LI

Literally! With Rob Lowe

Stitcher & Team Coco, Rob Lowe

Potential Office Reunion Ideas

From Rainn Wilson: This Beets Everything (Re-Release)Jun 18, 2026

Excerpt from Literally! With Rob Lowe

Rainn Wilson: This Beets Everything (Re-Release)Jun 18, 2026 — starts at 0:00

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Granger, for the ones who get it done . Rain , we're both wearing hats. You got kind of a fishing what would you call it? Is your podcast about hats? Oh, so they didn't tell you. Oh, they didn't tell me Hey everybody, welcome to literally Rain Wilson , Rain Wilson It doesn't get more iconic than the beloved Dwight Shroot, but he's so much more than that . He's an amalgam of many different things . He's not just a comedy icon, as you're about to see when it starts to rain. See what I did. How have you been? I love you. You're the best. Thanks. Good to see you. You're one of my favorite funny men in the world, but you're also a great dram atic actor. Oh, you're very kind . I need to tell you how much I loved Baxstrom, by the way. Oh, thanks. Yeah. You and seventeen other people watched that, and I really appreciate that. If only I'd been in Nielsen family , I know. Because dude, I think Nielsen families represent five hundred thousand people. I think that's the way it's broken down. At least it wow. That's the way they do it. Wow, that's that's incredible. Well, it's interesting because Baxstrom for those of you who don't know was a thirteen episode arc I did on Fox as a disgruntled alcoholic self hating police detective who's also brilliant at solving crimes , of course . And we got canceled after the thirteen because our ratings we were just right on that cusp, you know, but we like got cancelled like a point nine, but then next year all the shows got like a point eight and a point seven and a point five. And now there's like network shows that have like, I don't know what the viewership number is point nine is a big, big, big, big hit now. Yeah. Yeah. And that was that was about seven, eight years ago. We got a point nine and we should have stayed on the air. We would have we would have done great. That's happened to me a bunch of times that I was in a show that was the people thought was the ratings were not good and what they were were the new normal before they were accepted as the new normal. That's exactly the point I was trying to make. That's exactly right. We were right in the middle of the new normal for broadcast television, but they were like, oh these are these are trending downwards. Guess what, folks? All the numbers are trending downwards. It's unbelievable. I mean , when parks and recreation was on , it was always a jump ball . And do you remember if the office had tremendous crazy ratings. My sense of it was that it was it was a rating success, but it wasn't like it was blowing the lid off the place. These people just loved it. It was just beloved, but in terms of ratings, I don't think it was a big deal. Yeah, it was a really interesting thing because for the first season we got terrible ratings and the first part of the second season was really, really bad. We were on the verge of cancellation for month after month after month. And then very slowly in the second season we started creeping up the ratings roster and then all of a sudden we were nominated for an Emmy and then we were we were good to go at that point. But you're absolutely right. We were the number one comedy on NBC always no offense to Parks and Rec . But you know, when you looked at like the shows, we were like number thirty seven of like all the shows , but they, you know, when they when they they also do a finer investigation of television numbers. Is this too inside baseball share? No, it is not. Okay when they and when they do that they realize like, oh, here's who's watching the office college kids and rich people . Yep . So we became a very, very valuable audience to them. I mean, the West Wing had the that was a broad ratings hit too, but one of the things that they loved was not just the ratings, but they loved the socioeconomic breakdown. Right. Yeah , of who was watching. It's so funny to go back and look at that. Was it Wednesday nights? Officer Thursday nights. Thursday nights. Yeah And it. was at one point it was a community parks and rec ord rock. Yep, that's right. Dude, I mean, that's a solid lineup. Unbelievable. You know what it is? It's the lineup that made Netflix. I mean, when Netflix didn't have anything , it had those shows . It's so funny because a lot of people said years ago, hey, when Netflix loses the office, what do they really have ? You know, what do they really have? And we're seeing the evidence of that now. It took a little while. It took a year and a half two years for the office to leave, but they don't have that back library and they don't have the office and people are leaving in droves ultimately. So I'm doing a show for them. I thought you were on like nine hundred and one lone style.. I