It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload the podcast last week.
They're right.
Hey, guys, welcome back to TV Reload.
I want to thank you for clicking and downloading on today's episode with Felicity Ward from the Office Australia, which has been eagerly awaited its arrival on Amazon Prime. I've always loved the English and the American versions of the Office, so it's been exciting to check out the Australian version. I think it feels more Kath and Kim, more so Kath and Kim than the other versions that we've seen overseas.
It may polarize some, but one thing that you cannot do is accused Felicity of not giving this show one hundred percent. Felicity will talk about her relationship with a series, and her answer is actually quite interesting when it comes to which of the other versions she had seen.
We will talk about how.
Felicity would get into her character and what props she kept eating, but probably is sounding much weirder than the actual answer is. I will discuss the anticipation and if she has been scared or if she's been excited about the country finally getting to check out our Australian version
of the Office. You will get everything from what the current state of players with series two, what level of improvisation Felicity was allowed, and we will also share some bonker stories from what it's like to work in offices. There's actually so much to talk about today. With Felicity, we get some inside revelations. So guys, sit back and relax as we unpack the wonderful world of the Office Australia, which is now available on Amazon Prime.
Yes, but leaving marks.
I'm in Queenslanes, I'm on holidays and so I just you know, I've got my teenage mutant Ninja turtles and just tell you.
How much I love this, Ben, This is really my like the amount of interviews I've done in pajamas on the phone, no bra, stinky anyway, on your holiday, Thank you so much.
Well, I'm obsessed with the Office and I'm obsessed with you, so it would be rudent for me to not be here.
It actually would be rude.
Actually, are you excited or are you nervous? Because I don't know how I would feel. Because when you're sort of recreating something that already has an established idea from the audience perspective, and then you bring it.
Into your own you'd be thinking, and you know, you filmed it all, so you've you know, it's.
Nothing you can do about it. Maybe it's done.
Are you nervous?
Yeah, I'm nervous. But also this is the good bit, Like, this is a bit where I get I can talk about the show. I can talk to people about the show. We filmed it a year ago. It was embargoed for so long we weren't allowed to say anything. So it's so like I'm having the time of my life. I get to wear pretty clothes and get pretty makeup and talk to pretty people and talk about this show that I love and that I'm so proud of. And it
was like the most fun job I've ever had. And I think that I like lots of people are going, oh, you, do you feel the pressure? Do you feel the pressure? I'm like, the only pressure I'm getting is from people asking me if I feel the pressure yea, because I'm not on the internet, like Instagram has a function that says people you follow, that's the comments I'm getting. That's what I'm reading. I'm not reading anything else. Because people are going to have very strong opinions about it either way.
I've been really fortunate this week the people that have seen it have really loved it, and that's how I feel about the show. And I'll just let people have their experience with it.
You know, Well I did loll you know, and that's what you want. That's the best review you want. Just want to know that someone lolled. But it was a laugh out loud. I'm willing to say the whole sentence since yeah.
Because lol is just an ironic way to say funny. Now, yeah, I genuinely laughed out loud. I know what's happened.
I wanted to know about your relationship with the show because I think I've got the relationship where I watched the English version first, and I mean that's what came first, but a lot of people watch the American version and then they went back to the English version, so they sort of have different relationships.
What about you? Do you have a preference with the English or the American version of the Office.
Well, two things. I think that they are completely different shows. I don't think that not that they're completely different, they're their own shows. I don't think you can compare them. I think They're both brilliant and they bring different things culturally that the other show. You know, the first season of The American One was all the same British scripts and sort of slightly Americanized characters, and there was a
disconnect there. And then they started writing their own and they wrote from their own cultural perspective, and then it turns into this incredible, beloved, nine season running sitcom, you know, like it was its own beast. I started with the British One. I had never seen an episode of The American One until we'd finished filming our one, and I watched it and I was like, this, Steve Carell is really want to watch. He's quite talented. I don't know if my things, you know, he's an upcoming star.
You know. It's interesting because like with that, with those performances of those men, Ricky Gervaise was so iconic, and then sort of Steve came in and there was what's happening with you? There's a bit of pressure, but then Steve did really make that his own. But I guess, upon reflection, do you look back at those two characters and have a favorite, Like, is there one of those two that you prefer more than the other No, because.
They affected me in completely different ways. Like when you watch David Brent, you want to tear your skin even now, even now when you know him and you love him. It's the most awkward, painful, annoying, revolting. He's kind of despicable, and the power of the show is that you still root for him when he feels vulnerable, whereas Michael Scott, he just has a warmer face. You know, David Bran hasn't been base. He's got mean little eyes, where Steve
Carell has like big, open, round clown eyes. So even from just what you're looking at, but David Brent looked like a boss you have had.
Yeah, I agree with that, And you know, when the script came across your desk, you'd think about all the other versions. But I wondered whether or not, once you stood in front of the cameras, whether you just were like zoning in on what you'd prepared and how you didn't.
