Greg Daniels - Pt. 2

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your podcasts. Hi. I'm Greg Daniels. I was the showrunner of The Office. Hello everyone, it's me. That's right, your trusty host Brian Baumgartner, and you are listening to the Office Deep Dive. Thank you for joining me once again today. I am very pleased to bring you part two of three of my conversation with Greg Daniels. Now, think of this as the second act of a three act play.

If Greg's interview were the Lord of the Rings and and it was almost as long as that trilogy, then this would be the Two Towers, which my producer has

instructed me to say is definitively the best one. Anyhow, by now many of you know that Greg was the creator and showrunner of the Office, and what that means is, in addition to doing a bunch of other things, the showrunner is basically the head of the writer's room, which is why I wanted to save this part of Greg's interview until now as the official start of our mini

deep dive on the writing of the Office. I'm very excited to kick this series off with Greg talking about all of his theories on comedy writing, insights into the writer's room itself, and how they came up with so many great storylines. Also, towards the end of this episode, we have a special cameo appearance by Ben Silverman, our executive producer and the guy who initially hired Greg to run the show. It was so fun to have them

together in the studio. A little hectic, but fun, uh And it's always fun and educational to listen to Greg. So without further ado, let's dive in with Greg Daniels. Bubble and I Love It, Bubble and squign Bubble and Squeaker cookie at every More left over from the Nut People so Mike talked about that. You talked about a writing staff and assembling a writing staff, um and and you described it as being like X Men, right, that you didn't want writers who would could all write the same. Yeah.

I think I told it as as a baseball team. Okay, okay, not that I'm you know, so much more jockey or anything, but the idea that you can't get all pictures. You know, somebody, somebody has to be really good with a story, somebody has to be really good with jokes, and um, you know, I always I feel like the story people should be

in charge. And they talk about shows jumping the shark, and a lot of times, what I think why they jumped the shark is because the original writing staff has the more senior people being really good at character and story and the younger people being good at jokes. And then three years in the senior people have left to do their own shows. The younger people are now the

senior people, and it's all gets really jokey. But yeah, so I mean that first, that first staff, the first person I hired for anything and the whole show was b J And and you hired him to do both immediately. Yes, he was a writer performer higher. Yeah, and Mindy also, and I saw her do her stage show Matt and Ben, and then I read her script and I would have met with her off either one of them, and the two of them was the great combo. Paul I had worked with on King of the Hill. Who else was

that first year? Well there was Mike obviously Mike. Mike had a lot of similar background to me, like he was coming off SML and was intellectual, yes, with the big brain and a similar haircut. So I definitely we definitely vibed right. Some of the writers talked about um, both from Lee and Mike. This is how they summed it up, so you can respond or disagree that Lee and Jean were that they were really into or they excelled at the cringe comedy factor. Yes, that Mike was

more optimistic. Yeah, that Mendy was more absurd ist and juicy and juicy. Yes, Mendy is very good at finding actual conflict and actual romance between people. She was like absurdist but but also juicy writer. Um, that Paul was very very into Michael's worst instincts. Yeah, Paul's really psychological, very already and very into psychic psychology and Michael's brain, and that Jen Silata was very tied into Pam that I would disagree with. I don't God, I don't feel

she was that. I mean, I feel like when I think about Jen, I think about Michael stories. I think about like the funeral for the bird and stuff like that, and she another person super into the psychology of Michael Jens. Jen's fascinating. Jen is like child of JPL physicists people,

very brainy. Like all of her work after the office is like formally interesting, Like she has a screenplay where every scene is from a different year of a guy's life, and she's now doing this animated show about trees, the protagonists or trees. And you know, she always like set something really difficult for herself, like you're gonna do a movie about all the characters are rooted in the same spot.

Go but guy, I guess he was. Well, it's interesting that you both referenced the same episode with Michael and the Bird, and from your perspective, it was it was Michael's story, and what Mike talked about was that it was Pam facilitating this for Michael that ultimately at an important moment, so It's just funny that I remember, like Jen on the white I don't know if Mike reference

the white board. But well, okay, so so the writer's offices, right, we had we were in the building that played as their office building and Michael's office on the second floor was one of the writer's offices, and you know, we just dressed the one wall that faced the parking lot, and then there was a trailer in the parking lot behind it where we had the table readings, and that was like sometimes a room that the writers would go

to when they had to work something out. And that episode was a very um tricky episode because Michael did not know what the story was. Michael was in complete denial that he was really upset that the guy who had his job had died, and nobody cared in the office like he didn't, but he wasn't aware that that was the story, and he fixated on the bird, and nobody knew what the story was until Pam figured it out.