Yeah am . I'm on two shows at the same time. I'm doing two shows. It's kind of unprecedented. That's nuts, but you're always you're such a workaholic. It was inspired by my son, John Owens online trolling of me . And it kind of became people it kind of became a thing that people reported on and there were segments on Seth Myers and Ellen and Kimmel and Good Morning America and, like people took not ice and it kind of took on a life of its own and kind of got away from him . And in my social media, literally, feed was like, I'm just here for John Owen. I'm just waiting for the son's comments. Like they could . So he and I were like, I wonder if there's people like this thing, whatever this thing is, I wonder if there's if there's something here to mine . So you know, we just thought and thought and came up with different ideas and different worlds and different story pesitch. And what we settled on was the spirit of it is what people like. And it's the spirit of a larger than life father who probably hasn't lived in reality since nineteen eighty one And the world kind of sees him one particular way and then the sun knows what it's really like behind the curtain and is the only one who can sort of speak truth to power . And so that's the dynamic that we've built on. And in it, I'm playing like an Elon Musk , sort of world famous, highly eccentric, maybe insane genius entrepreneur businessman and then he's the son who's moved away from just can't get out of that shadow no matter how hard he tries . So he is a flutist or floutist your son playing your son or is someone else playing your son? He is playing he co created it with me and a man named Victor Fresco who I remember Victor Fresco. I've auditioned and not gotten into many of his shows over the years. We could have had you audition and maybe gotten into this one. I don't know. I didn't get the call. Sorry, Rob. All right, well, I'm gonna fix that. It's fantastic. One of my favorite shows. You're talking about Backstrom. Cancel show. One of my favor ites was The Grinder. Oh , thank you. I love that show. It was so funny. Thank you. It was so weird and funny and wonderful and dark and twisted and surprising It was that was a real failure to not keep that thing in the air. And right back at you, brother, because I think it was around within the same couple of years on Fox. I mean, I would have loved to have seen Baxstrom in the grinder, anchor at night. And I've missed having that kind of a character. And this is hopefully will capture it feels like it. Like we've table read all the scripts already and it feels very like a companion piece. You never want to try to recreate something, obviously. But you know what it's like when it feels has the same feel. Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. It's been fun watching my son. How you have I have one son seventeen? Yeah. Okay , so seventeen, is he a junior? He just finished his junior year. Yep. Now, so the junior year was it is insane for him and you're junior year in my kids' lives for many number of reasons was like it was a slog. It's like getting rid of for college, taking the tests. Am I going to go to college, not go to college? You know, friends are partying, it was nuts . Yeah, it was a challenge , but you know, first of all, it's a challenge raising a teenager under any circumstances. Secondly, it's a challenge raising raising a teenager in the contemporary society with social media and you know this mental health crisis that is really out of control with young people. I asked my son Walter the other day. I was like, Oh, how's your friend blank? I was like, oh yeah, he's out of school because he attempted suicide and he is institutionalized. He was like, oh wow, okay . Didn't know that. But then you throw COVID into the mix on top of that and being a teenager in COVID land , which like this year was definitely rough, but he got very good grades and he pulled through, he did a good job and worked hard. Last year he almost flunked out on Zoom school doesn't surprise me. How could anybody ask a teenager to sit on a screen? I mean, I can barely sit in class for long or seven hours. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. And learn . It's one thing to be there. It's another thing to like deeply learn. Yup . Yeah . So well, congratulations that he's gotten through I mean, as you allude to, so many , so many don't . Yeah, indeed. I have such empathy for when I hear Oh my son or daughter's a junior. I'm like okay . Yeah , yeah. We'll see. We'll see what surprise of senior year has in store . You are such a specific and that's the thing anything that I love is a specific has a very specific tone, voice thing. Do you know, I don't like anything that's general, like in performance, in music, in art and I think that, you know, not many people occupy the place that you can occupy as an actor . And And ironically , as much as we love that stuff, the that's often the hardest thing to get people to see and hire