Brent Forrester

no fiction podcast ever has. Listen to Maxi Miles on the Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to our show. I'm Zoia de Chanelle and I'm so excited to be joined by my friends and cast meates Hannah Simone and Lamar and Morris to recap our hit television series New Girl. Join us every Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast, where we'll share behind the scenes stories of your favorite

New Girl episodes. Each week, we answer all your burning questions like is there really a bear in every episode of New Girl? Plus you'll hear hilarious stories like this that was one of years things you brought back from Yeah, because all for National Past Layers. Yeah seven hoop Yeah. Listen to the Welcome to Our Show podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get

your podcasts. From Cavalry Audio, the studio that brought you The Devil Within and The Shadow Girls, comes a new true crime podcast, The Pink Moon Murders. The local sheriff believes there may be more than one killer. They were afraid just face it out in that area. The family was targeted, most of them targeted while they were sleeping.

The Pink Moon Murders is available on February twenty second, and you can follow The Pink Moon Murders on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Brent Forrester. I was a writer and producer at the Office. Hello every one, and thank you so much for joining me again. This is the Office Deep Dive, and as always I am your host, Brian baum Gartner. Today we are continuing our mini dive if you will, into the Writer's Room with the one and

only Brent Forrester. Brent joined the writing staff in season three, which, as he talks about in this conversation, this was not an easy thing to do. I mean, there were some real heavy 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 and Squeak. I love it. Bubble and Squeak on Bubble and Squeaker Cookie, every moment left over from the nut before. Oh yeah, what's up? Oh my goodness, so good to see you. Oh my gosh, wow, you created

the circumstance off Endless Office Reunion for yourself. Everybody, Yeah, 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. 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.

Doubt your podcasting, 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 like 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, and

we have 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 cam

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? But now was that Susan Susan Harris? I hear it was your first sort of mentor time. Yeah, you know, I had actually gone to high school with her or 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 graduated 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 ratist uh natural dialogue writers ever, Susan Harris. So she helped you get the job on nurses retrainer 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 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 industry. Blossom blowesome. 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 ad tellers, 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 Roseanne 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.

And Apatow 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? Jo? Comedian? Right stuff? Oh yeah, let'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 Gregg 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 like one of the craziest self destructive moves in a weird way. But I

was young. I was in my twenties. I means 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, seen 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. As 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, on top of all 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 in capable of doing. So it's it's I can't go from here to here in no time like you can in a cartoon. I always Yeah,

there was definitely some Homer Simpson elements. 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 go, 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? 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 American show. 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 Oh 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 it was there,

Uh and uh, Paul Leeberstein, Jens Alata, 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 are.

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 it 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. It's a hard time for hiring, so you need a hiring

partner built for hard times. That's Indeed. If you're hiring, you need Indeed because Indeed is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview, and hire all in one place. And Indeed is the only job site where you're guaranteed to find quality applications that meet your must have requirements or else you don't pay. Instead of spending hours on multiple job sites hoping to find candidates with the right skills, you need one hiring partner that can help you do

it all. Indeed partners with you on every step of the hiring process. Find great talent through time saving tools like Indeed, instant Match, assess months and virtual interviews. With instant Match, as soon as you sponsor a post, you get a short list of quality candidates with resumes on Indeed that match your job description and you can invite them to apply right away. Plus, you only pay for

quality applications that meet your must have requirements. Join more than three million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. Start hiring right now with a seventy five dollar sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at indeed dot com slash office deep Dive offer valid through March thirty one. Go to indeed dot com slash office deep Dive to claim your seventy five dollar credit before March one. Indeed dot Com slash Office Deep Dive

terms and conditions apply. Need to hire you need Indeed. I'm Colleen with Join me the host of Eating While Broke podcast While I eat a meal created by self made entrepreneurs, influencers and celebrities over a meal they once eight when they were broke. Today I have the lovely aj Crimson, the official Princess of comfin Asia Kid and Assia. This is the professor. We're here on Eating While Broke and today I'm gonna break down my meal that got

me through a time when I was broken. Listen to Eating while Broke on the I Heart radio app on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Jake Halpern here. If you've ever wondered what it's like to make a true crime podcast like deep Cover, well now's your chance to find out. Join me and my friend Dana Goodyear, who's the host of Pushkin's Lost Hills podcast, on March sixteen for a digital conversation on true crime storytelling.

We'll talk about how we make our stories dramatic and accurate, and how we navigate all the ethical dilemmas that we face in the process. Get your tickets now at moment house dot com backslash d c l H. That's moment house dot com slash d c l H. 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 a 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 paring. 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 story together, do that right, 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 Dwightes, 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 thought, 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're you 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 writers what they thought. It was Larry Sanders and uh, Judd apataw. 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, what's the Larry Sanders show? And by the end we had a phrase, a motto, and it was behavior over banter. I never forgot it. Man. You know, you don't have to have clever wordplay if the characters are in an interesting behavior. Now, I can tell you two behaviors that are funny for actress. One is lying, always funny. The

other generally is seduction. Unless the person I suppose it's 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 think of the writer's room uh as an art project that 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 sent 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, Jem's 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 him 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 lions share of the credit probably goes to Greg and his three dimensional chess that he plays

with his mind. 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 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 along 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 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 Jym 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 cheer, 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