It didn't cross my mind when we were filming. I'm not at any point did I go, oh, is this too much like this? Or like the British office or the American office didn't enter my psyche once we started filming because it's just you don't know. I didn't know what it was like to film the office. So when I go in, I just I'm filming a sitcom. And it was fun. Every day was fun. Like I'm very of I've been in stand up comedy for sixteen seventeen years.
I've never had the lead in a sitcom before. So to turn up and have a you know, twenty years of experience because I was in a sketch show before that. I tried to be an actor before that, which means I'm very good at making coffee. But like, I have a long history of working really really hard and for a really long time and you know, having some success, but not ever getting the lead in a sitcom. So I was I've never been more ready for anything in my life as far as like the work is concerned.
I turn it up with a smile. Every day. I was getting up at four point thirty. I'm like, great, make some comedy. I was so grateful. I am the most desperate lead of a show that you have ever met. You will never meet anyone more grateful for a job than me.
There's something very infectious about the way in which you play this role. Like, there's something very funny, and I have seen your like a lot of people in Australia, We've been in your audience for a long time. I wanted to know about whether or not they let you improvise a lot, you know, was it all script or was it you were allowed to take some liberties.
I was both like this it was so well scripted, but also the way that Jackie and Julie worked, Jackie Van Beek and Julie Defino, who's the out director and the head writer, and then they each wrote individual episodes and they were along with Jesse Griffin like devised all the storylines as well, and Jesse wrote some episodes too. It was so well scripted, but like sometimes we were writing the rewriting scenes while we were filming the scene.
So I'd be filming a scene, I'd have learnt it, and then Julia go, hey, can you try this version, or can you try this line? Or let's do this, and so I was just ready for anything. And then they sometimes would just let the camera roll and go, okay, see you can you know, you can muck around on this version. So it was it was all things that was just the best. It was the best of every world.
That's the best of it.
When you get someone like that to work with, Like you speak to a lot of actors, they're like no, it was like line my line.
You know now I need to feel like this.
I respect that too, because if you haven't got good writing and got nothing, writing is the key.
Yeah, I think you know what's interesting as well as like when I was talking to people about our Australian culture. Our offices are very different to the UK and to America. But I love talking to people about like bonkers office stories, about things that people have experienced in themselves. And I rang a girlfriend who I knew loved the office and she works in office. She'd gone back to work after
quite a few years. She said her first day, first week back, they had this girl that was leaving and she was told, do you want to sign this card to say goodbye to this girl? My friend was like, I've never worked with her, Like what what have I got to say? And then they went around and asked for money. Such a weird office culture.
And then in the end show are you my Italian nummer? What we can we put money in a birthday come for anyway?
They took her to the lunch and after everyone sat around the table crying saying goodbye to this girl, the boss went, guess what, guys, I'm not going to say goodbye because she's not actually leaving. We're bringing her back in a different role next week. And everyone just looked at each.
Other and I'm like, we need my money back.
We'll put their money in. But like, don't you think that office culture is just so bonkers.
I've never had a job in an office, but the stories that people tell me. I didn't interview this morning, and they were like they said that. There was a one of the people who wrote in and said their bosses checked their waste paper bin at the end of every day to see how much paper they'd wasted, and if they wasted too much, they'd make them take it out and cut it up and use it as messaging pad.
There's another one who said that they clipped their fingernails or their tone I can't remember, in front of the other person while they're having a meeting and there's just nails going everywhere. Who are these insane people? So like, when you watch our office, like a Hannah might come across as mental, But according to real life She's very tempered and very on brand for the maniacs that are out there running businesses.
Yeah.
I had this boss once that I worked in radio, and I you know, like I won't say which radio was mix of him anyway, And he sat behind this glass wall that I could see through, and he knows that I can see through that. But I'd watch him every day clean his ears with his fingers.
They said that there was one who cleaned their ears with a paper clip.
I clean.
I mean, I'd clean in my years with my fingers. I do that.
There's so much fodder for you to have with this show. There's like endless supplies of it. Do we know whether or not you're getting to do season two? Are we going to be talking in nine years when you've done nine years of this show?
I won't be talking to you if we've got nine series. No, I'm joking. Yeah, I'll beat my pajamas next time. You won't be getting full glam baby, you won't be getting gel males next time. I mean, look, the show isn't even out, so I don't know. I don't know of any show that knows they're going to go again before the show is out, And we are no different. So we won't know until the show is out whether we get to do another season. I really hope we do. My god, this has been the greatest joy of my life.
Don't tell my son more, Hannah Howard.
The last question I ask everyone who joins the pot is what is something from behind the scenes, something we won't see as a viewer, that kind of like a behind the scenes secret about what.
It was like for you to make this show.