But anyway, it's hard to write that it's unusual because a lot of times we would use these talking heads to announce what the story was. You know, it would be like today's Diversity Day and you know, guys coming in to you know whatever, and um so Jen went into that trailer and we came in and it looked like she was tracking a serial killer. She had like all these lines and you know, diagrams on the white board, and it was all about in every moment, what does

Michael th is happening? What is really happening? Subconsciously, it was like a very complex story. But that's that's my like most classic gen moment to me, right, well, the variety. I've been told that this wasn't intentional. You were looking for the best people, You were looking for specific matches, but one of the things that you did was by hiring people with such diverse backgrounds, even in acting. Right, So on the writers, you were looking for writers with

different skills. But on the acting side, you know myself and Rain essentially we were straight theater guys and I was doing mostly drama. And then you had you know, Steve and Angela and Oscar who were like improv guys. And how did you get so good? That's the part I understand. You also used to do something that was so useful. I don't know if I've mentioned this to you before, but we would have these scenes and you need a but but I'm so proud that you said.

You've never said this to me before, but I thought, go ahead. I'm glad that it was good. Like obviously was intentional. But we would get into these scenes and they'd be funny scenes and there was no point to edit, and we were like, how do we get out of the scene, and then we'd be like Kevin, Kevin has done something. Yep, there he is. I'm very proud of that. I'm very danged into the wall on his way out. That's the endpoint. Well, and that, I mean again, that

goes to the ensemble that was being created. I mean Randall in the beginning, yes, but then certainly as we went on and it was way more Matt Sown as the camera guy. He I would I would look at him and I would give him It was like it was like a quarterback, right who who gave a nod to the wide receiver like the ball's coming your way like, And at the end of the scene he would whip that camera around because I had something that I was gonna do and to try to find some end. Well,

thank you so much for saying that. You saved us so often and it's great because you wouldn't know, you know what I mean, Like I wasn't on set all the time, right, I mean the twenty eight episodes, I had to be in the editing room a ton of time and the writers. Yeah, and so a lot of times I would miss some of the fun on set. And then you know, you'd be in the in the depths and the with me and you know, Dave in this room in the middle of the night, and please God, please,

did Brian do anything? And you always saved the day? Oh my god, that's so awesome. Um, So, how do you feel like Diversity Day helped created our version of the show And was it important to you at that time that we look at issues of social relevance or again, was it just because it was funny? Oh? Well, you know the first season a lot of them we're great topics.

And I remember saying to everybody after we wrapped the pilot, I was like, I had such a great time doing a pilot and I was I remember saying to everybody, if this is all we get, I'm happy we did a great job. And I remember saying that after the first season, and you know, I said that pretty much

every season for a long time. It was. It was great fun, and in the beginning it didn't look like we were going to be on for very long, so you you know, you took what joy you had um But definitely when we got five episodes for season one, I know I had the feeling of, well, let's make these five count, you know, let's say what we can say with this show. In case this is all we get,

let's you know, do our best. And in adapting it, I felt that all the themes of the show, how how Michael would put his foot in and everything, like when you try and bring that to America, race relations is the big thing that he would do. You know, it's like our our history of slavery and race relations and civil rights and everything. It's just more present in

American culture. I think there's a few interesting differences, Like, for instance, in England, for whatever reason, ambition is looked at very poorly, Like how Jim was didn't seem too ambitious. That was the way they were signaling the English audience that he was super likable. But it's different in America, and so like I think a lot of times people are more like, well, if he doesn't like a job, Why doesn't he why does any moved together? Right? And

so interesting. Yeah, so that was something that that we had to adjust and stuff. But Diversity Day was really big. It was the first time we were like on our own, we're not looking at any British scripts, and I really wanted to set up the characters properly, and since it seemed like of all topics and I used this term er story you are I don't know where it comes from.

It kind of means like the root story, like the most representative one, and like for me on King of the Hill, it was, um, Hank's unmentionable problem if you if you know that one where he's constipated and he has to go in and have a It seemed like everything that Hank was the fact that people were talking about his constipation would be the worst of him, you know.

