“Sometimes, I’ll start a sentence and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.”
Well said, Michael Scott. That’s the perfect way to introduce For The Win’s tribute to The Office, the NBC comedy that celebrates the 15th anniversary of its premiere this week (March 24). For the show that’s still so embedded in American and internet culture, we’ll break down everything from the best sports moments to the best couples. Because, as Wayne Gretzky Michael Scott says, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”
The Office hasn’t been on the air since 2013, but fans really haven’t stopped talking about the classic show. But just because you’ve rewatched it 100 times doesn’t mean you’ve done extra research for behind-the-scenes details or quirky stories.
So that’s what we’re here for.
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If you’re a super intense, extra diehard Office fan who reads anything and everything on the internet about the sitcom, yes, perhaps you do know these fun facts. But we here are For The Win are pretty big fans of the show, and we didn’t know most of these details.
So here are eight things you might not know about The Office and its characters.
1. The Office cast voted on the theme song
In 2018 while Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet did an interview with IndieWire about their performances in the film Beautiful Boy, Chalamet explained he had to actively make sure he didn’t scare his co-star away with his Office fandom. And at one point, Carell chimed in with this little detail:
“Incidentally, we all voted on the theme song.” Chalamet’s eyes lit up.
“We had four different versions of the theme song from different artists, and Greg Daniels, the producer, sent us all versions,” Carell said. “And as a cast, we voted on what was going to be our theme song. It’s kind of cool.”
2. Jim and Pam’s proposal scene was ridiculously expensive
At the beginning of Season 5, Jim and Pam finally get engaged. And after previously teasing the moment several times with fans (and Pam) wondering when and how it would happen, Jim got down on one knee in the rain at a rest stop somewhere between Scranton and New York, where Pam was for art school.
Executive producer Greg Daniels, in an interview with The Washington Post in 2008, explained:
The writers, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, had written the scene to take place in the rain, with lots of traffic going by to obstruct the view. On our show, the feeling of not being able to see the whole thing helps make it less Hollywood and more realistic.
We decided to fly the cast and director Paul Feig to shoot at the actual Merritt Parkway. But it turned out to be $100,000, and we couldn’t use fake rain there. So we decided we would re-create it in Los Angeles. We found a gigantic parking lot behind a Best Buy, and our production team built a replica of the rest stop.
It ended up costing twice as much, it was, like, a $250,000 shot or something. It’s the most expensive and elaborate shot we’ve ever done, but it’s also sort of the highlight of five years of storytelling.
3. John Krasinski wore a wig during Season 3
Krasinski said in an interview promoting the 2008 film Leatherheads that he was wearing a wig in the last six episodes of Season 3.
He had to cut his hair for the movie directed by George Clooney, and shooting that overlapped with shooting the end of The Office‘s third season. So that’s why Jim appears on screen with a new haircut before his job interview in New York in that season finale.
4. Seth Rogen auditioned to be Dwight, and he was among the many now-stars to try out
In 2013, audition footage of actors who weren’t cast was released with the Season 9 DVD set, per the Los Angeles Times, and that included Seth Rogen auditioning for Dwight, Adam Scott and John Cho auditioning for Jim, Kathryn Hahn auditioning for Pam, Bob Odenkirk auditioning for Michael and Eric Stonestreet auditioning for Kevin.
5. The Office characters learning CPR actually saved someone’s life
It’s hard to forget the extended “Stress Relief” episode, and CPR scene, in the middle of the fifth season. Dwight fakes a fire in the office, Stanley has a heart attack and, when the staff attempts to learn CPR, Dwight cuts the face off the manikin.
But the CPR scene also offers some practical advice. When performing CPR, chest compressions are supposed to be at a rate of 100 beats per minute, which is fairly fast, and it can be challenging to keep pace. So in the episode, the CPR instructor tells them to perform compression to the tune of the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive — which Michael initially mistakes for I Will Survive.
This all helped one man save a woman’s life in 2019. According to the Arizona Daily Star, then-21-year-old Cross Scott stopped to help a car on the side of the road with its hazard lights on when he found an unconscious woman.
“I’ve never prepared myself for CPR in my life,” Scott said. “I had no idea what I was doing.”
But he actually did because of The Office, and he said paramedics who eventually arrived told him if he hand’t helped the woman, she might not have been OK. More from the Arizona Daily Star:
What popped into Scott’s head was an episode of the television show “The Office” in which character Michael Scott (actor Steve Carell) sings the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” while doing chest compressions on a dummy. …
As Scott straddled the woman and began chest compressions, he sang the song out loud. All he was thinking about was Michael Scott’s face, singing “Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.”
6. The Office computers had internet
According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s 2011 behind-the-scenes look at the show, the computers on set obviously turned on, but they actually had internet too.
7. The “Dinner Party” episode was the only one not rewritten
Unquestionably one of the most cringey episodes on the show built on cringe, the “Dinner Party” was the only one that didn’t require a rewrite, according to one of the writers, Gene Stupnitsky. In Rolling Stone‘s 2018 oral history about this episode — we highly recommend reading it — he says:
“Most scripts get rewritten, and I think this was the only one ever done that didn’t. The only thing that was changed was that in our first draft Jan hits the neighbor’s dog and kills it on purpose.”
It’s hard to imagine that episode getting any more painful, but Jan killing the neighbor’s dog “was going too far,” writer Lee Eisenberg said. Eisenberg elaborated on this process and NBC executives’ reactions to it.
‘So the writers got called in to the office to hear the notes. Greg [Daniels] gets on the phone and the executives are on the other line, on speakerphone. Only the writers have read the scripts so far and this is, you know, before the table read, and they get on the phone, and they go, “This script is really, really dark.” And Greg said, “Yeah.” And there’s a pause and they said, “It’s really dark.” And Greg said, “Yeah. It is.” And they go, “It’s really dark.” And he goes, “Yup.” And then he goes, “OK, anything else, guys?” And they said, “Uh . . . nope.” They hung up and that was it. They didn’t offer any other notes.’
Wow.
8. The woman who played Phyllis was an NFL cheerleader in the 1970s
Phyllis Smith, the woman who plays Phyllis Vance, is from St. Louis, and she was a cheerleader for the Cardinals before the franchise moved to Arizona. In a 2012 interview with Yahoo, Smith clarified, however, that a popular photo of a cheerleader circulating on the internet, which was assumed to be her, is not actually her.
But she did explain how she became an NFL fan and cheerleader, and it started with her dad being a season-ticket holder. Smith told Yahoo at the time:
“He had season tickets, but how it came about [was] that I auditioned for the Municipal Opera of St. Louis. Out of that audition the lady, who was also the choreographer for the St. Louis Cardinal cheerleaders, asked me to audition for the cheerleading squad — and I made it! It was just the perfect job for me at the time. I really enjoyed it because I loved football, so I was able to watch the game, dance, and be there and look at the cute guys across the field. So it was the triple threat there (laughs).”
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