Long before it became the quintessential TV show of the 2000s, The Office was a forthcoming adaptation no one was sure the world even needed. During a recenlt appearance on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, Steve Carell revealed that he was nearly warned off from doing the show in the first place.
Of course, a lot of this isn’t exactly secret knowledge — even Poehler herself said that when the idea to adapt The Office started circulating, she thought that “this is a terrible idea. No one can be as good as Ricky Gervais, no one can do that show.” But as Carell tells it, while he was on set making Anchorman in mid-2003, co-star Paul Rudd tried to talk him out of going after the role of the bumbling Michael Scott.
“Rudd pulled me aside and was like, ‘Don’t do it, man. Don’t audition,'” Carell said. “It was like, ‘There is no way.'” In addition to Rudd, Carell said he was told by several others in Hollywood to avoid the remake “with a 10-foot pole.”
But surely once he booked the job, everything was copacetic, right?
“Our pilot was the lowest testing pilot in the history of NBC,” Carell said. “People really hated it. They actively hated it. And I don’t quite know how it got legs after that.”
Perhaps part of what helped the show “gain its legs” was that Carell actively didn’t take too much from the UK original, which which ran for just 14 episodes between 2001 and 2003.
“I watched a minute of one and [Gervais] was so good and so specific and so funny, I thought, ‘If I watch a second more, I’m just gonna go on an audition with that,'” Carell said. “I won’t be able to even imagine it a different way.”
Of course, everything eventually turned out just fine for The Office. Not only did it run for 201 episodes across nine seasons, but it also earned five Primetime Emmy Awards (including 2006’s Outstanding Comedy Series) and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Carell, meanwhile, won a Golden Globe Award in 2006.
The Office even launched its own spin-off in 2025 with The Paper, in which the same camera crew from Dunder Mifflin Scranton followed a similarly motley crew at Ohio’s Toledo Truth Teller. (The show has since been renewed for a second season.) For even more from The Paper, check out Liz Shannon Miller’s enthused review of season one as well as star Sabrina Impacciatore’s recent interview with Kyle Meredith.
Meanwhile, Carell left The Office following its seventh season; reviews for the final two seasons weren’t nearly as glowing as a result. So, where does he stand on ever doing anything The Office-related ever again? Speaking to Collider in 2018, while Carell think it’s best to “leave well enough alone and just let it exist as what it was,” he added that the show was “a special thing before people thought it was a special thing. It was special to us.”
Check out Carell’s full “Good Hang” appearance below.