And so the Diversity Day was kind of like an attempt to find that that super representative story of like how is Michael going to step in at the worst. And we worked out a lot of interesting things with Diversity Day because I'm the first time that it was broken. It was in chronological order, and it took place I believe over a couple of days and then we were like, it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel right, you know,

it feels more docu to be in one day. So we kind of had this flashback aspect to it, where we we started the story on it's the today's diversity Day and a guy is coming to train us, and we found out their training because a couple of days

ago you did this thing. We kind of flashed it back, and then with the Pam and Jim of it, I had said to b J, here's what I want something like this, something like he has a terrible day and they're in this horrible, boring meeting and she falls asleep and her head falls on his shoulder and it's this precious memory for him and then she wakes up and it was just this little thing, but it turns totally

turns his day around. I was like, trying and find something like that, and you know, and when he came back with the outline, he used that and he was like, I I tried find anything better that, um, you know, and it was sort of like something that people had personal you know, it just felt very relatable and that was something I also felt was a feature of Seinfeld was observational stuff, like really connecting with people by noticing a moment that everybody's had but hasn't been done to

death before. And I felt like that was a good one, like like somebody that you liked who kind of leaned on you or something right and um, and then we had Um Kam Huang was our writer's assistant. He was the one who suggested the thing with the cards because he had had that happened to him and some some training thing. And we were like, yep, we'll take that. That's great. It was a really great episode. I mean, I it's hard to imagine, like we did two one episodes,

but the second one might have been the best. YEA, Well, it's hard to find many that are that you could say are better. It's it's always amazing to me when people they say one of two things like one like oh I didn't like it in the beginning, but then it caught on it was too and then you mentioned diversity down They're like, oh, yeah, that's and that was

that was the second one. Yeah. I think that because I mean pretty much everything I like or have had, have worked on has had the same sort of trajectory, like certainly was the case with Parks and Rack. But um,

it's character comedy. And if you're going to make the choice to do that Jack Benny thing of your money or your life and not just have a guy stand there and tell the setup in the punch line in the same line, right, if you're gonna go with character comedy, you've got to learn who the characters are, right, and the audience has to figure it out, and that takes

some time. So they always tend to start slow. They don't start with the bang usually, So I wasn't thrown or worried when it started slow, right, But there's a difference between season one and season two. Well, so that was my next question. So I, um, you felt like, to my understanding, all of the writers disagreed with you. But after the forty year old version and seeing Steve and seeing him in a new way and when what his sensibility was that you needed to change Michael, that

was a part of it for sure. But like you know, how I said, the the goal with the pilot was could we even produce something that looked like The Office? Right? It was a production type of deal. So then going into season one, it was like Okay, can we right the office? Can we write stories that are like this and are just as good but not use the British scripts or anything like that. And then I think we achieved that, But then we didn't have very good ratings.

And Kevin was really a fan of the show, and the middle management at NBC were fans of the show too, which was really funny because I went to like whatever the upfronts, the things where they would presented, and all the middle management would come and tell me how much they loved it, and they would point to the senior management as being Michael Scotty, like you could say, was you know, you could tell like they were feeling oppressed by people, not Kevin but other people in the in

the structure. But anyway, it was really hard to get picked up. And Kevin said, Okay, Greg, you have to come in and pitch me how you're going to change it, because it has to change. You can't do the same thing season two as you did season one. And I'm not sure exactly where I was. I feel like I might have been on vacation or something, but I wrote on a napkin. I tried to come up with things

that would rehabilitate Michael. And also I realized that I had been treating the office like everything I had learned on King of the Hill didn't count. There was a new show and it was like art or whatever. And then I realized, uh, no, everything I learned on King of the Hill is still valid. And the thing with King of the Hill was when that show started, Hank

wasn't very likable. Like I kind of came in and had to rewrite that show a certain amount and create situations where Hank would be able to be kind of conservative but in a likable way. So a lot of the other characters are there too make him more likable

and appropriate. And so, for instance, he has his niece there so that he can be very boy scouty and you know what I mean, like, you know, don't show me the whole you're under under things, you know, like um, and you know his his dad is way over the top horrible, so that he's kind of you go, um, well, poor Hank, I mean you know exactly, Yeah, he's doing his best, you know. So there was like little tricks like that to try and kind of normalize and center

the character right. And so I come back in with this napkin, and it had all these beats that I felt we could create a show around, like, for instance, the idea that, Okay, his team, it feels very oppressed by him, is always rolling their eyes at him, but if an outsider criticized him, they'd back him up. So that became the Dundees right where everybody's enjoying making fun

of Michael's awards show. But when when people who don't work there start like heckling him and throwing stuff, they kind of rally around him, and one of them was, Michael should give somebody really good advice at some point, and so that became Booze Crews, where he's like handcuffed to something and he tells Jim not to give up ever and to still go after Pam. And I knew people really wanted Jim to do that, so to hear Michael kind of turned Jim and make him stay the course.