early on . And I'm curious what your knocking on the doors of show business was like . Yeah, that's that's a really interesting way into that question and I appreciate that. So I did theater in New York for like ten years before I came to LA and tried my hand at TV and film and I was so far down the rung of actors in New York with tiny little kind of useless agents. I didn't even get an audition for law and order being in New York for ten years. That is audition . Not even an audition . Okay, for those of you who don't know, so law and order as seventeen show s all being shot in New York . They have think of all the actors. It's like it's a factory. I mean, like yep, it's easy . Every episode has , you know, five or six guest stars and like seven or eight co stars, you need someone who's the deli owner or the truck driver or the janitor or what have you. Yeah . Yeah. Why that's a bad agent . I tell ya. What kind of auditions were at? But here's the thing because you're talking about a specific voice and it's like I was a weird looking here's how I define myself a weird looking leading man . I like that because and people didn't know what to do with that. I wasn't like No, let me ask you a question. Why do you say leading man in that character actor? Because everybody goes, oh character weird looking, oh, that equals character actor, which of course we know it doesn't. But why how did you know that? Because I feel like character guy is like, you have the big fat jolly guy. Like, hey, how's it going? And he's like the character guy and he plays the big fat jolly gu . Now I really am at heart a character guy, but like capable of playing lead roles in a way that like Paul Giamati is capable of playing lead roles , but looked a little offbeat, but not so so weird that you couldn't say, Oh, he's the jolly fat truck driver or he's the psycho killer or something like that. So people didn't know what to do with me. It's just what you said. It's like they had no idea how to cast me . And they because I did a lot of theater and I did Shakespeare and tours and whatnot people just thought of me as a theater actor and they lacked the imagination to kind of go, hey , what if this guy could play a role on a TV show and he just plays an offbeat character, you know ? And it really wasn't until so I had zero success in film and TV at New Y ork, came to LA and then by hooker, by Crook, got in a few kind of smarter casting directors offices and they were kind of able to see like, oh this guy has a thing that we can find a place for him in the in the great wide wonderful world of the entertainment business . So that started it was a long slog, but that started when I came to LA. So in a weird way I have this kind of resentment against New York because New York is supposed to be oh it's so artistic and it's the land of theater people and they're doing strange and interesting things and oh now they're doing performance art and now he's in a film and now he's on Broadway and but it was very, very limiting to me whereas in LA people were like, oh my god, this guy could play dramas, could this do comedy. He could play a psycho killer, he could play a nerdy paper salesman, he could be, you know , in films , he could be in six feet under , play mortician, like they were able to kind of see me in an imaginative way. So that specific voice that you're talking about right away as soon things started, especially around six feet under . But even a little before that people the people in the industry got very excited. They knew and my manager at the time, this guy Mark Schulman, we don't work together anymore, but he was such an amazing manager. He believed in me. I had zero credits, Rob. Zero, zero, zero, zero credits, not even an audition for Law and Order And he was like, you're going to be lead actor. You're going to be on TV shows. You're going to have your own TV show. And he saw that vision and I was like, what are you talking about ? Because he was able to see that that voice thing that you're talking about . Yeah, it's it is amazing how important someone with vision is. And you know, the stories of casting directors, as you say, smart ones , seeing somebody and not and seeing what other people are just missing Therapy is one of those things a lot of people talk themselves out of without even realizing it. Like it's too expensive or it's too overwhelming figuring out where to even start. But rula is one way to make that first step a lot more doable , offering accessible, affordable therapy that fits your needs. Sign up in just a few minutes and get matched with a therapist who fits what you're looking for. You need to talk to somebody quickly . Appointments are often available as soon as the next day . And with insurance, sessions average around fifteen dollars copay. You can see estimated costs upfront, so there's a lot more clarity going in. And in terms of outcomes, ninety three percent of Rula patients report symptom improvement. If therapy has been sitting