Who doesn’t like TV and Paper, put them together and you get NBC’s The Office. Sure you know it was based off a BBC show of the same name created by the beloved Ricky Gervais, but what ELSE do you know about it? Here are 15 things you didn’t know about The Office.
15. Four of the regularly appearing secondary characters have the same first name as the actress or actor that plays her or him: Angela (Angela Kinsey), Oscar (Oscar Nuñez), Phyllis (Phyllis Smith) and Creed (Creed Bratton).
14. Dwight currently has four bobble-heads on his desk. The most well known is the “Dwight Schrute” bobble-head, a present from Angela in season two. Two others seen throughout the series are of Mike Lieberthal and John Kruk. Lieberthal played catcher for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons before being promoted to the Philadelphia Phillies and John Kruk was a Philadelphia Phillie before retirement. The fourth bobble-head, added in the fourth season, is of former Syracuse University guard and Scranton native son Gerry McNamara.
13. Dwight has a “Froggy 101″ bumper sticker on the filing cabinet next to his desk. Froggy 101 is the #1 rated country-western station in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the setting for the show. This bumper sticker can also be seen in the office of Michael’s boss at his short-lived night job at the telemarketing company.
12. It is frequently mentioned that the characters Phyllis Lapin Vance and Michael Scott are the same age, having gone to high school together. In real life Phyllis Smith is 11 years older than Steve Carell.
11. Many of the famous insert shots from the original series such as the water cooler and copier machine are not used in the show. Instead they pay homage to those particular shots by placing them in the opening credits.
10. The exterior shot of the building the office is “in” in Scranton, Pennsylvania is across the street from a bar which is coincidentally named “The Office”. Greg Daniels has said that he hopes this is a sign of good karma for the show. The Office (the bar) was actually condemned by the city a few years back.
9. The first season was filmed in actual office space located just above a sound-stage. The sound-stage is often used to replicate the Dunder-Mifflin warehouse, most notably in the “Basketball” episode. For the second season, an exact set replica of the original office was built on a sound-stage for further shooting.
8. Michael has a Union Jack Flag on his desk that appears in various shots as a homage to the original British series.
7. The computers on the Dunder-Mifflin office set are wired for the internet. Cast members have admitted that when they’re in the background of scenes they are often checking email and surfing the net.
6. The Office’s address is 1725 Slough Road. Slough was the name of the town in which the original version of the show takes place. However, there is no Slough Road in Scranton.
5. Many main and supporting cast members have written episodes of the show. B.J. Novak (Ryan), Paul Lieberstein (Toby) and Mindy Kaling (Kelly) wrote 12 of the 28 episodes over the first and second seasons (albeit separately). (Liberstein would even go on to direct a fourth season episode, “Money”.) Steve Carell (Michael Scott) has written two episodes so far: “Casino Night” (which was the second season finale) and “Survivor Man”. One episode (2.8, “Performance Review”) was written by Larry Wilmore, who plays Mr. Brown, the diversity instructor. Michael Shur, a seasoned writer, plays Dwight’s cousin Mose Schrute. Gene Stupinsky and Lee Eisenberg, two writing partners, play the delivery men in the Valentine’s Day episode and others. Greg Daniels, the developer and show runner of the Office, played Michael’s neighbor in “Office Olympics” but his scene was cut.
4. John Krasinski and B.J. Novak went to high school together. They went to Newton South High School in Newton, MA and they both graduated in 1997.
3. Both Brian Baumgartner (Kevin) and Ed Helms (Andy) graduated from The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia.
2. Some of the video used in the opening theme song specifically the exterior shot of the building was taken by John Krasinski and his friends in their Jeep. John had just gotten the part and was coming out for shooting.
1. Steve Carell only watched a few minutes of the British version before permanently stopping such viewing because he did not want to copy Ricky Gervais’ performance as the office manager. John Krasinski, on the other hand, was an avid viewer of the original.
If you’re the kind who likes awkward office moments, you’ll probably also like our list of the 5 Worst Dance Moments on Television.
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