You really like Michael, And there's other examples of it, right, but like, oh, good at his job, and you realize, Okay, he's not a great manager, but he's a really good salesperson. You know, he's like everything that makes him a bad manager's caring what other people think, and his changeability and everything and desperate need to be liked makes him a really good salesperson. So it became more like the Peter principal, like he'd been promoted past his level of expertise here,

but that wasn't so bad. And then you know, like seeing him with kids, like Halloween, the ending of Halloween, to see him desperately want to have a friend at work but you can't because you're the boss and you have to fire somebody and just be so bummed out and then just light up when the kids come trick or treating and everything. Yeah, things like that, and we kind of turned the boat on him, and uh, you know,

that was a different show after that. Mike told me that there was a lot that basically all the other

writers disagreed with with you about changing it. The idea being, um, you were right, by the way, but the ideas, the idea the idea being like, no, we're doing this special show and if we burn into a blaze of glory, that's fine, but we're gonna keep you know that idea and you and you said, no, we're doing the same show, but we're going to have just a few moments like you mentioned at the end of episodes or at certain moments where we just take him and tweak him a

little bit. Yeah, that sounds right. I mean what I was trying to do was intention, because if you can have a purity of intention, he can do the worst things in the world for comedy. But as an audience you sense that he didn't do it in order to

be cruel or to be a jerk. He's trying. So like, the hardest one of all was Scott's Tots and Lee and Jean are not the guys you go to for this humanizing aspect for one thing, but and you know obviously for comedy, right I mean, and I think Ricky and Stephen put it in the bones of the show, right, he he does the wrong thing. The show knows what the right thing is, but he doesn't, and he's always

doing the wrong thing, and that's like the bones. So it did freak out the writers a little bit because they were worried that it was going to be too far away. Um. But with Scott's Tots, I was like, okay, Um, from his perspective, what he intended was he intended to be successful and to be a hero and to be a philanthropist and to make a big positive impact in these guys lives. That was his intention. It was a good intention, you know, it was Yeah, it was a

good intention. He didn't make it, but as long as you like. To me, that was the key of that episode because like most of it was about the intention, and if you could get that right, you could get all your jokes, but you would still protect the character. And to me, this was a very King of the Hill type of thing because like in that episode that I mentioned Hank's unmentionable problem, you know, it could have

been all but jokes the whole time. But we played it like a medical drama where the real conflict was Peggy saying, why don't you open up to me? You're gonna die? I mean, she's having dream him is that his resence is going to kill him where she's gonna be a widow. You know. So we we played this sort of realistic drama aspect and then you got all your poop jokes that you wanted, you know, but it didn't look like that was the point, So you had a little bit more leeway and sort of the same thing.

I think that you know, it really hurt Michael that he wasn't able to be the guy he thought he was going to be when he made these promises, So you kind of got all your being a jerk comedy jokes, but you also were like, uh, it's not the worst guy in the world. Right. It's a hard time for hiring, so you need a hiring partner built for hard times.

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Glory Adam, host of Well Read Black Girl. Each week I sit in close conversation with one of my favorite authors of color and share stories about how they found their voice, hone their craft, and navigated the publishing world, and composed some of the most beautiful and meaningful words I've ever read. We journey together through the cultural moment where art, culture and literature collide and pay homage to

the women whose books we grew up reading. And of course, I check in with members of the Well Read Black Girl Book Club. It's a literary kickback you never knew you needed. And you're all invited to join the club. So tell your friends, tell their friends so we can be friends who love books. Listen to a well read black Girl on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. A few people talked to you about one of your core ideas, which is