structurally 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 freak only 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 styrofolm container was cold lettuce and tomato, and the gimmick was that you buy it and then and they put it together in the hot stas hot and the cold state 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 White 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 seemed 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 Corrella, 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 somewhere deep inside doesn't trust him because what 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 kind of attaches to that schoolyard schoolyard I'm I'm in the nineteen fifties all of a sudden, but like 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 performance, that's unnecessary. But what is that coming? I don't know. I mean, please go ahead if there's something you want to play. I mean I can't stop you. Sure 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 alone, 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 spilling the children as possible. I'm glad you brought up Kevin's spilling 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 area edition of and in 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 tell you, I remember with Kevin's chili. I was so out of you, Brian that we were like, Okay, we're gonna build a chili treen 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 prop 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 carried that incredibly heavy chili container. That was amazing. We only got two takes, I would call because 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 fill it. 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. 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 pieces 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 ciss of viand would 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 at Did you know that on the day Doctor King was shot, the all black security detail normally assigned to him was called off. They're the ones who would not allow him to stay at any hotel with balconies. That security union was reassigned. I was a

man there. And did you know that on the day Doctor King was shot, two black firemen stationed across the street and one black police detective who was surveiling King. We're all taken off the job. What was the emergency that caused? Usually moved around the fire sure versus Did you ever ask what this was all about? This is the MLK Tapes. The first episodes are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The art world it is essentially

a money laundering business. The best fakes are still hanging off people's walls. You know they don't even know or suspect that there fakes. I'm Ale Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed and forgery in the art World, you knew the painting was fake. Um. Listen to Art Fraud on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Deleeber. I'm here to tell you about my brand new podcast, de Relieber

at your Service. I'll be sitting down with the world's most inspiring minds to uncover what makes them tick, what they've learned from their successes, failures, and the obstacles life has thrown at them. We're going deep with people revolutionizing not just their own industries, but also culture more broadly. From Lisa today Oh, the author redefining what it means to tell women's stories, to the fashion industry virtuoso Olivier Roosting.

You'll even hear me break bread with some of the most iconic and disseous names in pop culture, like Sir Elton John. After a lot of upsets, a lot of disappointments, a lot of betrayals, It's turned out to be the most wonderful life right now that I've ever imagined. I can't wait to share all of this and more with you. Listen to do Relieber at Your Service on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Greg Jen 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 on her 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 didn't 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, are 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 got to 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 go, 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. 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. And 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 Wolfile, I 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. That was one called China Okay, good good? Yeah? Uh, 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 out 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 pulse take on it, 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 should 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 at that it was sort of known he had a seven year contract, and I remember early on hang with Steve and him saying, apropo of nothing, this is the greatest television show that I will ever be a part of. I remember being struck by that because 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

the 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 was 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 challenges 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 goes, 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 Saturday Night 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 me in 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. Yeah, 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 and 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. Um. Are you happy with how the show ended? Yes? Very much so. Yeah. Uh. I remember going to the screening and the the emotions that 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 her 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 think you've

seen you got yourselves 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. He was just you just kind of translated into just a massive's really happening. That's pretty brilliant.

I'm Jake Calburn, host of Deep Cover. Our new season is about a lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago. We controlled the courts, we controlled absolutely everything. He bribed judges and even helped a hit man walk free, until one day when he started talking with the FBI and promised that he could take the mob down I've spent the past year trying to figure out why he flipped and what he was really after. From my perspective, Bob was too good to be true. There's got to be

something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust that guy. He looks like a little scum bid layer still Bidge, he looked like what he was or at I can say with all certainty I think he's a hero because he didn't have to do what he did, and he did it anyway. The moment I put the wire around the first time, my life was over. If it ever got out, they would kill me. In the heartbeat, listen to deep Cover on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're live here outside

the Perez family home, just waiting for them. And there they go, almost on time. This morning. Mom is coming off the front doors wrong with a double arm kid carry. Looks like dad has the bags. Daughter is bringing up the rear. Oh but the diaper bag wasn't closed. Diapers and toys are everywhere. Oh but mom has just nailed the perfect car seat buckle for the toddler. And now the eldest daughter, who looks to be about nine or

ten has secured herself in the booster seat. Dad zips the bag clothes and they're off, but looks like Mom doesn't realize her coffee cup is still on the roof of the car, and there it goes. That's a shame that mug was a fan favorite. Don't sweat the small stuff, just nailed the big stuff, like making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right seat for their agent's eyes.

Learn more n h t s A dot gov slash the Right Seat visits n h s A dot Gov Slash the Right Seat brought to you by NITZA and the ad Council. 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 Jen Salada and Mike Sure and all 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 rec 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, intral Park, Ghosted Platform, Never have I ever Champions Sunnyside

and Abbey's. I mean, that is an incredible list of shows and shows really that you guys um were the all stars of 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 t V 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, uh, 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 Pattnick, And so Jen Selata 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 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

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 is 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 were 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 so old 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. You're such a great actor. I love being around great actors. It's a pleasure. Very 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 end 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 Ethical Landscape. The Black Effect presents I didn't know, maybe you didn't either, But the history of black people ain't rooted in slavery. Oh no, it is royalty, not despair. Beat out here and every day in February, I will give you a black history fact that I didn't know, and maybe you

didn't either. It's a rugged, ratchet, realistic look at history. Listen. So I didn't know, maybe you didn't either. On the Black Effect Podcast Network, our Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or just wherever you get your podcast from. Big Brother, North Korea's Forgotten Prince is a new true crime podcast that dives deep into the life and mysterious assassination of the man wants destined to be North Korea's next dictator.

Join me Eaten Lye as we investigate a twisting tale of espionage, palas, gossip, and political backstabbing, and dive into the motives and suspects behind the most bizarre assassination plot of the century. Listen to Big Brother on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Coming February. Mama, what does the chicken say? What the draft diraffe? Really? Giraffe giraffe? You're not gonna get it

all right. Just make sure you nail the big stuff, like making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right seat for their agent's eyes. Get it right visits n h S a dot gov slash the Right Seat brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the ad Council