in the back of your mind, Rula is a pretty simple way to take that first step. So turn off the talk track that's keeping you from progress and head to rula. com. That's RULA . com to find a therapist the easy way. Dads find one version of things they like and they st ick with it for decades, a wallet, sneakers , even a haircut . From watches to Cologne, Macy's Father's Day Online Gift Guide makes it easy to upgrade dad's goat to favorites. Same vibe, better version. Give his wardrobe a refresh with a Tommy Hill figure, printed floral linen shirt, or level up his signature scent with a Raban one million elixir gift set. Does dad basically live at the grill all summer? Set him up with a Cuisinart deluxe stainless steel fourteen piece grill set for the watch collector, oh yes . Macy's has instant favorites like a Casio men's digital vintage gold toned stainless steel bracelet watch . And for dads who never met a sport he didn't love, that'd be me, shop at an Adidas World Cup fan jersey or an underarmore golf polo . 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I wear the cotton polo all the time . I love the jackets . I love the shorts. I just got a new pair of shorts for the summer. I cannot recommend Quint enough. And the prices are f antastic . Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince. com slash rob for free shipping on your order and three hundred sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too, that's Q IN CE dot com slash Rob for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns quince dot com slash Rob. New York, theater, what did you enjoy, not enjoy? Like were you a big check off guy? Did you like to do the bard or did you do Mossam Shepherd More like what was your vibe? Did you play the Guthrie? Did you play around the country? I did. Oh, I trod the boards. Rob, I trod the boards indeed. Yes. Um , I did a little broadway, I did a little off Broadway, I did the Guthrie the Arena stage. I did a lot of regional theater, I did some tours, did Broadway tour . And I guess what I really loved about it and it's something that I still love to this day is my training at NYU as a theater actor was to be a repertory theater actor, to be, hey, tonight you're doing a Steven Santusicalaim m and tom,orrow night you're going to do a virtual prep play. And then the next night you're gonna do a weird movement performance based thing. Then you're going to do check off and you're gonna do Shakespeare. And then you're gonna do a farce and you got to be ready to go into all of those different kinds of styles of acting. And I love that idea of the actor as someone who transforms into characters , depending on the needs of the play. It's like, who am I this time , you know, that whole that whole thing? So and I still I still really enjoy doing that as an actor . And you know, it's been an interesting challenge after the office because I'm so well known for one iconic role but I'm really happy and proud of the stuff that I've gotten to do since then I've done cool indie films, a zombie film, a horror film, a, you know, a big blockbust er yep, you know, shark film The Meg and the Mega Legendary. I mean not a day goes by where my sons and I don't talk about the Meg. I'm not kidding, I'm not being a dick. It's absolutely the crew. The Met one of the great titles of all time. Come on . I'm not sure if I believe you or not, but that's true. I'm telling you . But I'm not trying to brag about my career, but I am saying that the thing I was trained in to transform into very different characters is something that I get to do in my career , which is a great segue. I don't know if I'm doing this too early. No because I was about to go ahead because I was just about to ask Bill and Jerry and Marge go large I'm obsessed with hearing about this project . So yeah, Jerry and Marge go large coming out of Paramount plus, I'm really excited about this film. It's Brian Cranston, Annette Benning. It's based on a real story about a couple in Michigan that figured out that with this certain lottery game, if you played it in the right way and enough, you would actually make money. You were guaranteed to make money from it. Wow. True story and they won millions of dollars, but they also brought in their friends and their family and people in their town , which helped revitalize their town in Michigan . And this is one of those rare movies that Hollywood doesn't really do anymore, that it used to do so masterfully like in a Frank Capray way of like regular Americans , good hearted people , small town Americans getting along, doing good people, doing good deeds for other good people . And I really, it's very warm hearted, it's up lifting, but it's not trickily, it's very funny. And I play kind of the comic relief , Bill, the slovenly owner of a liquor store where they buy all their lottery tickets. And he goes in on it with them and is taken along on the journey and it was just a buttload of fun. Tell me about Annette Benning. Annette Benning