the idea of truth and beauty. Yeah, that was my thing with Randall, the truth and beauty, Truth and beauty. Yeah, and what does that? What does that mean to you? Um? Well, you know to me, that was I think that's some romantic poet. I'm not sure where that came from, somebody like John Keats or something. I don't know, and I don't even know what he meant by it. But the way I used to use it with Randall was, that's what we're going for in the camera, right, Let the

camera seek out truth. That's what it's trying to find. That's the point of a documentary. What's the truth? And also not like a cynical negative truth, like also, where where's the beauty? It's like another principle of photography of like a good photograph is you know, a little sprig of weed coming through the crack concrete or whatever, you know what I mean. It's like, where are you gonna do something that's a little bit inspiring but find it

in a truthful way out in the real world. Right Well, Mike sure talked about it, and you told a story about um a parking lot and endless parking lot with lines and parking spaces and in one crack there's a little flower, a little dandelion. Said that it's funny. I just made the same. Ye, yes, I think that that, you know. I like the notion of aesthetic, like what do you searching for in art? And the Japanese have interesting aesthetics with a cracked pot? Did he mention that

to use that a lot? So? I think it's called woo. I'm not sure, but it's the notion of a perfect pot is okay, you know, and we in the West probably value a perfect pot. But a cracked pot where the crack suddenly makes you feel the history of the pot and the people who have used it in their family and have treasured it and kept it even with the crack in it, like it suddenly cracks through, you know,

it suddenly we'll will touch you. It's those little details often of imperfections that's like a it's just a cool

sort of philosophy. Yes, yeah, I have so far off topic, but a number of years ago, my parents were moving out of their house and I went for a week and I was like helping them and throwing out all of this trash and we go into like the corner of a closet and a guest room that no one ever slept in, And in the closet there was a big piece of paper that was folded up and I I unfolded it and it was a Kennedy poster that my dad had like handed out or seen or collected

or whatever. And I remember saying to him, can I have this? And he's like yeah, it's like all torn or whatever. And I took it and I framed it and I took it to this place and they were like, oh, we can you know do this or that, and I was like no, no, no, the crack has to stay there and the wrinkle the folded marks just as lightly as you can matt this on something and enclose it because I want that history of it. I don't know

that idea. Well, also like I mean, you know, they don't get too psychological, but you know, when you think about your dad, right, you're so the relationship that you have with your father, the fact how old that they are, and just the sense of like passage of time, being impoor into that relationship and fragility of it and knowing that it may not be around forever, and that I can completely see why a tear in your dad's poster

adds to the emotion of it. Yeah, right, totally. Um, well, there's a lot about writing that isn't necessarily only about the office. But you know, like when you have a set of principles that you're trying to do for the show, right, if you're going to say, all right, I want to be realistic, I want to be relatable. Uh you know, I want to be observational. If you're going to follow those principles, you're gonna end up commenting on what's around you.

And this to me goes back a long way. It isn't unique to the show necessarily, but like when I was on The Simpsons, which is this is you know, complete cartoon, but the way that one Simpsons writer one respect from another Simpsons writer when I was there, was you did something super real. You had a line that just found like it just came out of a teenager and it was just perfectly you know, real to the situation and somehow, in contrast to the cartoon nous of it,

that always seemed to be like a cool thing. And then when I got to King of the Hell, we used to do a lot of research. We would go to Texas. I'd take the writers to Texas every season and we'd fan out with our reporters notebooks, and we you know, we'd try and dig up unique stories because I always felt like the shows that I really liked, the stories were original, like something had happened to one of the writers or you know, they weren't just going like,

well what did what did Cheers do? Let's do a version of that or something. You had to go out and do your own work and dig up your own stories, right Well, Mike Scherr told me, even multiple years into the run of the show, and at this point we're

a huge hit. When we went to Scranton for the Writer's Convention, they did the same thing you sent that you said, fan out, go, you know, go walk down this street, see what places you find and they found restaurants and yeah, it was cool Richards and a lot of them. Of course, like when we've done that. When we did the show, the internet was a thing, so you could go online and search all the bars and you know, Google map or whatever see what they look

like from the outside. But a lot of that happened while we were doing the show, and Phil was great at that. Phil Shay used to go to Scranton and have all these deals with different businesses and radio stations and he'd come back with props for the set. They were all super authentic. Right. Well, and on that note, going back a little bit, but why did you pick Scranton in the first place. Yeah, well, there were a