A bunch of people have asked me this, and so I'm trying to think of something that I haven't told anyone. Let me go through a couple of things. So I put on five kilos as the show went on because the catering was so good. Yeah. So the outfits that I tried on the beginning of the series that fit me did not bit. At the end of the series, it was like, we need to take the trousers out. That button is gripping for dear life, the hardest working
button in showbiz. That's one of the things. Something I've already told people this, But I had a bluetooth speaker in my prop handbag, so in between takes I could blast music and I could keep my energy up and just dance around. And the thing is, people don't tell you to turn the music off if you're the lead in the show. So I don't know if they enjoyed it or they would just being nice to me, but I assume that they enjoyed it.
What was the go to?
What was blaring through?
No mate? I DJ at comedy festivals, so there was an for a repeat, never a repeat. It was back to back, just bangers. There has to be something. I want to give you something that there.
I do love the craft services. I remember once a friend of mine, not to name job Hamish Blake, asked me two friends, yeah, just pick that up and put that here.
He was doing it.
My friends too, wanty something. I don't know if you watched twenty something, it was really funny with Jess Harris.
And yeah, I wasn't in the country when they came out, but yeah.
It's really funny, So circle back and watch that. But anyway, it's very small production. They didn't have a lot of money, so the extras were all free and so Hay was like, can you come down. It's a full day. You're basically being in a tent with a whole bunch of widows for the whole day. But the craft services are amazing. So I remember I went home and I had the face like I'd been at Sizzler. There was He asked me to go back the next day to do another day, and I was like, never again.
I have food poisoning. I'm six kilo spatter from yesterday, so I won't. I'm trying to. I'm just trying to think of a good one. I don't want to. I don't want to give you something then people have got, yeah, that people have already got.
It's actually I feel like I should email people because this is episode like four hundred and ninety of this podcast, and I'm thinking them. It often comes to a struggle because people are like, this is like a lott of pressure to put someone under it. You know, it's not because you want to deliver.
I will say I ate my snack of choice. I ate veggimi and butter on cruskets every day.
Every day.
Every day. They'd be like, Janet a stack, do you want some cruskets. I'm like, yeah, I want some crusts. If I believe in the UK we don't have cruskets and I have veggiemie at my house, but they don't have it anywhere else, so I'm a lot of crosskets. It was so good. Take it with you, and you know how it is it Minty's or fantails that have gone out of business.
The fantails are out of business, which is so sack because I love those.
There was a big jar of mintis, I think on the reception death and I ate so many of them and they had to cut them off. They're like casting through it. You got to stop eating the mintis. That's it's like a prop. But I would still sneak them because I fucking love Minty's. Yeah, so that was like an ongoing guy. You've got to stop eating the Minty's. It's a prop. Okay, we can't afford more Minty's.
You were the ob his choice because you were getting bigger and you were probably the only one eating the minties. They should have been like, it's you Angela Pree would have known.
But I had fresh breath. Let me tell you that that's chunky.
But I had fresh breath, and that is all you want.
Can I say, I congratulations on doing this. I think you're brave for taking something like this on. But I think that it's amazing and it's funny, and I can't wait frustrate or watch it and fall in love with it for its own reason.
And it's it's nice.
You know, with television, we want to see ourselves reflected back. That's how we relate to it. And there's so much of that happening in this show. It's very sort of iconically. It's Kathy Kim, you know what I mean. And as much as people will say that that's making fun of people, it's actually us and so us.
It's us us, Like all of the characters are on their people. Everyone who watches the show will know at least one or two of the people in there that got all it's just like Cama, well that's just like Katie, or that's just like you know, Greg or whatever. And I would I would really encourage people to watch the whole series because it is so funny. I just think it's so funny. I think it gets funnier and funnier.
It builds, it builds. It's like, you know, just before you go, it was funny.
You know.
When Kathy Kim first came on television, a lot of people saw it and was like because it was so relatable to them. They were like, it was like home and away on neighbors. They didn't see the silliness of it. And the more you watched it, the more you thought it was funny. And that's why, all these years later, when you watch Kath and Kim, it's fucking hilarious.
And that's because it's one of that style. It's that style of comedy which you do so well.
And it's the more you watch it and the more you tell your friends, do you remember when this but when they when they sold the chips on eBay?
You know what I mean? And that's where it becomes funnier. So people keep watching it.
But yeah, yeah, me too. And it's got This show's got a lot of heart. It's got a lot of heart. And yeah, I really care about the characters, and I really care about the show. And I had a wonderful time. I hope other people enjoy watching.
Him have the best time talking to the media today. Everyone's celebrating you at the moment, So thank you. Thanks being so generous with your time and chatting about the show.
And have a great time. Thank you, Bye, see later.
Bye.
Now I'm going to take my pajamas off now, go back to bed.
You're on holiday, Sube.
Put some clothes on, have a shower.
Oh yeah,