LA Comic Con ’23 — ‘The Office’ Panel With Rainn Wilson And Paul Lieberstein

Mockumentary sitcom The Office spanned nine seasons, from 2003 to 2013. The quirky series is experiencing a renaissance, sparking nostalgic binge watching and reaching new viewers through streaming services. At Los Angeles Comic Con 2023, Fandom’s Bailey Meyers moderated a panel featuring Rainn Wilson and Paul Lieberstein, known for their characters Dwight Schrute and Toby Flenderson. 

When asked what made The Office unique, Rainn Wilson said the scripts were absolutely brilliant, and that the cast would first perform takes as written, and then they’d be allowed to improvise. The shows were then created in the editing bay by Lieberstein and Greg Daniels, using the funniest takes. For any given scene, it could end up being the scripted line, the actors’ improv, or an edited cut between the two versions. 

Paul credited the crew for even getting the shots in many cases, since the cast was having so much fun. They’d often break character mid-scene, and the crew would have to scramble to find a shot that didn’t have any cast members corpsing. One episode in particular stood out to him as an example.

In a Christmas party scene from Season 7, Episode 11, Michael (Steve Carell) was dressed as Santa, and Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) sat on his lap. It was such a ridiculous moment, overplayed by both actors, that they had to repeat the shot a ridiculous number of times to have enough takes to cobble it together in editing.

Rainn recalls that they had a guest director once in Season 6 who could not believe that the cast was still on such great terms. “I just came from the set of Desperate Housewives, and no one is speaking to each other. They won’t come out of their trailers. And here we are just hugging and laughing, and I will always treasure that. It really was a second family”

Paul said “It’s true. I’ve been on shows where people, after a while, they won’t talk to each other.”

Paul did point out that there was a period where Rainn refused to say “Good morning” to anyone on set, though. Rainn defended this position, saying “You come in every single day, and every day, people would be like ‘Good morning, Rainn! How’s it going?’ ‘Good. Good’ ‘What did you do?’ ‘Well, I went home and ate dinner, and then I woke up and ate breakfast.’ And then the next day, ‘Good morning, Rainn!’ from 120 people.

“It was intolerable. Insufferable. So I made an announcement. I will say good morning to everyone on Monday morning. Tuesday through Friday, there is no ‘Good morning, how was your evening, what did you do?’ It’s interminable. It’s insufferable. It’s wrong.”

When asked what surprised him the most about Dwight’s evolution over the course of the series, Rainn responded that Dwight had not, in fact, evolved at all. “It’s a good thing. Dwight is pretty similar in Health Care (Season 1, Episode 3) and The Alliance (Season 1, Episode 4) as he is in Tallahassee (Season 8, Episode 15). 

“I think he grew in confidence, yet in the final season, you wanted him to have some evolution and maturity to stick the landing. He became a father, a husband, a manager… He gained just 8% more maturity to really stick those landings. He’s really just pretty much the same all the way through. That’s actually a problem that a lot of television shows have, that characters start out prickly, unlikeable, and they have fatal flaws. They’re difficult, and then they smooth out the rough edges by season three or four. Then everyone gets along, and then you lose the comedy.”

Paul added that the impressive thing about Rainn playing Dwight is that, even with the lack of personal evolution, Wilson played the character in a way that made it possible for viewers to hold both contempt and warm feelings for him simultaneously. “People don’t change that much, but their relationships change. The actors felt that, too. Along the way, we became more and more of a family. But there’s still people in the family that annoy the crap out of you.”

One of the rumors floating around is that the computers on set were actually connected to the internet. Wilson and Lieberstein confirmed that they were. Because the show spent 97% of its time in one big room, there was a lot of time where main characters were in the background of scenes they weren’t directly involved in, as living set pieces. That can get very boring, very quickly.

On the subject of what types of sites the cast would surf while on set, Rainn shared that he played online poker for a spell. It became problematic when he’d be in the middle of a hand and would miss a bet because he had to deliver a line, so that was short lived. Leslie David Baker (Stanley) spent 400 hours shopping for a couch. There was also a lot of fantasy football happening.

It got to a point where Assistant Director Kelly Cantley-Kashima would fine the cast members if the camera caught their screen on sites like Yahoo, Google, or YouTube. The offending actor would have to pay $100 to a charity of her choice. Rainn ended up paying a couple thousand over the course of filming nine seasons. Oscar Nuñez (Oscar Martinez) stood no chance because of the orientation of his desk. His screen was almost always in the shot. Kevin’s desk was in the best position for goofing off on the sly. 

The final question came from an audience member who asked if the cast ever got to taste Kevin’s famous chili, to which Rainn responded “We sucked it out of the carpet.” Then, after pausing for a beat, he added “That’s what she said.”