lot of factors that went into that. So you wanted to place that was outside of a city, but they never went and in place there was a little faded. And I felt the northeast part was kind of important to me, like it was an adaptation of an English show and something about the north Northeast. New England kind of mid Atlantic felt more like England in certain ways. And Scranton has like a name that's kind of hard to say. It's it's a comedy word. It's got a

case ound. It's a Scranton you know. But the interesting thing was that when you know, when I picked it, I talked to people at Scranton journalists and there's this guy, Josh mccauliffe, I worked at the scrant newspaper, and he was really skeptical that we were going to be nice to Scranton. And I had to say to him, look, you know, I did came up the hill. I went to Texas. I didn't make fun of them. I understood them. I like did the work to figure out what life

was like for people in Texas. And the point is not to do cheap jokes making fun of the environment with points, to be specific and find a world and you'll be okay, don't worry, right, So it did work out nicely, Like I think we got to love Scranton by going to visit for that convention and and then it was, you know, amazing to come back and go to the ball field and everything, and I think it's

been good for the city. And the other thing is like the city is so much more beautiful then you know, our corner of Van Nuys that we were shooting in next to the Granite Cutter. I feel like we did a little bit of an injustice to how pretty the city is, right, a lot of natural beauty very hard to recreate. And Van Nuys, Yes, 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 their faces. I'm out like Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed, and forgery in the art world. You knew the painting was fake. Um Listen to Ourt Fraud on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to our show. I'm Zoe de Chanelle and I'm so excited to be joined by my friends and cast Meats 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, revealed the truth behind the legendary game True American, and discuss how this show got made with the writer's, guest stars and directors who made the show so special. Fans have been begging us to do a new Girl Recap for years, and we finally made a podcast where we answer all

your burning questions like is there really a bear? In every episode of New Girl. Plus each week you'll hear hilarious story like this at the end when he says, You've got some Schmidt on your face. I feel like I pitched that job. I believe that I feel like I did. I'm not on a thousand percent. I want to say that was I tossed that one out. Listen to the Welcome to Our Show podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Adoption of teens from foster care is a topic not enough people know about, and we're here to change that. I'm April didn't what, the host of the new podcast Navigating Adoption presented by adopt us Kids. Each episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told by the families

that lived them, with commentary from experts. Visit adopt us Kids dot org, slash podcast, or subscribe to Navigating Adoption presented by adopt Us Kids, brought to you by the U. S Department of Health, that Human Services Administration for Children and Families, and the ACT Council and oh we have a special we have a special guest that's coming in a Hi. Thank you so much for every fun with us. Look at you, you're the one that got this. Yes, look at this years later? So cool. Yeah, so I'm

gonna come back. All right, Well you you're welcome to join in. Yeah yeah, Benny, sit down and pulled the microphone in front of you. Um, did you say we're rolling? Okay, just make sure that Mike is close to you. Greg, when Um, what were your first impressions of Ben when

you met with Ben? Let me see, Well, you know Ben, like I grew up in New York, right, So Ben has the vibe that I recognized that was fun for me, Like I could sense that he grew up in the same kind of environment of sort of brainy, you know, city life, and that was really fun. And he's got an enthusiasm like energy that I don't have. Like you know, when you're talking about you know, the methodical nature, you

could also say maybe plotting how I approached stuff. And Ben is like you know, mercury, like he zooms in and but also very able to draw pieces in from all over the place and make a coherent vision. So I remember finding Ben very uh cool and attractive to hang with and and Greg was always my first choice, so that probably put me in a good position for

Greg to view me nice. It's always but and and the thing when you say that about the New York thing, and then we progress to Greg's father now plays bridge with my mother's best friends, you know, fifty years later, you know, So it's incredible. Also, the experience that we both had in connecting on this show was like about the architecture of television and the architecture of the idea, because so much about it was newly conceived, but we

kept talking about with a shared love of television. We were not We were people who love TV and we grew up loving TV, you know, and all of those elements drew us. And I think what was incredible about Ricky and Stephen in our initial dialogues that we had with them is that they also love TV an American TV, an American TV in American cinema. Yeah, that was an

interesting thing. Like when I grew up in New York on PBS, you get Monty Python or Fawlty Towers or something, and you go, oh my god, British TV is so great. You know, it's so smart, and they would only get our best stuff. They would only get like Friends and Seinfeld or whatever. And they grew up with the exact same feeling of like, oh my god, we can never compete. American TV is only the best, the best of the best.

