Today in history, 16 years ago, the very first episode of the American Office premiered! “Weirdly, this is not recognized as a national holiday,” Brian Baumgartner says; but at least on his podcast, The Office Deep Dive, it’s certainly a day worth noting. So on this episode, Brian throws The Office a Sweet 16 party by answering questions and responding to reviews from fans, getting into everything from the unsung heroes of the crew to how many times he had to drop the chili. Plus, he sits down with Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers quarterback and guest star of The Office, to hear about his fandom, his favorite character, and why he didn’t love his line, “Flag on the play.”
Aaron was a superfan of the show while it was on, connecting with Brian through social media, visiting the set a few times, and even going out with many of the cast members. So when Brian was at a table read for the series finale, which was meant to feature a famous tennis player, he took creator Greg Daniels aside and told him, “I just want you to know that Aaron Rodgers is a huge fan of the show.” So Aaron got the gig. He says he felt bad for the script supervisor because he found his line “flag on the play” super cheesy, so he would ad-lib something different every take. “She never lost her patience with me,” he says, even after eleven takes! Aaron tells Brian that Kevin was his favorite character, but Brian isn’t so sure: “In public, you always say it’s Creed!”
Then Brian digs into the mailbag to answer some fan questions and gets into so many great stories. He shouts out props master Phil Shay as an unsung hero of the show, especially for making the Kleenex boxes fit his feet. Brian loves that some fans think Kevin Malone was a secret genius running an embezzlement scheme, but also offers up the real reason Kevin got his bar in the end. And in order to kill time on his computer to look like he was working, he created a MySpace profile for Kevin and wrote blogs on it. Fans would reach out, asking for signed pictures – but “I’m just Kevin Malone, an accountant,” Brian says. “So I just said, ‘I don’t know why you want a picture of me, but if you send me a signed picture of you, I’ll send one back.’ I got thousands.” Hear all this Office goodness and so much more on this episode of The Office Deep Dive.
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