set the DVR to record from nine to nine thirty right, and then we started showing up at eight fifty nine. So if you had not set it to start earlier, right, you would miss it. So you would need to tune in earlier, which means if you were watching another channel, you'd have to turn over to NBC before nine o'clock. And that changed the whole ratings things, and then the supersized episodes and all

of those things. I I you know, speaking of the length of the episodes, we did a lot of episodes that were double episodes, and we did a lot of episodes that were just longer episodes. Yes, but I always felt and I wonder if Greg would do this at some point in time. I don't know if there's some vault that has all of the office material. Is that the first not the first cut, but the rough cut that would get passed around for like notes that was too long. The six minute cuts of episodes were always

way better, and I wonder if they'll ever be. In fact, I think there would be a really smart money making scheme is to re release kind of directors cuts of all the episodes and let them be to nine minutes long. But it was always just such a pain to like cut them down from like that twenty five minutes sweet Spot to that twenty one minute forty twond mark that they would have to be to air with the commercials. Was there any story or anything that got cut out

that you specifically remember regretting. I have one that I yelled at the editors about. I think there was a lot more with me and Ellie doing death RACKI early on for Game of Thrones, that was they cut that almost down to almost nothing, and I remember being pistols like that was so funny, and they're like, we gotta lose stuff, Sorry, we gotta cut stuff. And because it was like the C story, so they're always going to

cut the C story. The A story is always going to be like Michael and jan and something, and then B stories like Dwight and Jim battling, and then the C story is going to be like some smaller thing. And sometimes Dwight is in the A story, but a lot of times he's in the C story, and that's always the one that gets kind of cut to the bone, right, What was your one? Mine was um baby shower and Jan is having the baby, and um, Kevin asks her where she got her sperm donated from, and Jan says,

it's a it's a very very exclusive place. You wouldn't know it. And Kevin says, the one behind the eye hop and they'll look on Steve's face and her face, and the idea that Jan's baby might have made was just pure. And they were like, yeah, we're not doing anything with that or like what if that. I was like, oh my god, that's just so funny. All right, we're gonna stop there for now. I'm so sorry we have to stop right in the middle. That's what he said.

I guess, uh, don't freak out because you are going to hear even more from Rain in a future episode. But I just I had to leave you with that thought, the idea that Kevin and may have been the father of Jan's baby. In fact, I'm quite convinced that he was that that that Kevin was the father of Astrid, and he would have loved the name and giggled at it. So think about that before we're back. Anyway, Thank you for listening. You guys are the best. I am so

excited to have you with me. On this journey and we'll see you next week for another episode of the Office Deep Dive. The Office Deep Dive is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Langley. Our senior producer is Tessa Kramer, Our associate producer is Emily Carr, and our assistant editor is Diego Tapia. My main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton,

and the so it is mixed by seth Olandsky. Special thanks to the amazing production crew who recorded these interviews with us Joanna Sakalowski, Julia Smith, Benny Spiwack Russell with Jaya, Margaret Borchard, Christian Bonaventura, Matthew Rosenfield, Alex Mobison, Lucy Savage, Judson Pickwork, Jack Walden, Jonathan Mayer, Andrew Stephen, David Lincoln, and said A Lee