And when I was expressing at some point to Ricky and Stephen how much I was a fan of British TV, they were like most of us thinks, you know, because they have you know, they'd seen like all of the failures or whatever that they had been exposed to, and they they were big fans of of US TV. And I talked also Greg when I was talking to Brian about the intellectual rigor that you have as a as a person and a writer, not just as a man.

That that's the cool part because most of the time you walk into a situation people do not want that, No, they want and and you surrounded the entire show with that. You know. It was an incredible group. Conan used to like so in the big very beginning of my career, I was writing partners with Conan O'Brien and he used to say to me, when you overthink, you start to stink. Yeah, because he he kind of pegged me as an overthinker, so that that would always go through my mind sometimes.

But well, but purposeful, I mean that's that's a much nicer I like the way. Yeah, purposeful, I mean that's part of driven life of our conversation was that we were creating something that was against network norms, that was against how traditional sitcoms were constructed. And the reason I say purposeful is because the decisions that you made were made specifically to move that forward. Well, you also could

out defend anyone who wanted to shift where we were going. Yeah, I also feel like I was you caught me at the exact right time, because I mean, I'm trying to add up the number of hours that I had in the you know how they talk about ten thousand hours, Like I had ten hours before King of the Hill, and I probably had another you know from that show.

But I I wasn't exhausted, you know, I was like, I definitely had a lot of good experience, a lot of thoughts about how I would do a live action show differently, and still enough energy to try and hunger to do it because it's so different now. But you get kind of placed into a framework really quickly, like oh, you're great at animation or I was great at reality, you know, like, especially when there's only four networks, it's

so different now it's it's crazy. But also like if you have a particular sense of humor, when I started, there really wasn't any room for that sense of humor in a half hour. So like I I went to Saturday Night Live because late night was where you had to do that kind of more niche you know, humor. And then cartoons okay, well you can kind of do it in cartoons. Cartoons are single camera form, but um, you know, they seem to have their own thing. They

weren't like your typical network sitcom. And then we had this little crack in in the selling world where Ablehood come out and HBO was big, and the networks were like, well, what should we do? Maybe we should be more like Cable And I don't think we would have been able without having had a British show to hide behind, right, you wouldn't have survived. Do you remember the marketing that was to me hilarious because when the show of the Way,

they try to sell it out of the Apprentice. Yeah, so we had um, you know, we've done the first season and the marketing department all they knew was Will and Grace, so they took uh single lines out of context pop pop pop pop pop, right, and then that was the the first ad, and out of context. None of them played like jokes because of what we were talking about, right. We didn't do like set up punchline jokes. It was all behavior and context and acting and everything.

And it was horrifying. You you look at these ads and you go, oh my god, we have the stupidest and most unfunny show in the world. And they were like, yeah, cod, you guys are going down. And I to say, look, the frame has to be different. You gotta blow up one moment and let it play. Otherwise we're doomed because it isn't a you know, a highlight reel. That's not how the show. I mean now it kind of does. Actually,

now everybody loves the show. You could you could make a great highlight reel out of moments because they know the character because everybody is so invested in what they're going to do. But when you introduced those characters to a broadcast platform, it was very chill. They were just like quickly you know, cut to Michael saying, well, there's going to be downsizing as if it was a joke

because they've got something. Um, Greg, what was the decision behind making the incredible casting decision to cast Ben as Isaac? I probably asked them, Yeah, that's right. Well, the point that I was sort of making a joke, but that the typical agent Hollywood selling, and that Ben and you

on the outside sort of an unlikely here. But I will never forget we did this UM panel at the Pailey Festival and we were being idiots, telling jokes and making the audience laugh, and then the moderator addresses a question to Ben, and Ben goes into at the moment seemed like five to seven minute speech about the history of comedy and tracing the Office's roots. I mean, just incredibly encyclopedia knowledge, like dissertation on comedy in the show.

And he stops talking and it's quiet, and you turn to the moderator and you go, well, and that's why he's my boss. Just like that, like there was like I don't know, it was just the moment has resonated to me forever. To me, that reminds me of Lauren Michael's like Lauren has this ability to put it all

together and make a charismatic vision out of it. And part of that, I think with Ben is the overview, Like he's seeing the entire business, the history of the business, all these different genres inside the business, different types of shows, what's next, what's coming down the pike. You know. The

overview is what most people don't have. And for him to be able to put it together, you're kind of like, I can't judge if it's real or not, but it's so it's so inspiring, it's like, well, its future have to It's just so hard to get anyone to take any risk that if you haven't thought through every element of their organizations, thinking about what you're trying to accomplish,

you end up running into a wall. You know, when you look to align yourself with collaborators and partners along the journey who are willing to have that fight together. However that works in partnership, because I look, I don't think I could have done I mean, I mean, it was all I could do to make the show if I had also had to, and all they wanted to defend it, and all they wanted to do was not make the show, you know, and so that's where you have to be able to do that and put that

energy in. But there's so many times I reflect back and I look just how unbelievably wonderful the people were in and around the show itself. Well, I had to like roam the executive suites was because because like covered in blood and gore from being beaten, you know, with all these business types and you'd come to the said and we're you know, making making Like I wanted to be in this, that was the business I thought I signed up for. But oh my gosh, it was so

great to be there. And then all the choices you made that we were able to defend and I also talked about and even our physical production apparatus that you created was transformative for broadcast TV. Like they didn't even understand what we were doing in our offices in our writer room, right, some of them were practical, Yeah that they were real and not really you know, like they were thrown by it all. Like we found that we

were kicked out of our season one situation. There was not a lot of support in the beginning, and I think for them till they they didn't keep our sets. Yeah, they didn't wouldn't keep it up. At the time, I didn't even you ever bring that up, but they didn't eat. They literally there like, no, we're not going to cover the rent till we make this decision. Yeah. So we were out and you know, and we used the parking lot and Hot Girl and stuff, and we'd established what

it looked like and everything. So we had to find some place where you could use the street and everything. And we looked all over Van Nuys and the sad part was most of the places we looked at I remember, no, they were doing porn. Literally. I remember going to one place and and I was like, well, this this looks sort of wholesome. What is this? And it was there was like a set with a swing on a tree and stuff, and and they're like, no more porn, more porn.

Someone told me this again in terms of like creating that reality for the actors, that we were going into an office. So there was a little room off of set right behind the accountants where you could watch stuff that was being filmed, where you had an office, but that you built that out to look like an office from the outside, so that the idea was that actors when they walked onto a sound stage. Didn't walk onto a sound stage. They walked into a carpeted area with

walls that was like an office. Do you remember that, not wanting the actors to go onto a sound stage. I remember that on our original set there was a very low, like low hanging lintel or whatever. Like the doorway was made of concrete or something, and very low. And I would run from my office up to the set to give a note, and I'd run act to watch it, and I'd run back and forth and everything, and I cracked my head on that on that low thing.

Remember that there was like a pass when we put a pad Greg Daniel's memorial forehead pad or something like that, because I kept smacking my head on that thing. Yeah, all those smacks knocked out any other memory why it was there? All right. Well, thankfully, it seems that the low hanging lintel did not knock out all of Greg's memories of the show, because we talked about it for like two more hours. So I'm going to say the rest for when we dive into the later seasons and

ultimately the end of the show. In the meantime, we will be back next week with another interview with one of our amazing writers. Truly, as Paul Feig once said, this was an all star Hall of Fame writing staff. I'm so happy we got to talk to so many of them. Thank you so much, listeners for listening, which is what listeners do. And uh and have a great 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 associate producer is Emily Carr, and our assistant editor is Diego Tapia. My main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton, and the episode was mixed by seth Olandsky. Adoption of teams from foster care is a topic not enough people know about,

and we're here to change that. I'm April Dinnuity, host of the new podcast Navigating Adoption, presented by adopt us Kids. Each episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told by the families that lived them, with commentary from experts. Visit adopt us Kids dot org, slash podcast or subscribe to Navigating Adoption, presented by adopt Us Kids, brought to you by the U. S Department of Health, that Human Services Administration for Children and Families, and the ad Council.

Look for your children's eyes and you will discover the true magic of a forest. Find a forest near you and start exploring it. Discover the forest dot Org brought to you by the United States Forest Service and the accounts the art world, it is essentially a money laundering business. The best fakes are still hanging on people's walls. You know they don't even know or suspect that their fakes. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception,

greed and forgery in the art world. I just walked in and saw this gright red painting presuming to be a Rothko. Of course, art forgeries only happen because there's money to be made, a lot of money. I'm listening to how what they're paying for these things. It was an incredible amounts of money. 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.