is one of those rare , like, she's iconic. Like to me , she's like a contemporary fade Dunaway. Yes. Like radiant , beauty , interesting , magnetic . And as I was, I never get starstruck working with actors , but I was working with The Net Benning. I was like, I just kept thinking like, wow, I'm acting the Net Benning. Cool. I mean, I loved Valmont, I loved the Grifters, Bugsy , so many amazing stuff that she's done over the years . And she is just so lovely and sweet and kind and cannot say enough good things better. Well Cranston is just a breathtaking actor. I mean, the fact that I mean that he's had talked about he's at two iconic characters like both of which you think you would never recover from his book, have you read his book, by the way? I didn't. I've heard great things about it. Oh , you have to some great stories, right? Oh , it's the best . His , I mean, it truly is a great book if you're interested in him obviously or any Breaking Bat or any of his work, but the process of acting his I mean he very much goes into his philosophy of acting which is, always really brave, I think, when actors are vulnerable enough to share actual process and not shroud it in generalities because it's a very personal thing. And it's also super easy to make fun of. So right. It's great . The Cranston book is great and he's also as you know, one of the nicest men you'll ever It is that is very true. Did you read the Wilson book? The Rain Wilson ? Yeah, the Bassoon King. Of course it did. How did you find writing? Do you have any interest in doing multiple books? Yeah, well here's the thing. By the way, the Bassoon King is one of the great is a great title I have, to say. Yeah. Very evocative. Thanks. Yeah. Although I think, you know, it's sold okay , you know, just to be a little insidery baseball. Like it's sold fine . It was not like a runaway bestseller. I didn't really expect it to be, you know, people aren't lining up to buy a book. But I kind of felt like I've been thinking recently like, I wonder what happened if I would have made it more dwite specific , just to sell some fucking copies. You know what I mean? Like if I called it the bear king , you know, or the bear lover or, you know , this beats everything beats B Some dwightish pawn or tip of the hat like even if it wasn't really about that at all. Well, that's what I did with this podcast. Literally is a tip of the hat at Parks and Rack and Chris Traeger. a That's why it's cold literally. Well, the interesting thing about the Passoon King is I wanted to write I had a story to there's some office chapters and office tidbits and behind the scenes stuff, but that's a very small portion of the book. That's like one tenth of the book . But I have, you know, kind of a life story that I thought had some interesting aspects to it, and especially in terms of my spiritual journey of growing up a member of the Bahai faith and leaving religion and explain to me quickly the Bahai faith. Give me a primer. Sure. It's Bahais, there's about six million Bahais in the world . It's the most recent of the world religions. Bahais believe in the sacredness and sanctity of all the world's religions. As Bahais actively read the Bible, the Quran , the Bagavad Gita, the writings of the Buddha, you name it. Bai's also believe that there is a new prophet or messenger or manifestation of God who came in the nineteenth century in Persia in the Middle East, whose name was Bahawa, and that name means the glory of God and this great spiritual teacher. Bahai's belief has spiritual lessons that humanity needs for today for right now that they're very relevant to the modern world . And Bai , so we worship God and try and do service and try and be good people. That's basically it. And you have a podcast about this? I do. I have several podcasts and one of them is a strictly Bahai podcast for it's called the Bahai blog cast and it's kind of about Baha's four Bahais, but we have a large listenership that aren't Bahas at all, but just some really interesting Bahas that are thinking, feeling, and doing interesting spiritual things. So anyways, there's a spiritual journey aspect to my book that was I knew was going to be a little hard for some people to swallow because they want to read like, oh I want to read a celebrity bio. I want to read about her stories behind the scenes stories and whatnot. I don't really want to hear about God and a loss of faith and rekindling faith and whatnot. So I knew it also needed to be really damn funny. So I tried to make it as funny as possible along the way to kind of like make a little sugar to help the medicine go down , but exactly . But actually , Rob, I'm since you mentioned it, I'm working on this, I'm working on one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, which is I'm writing a book on spirituality. Wow. So yeah, it's straight up. It's funny, but it's really just about what's prompted this. Hang on, I gotta lead you through this. There's so much I want to unpack. What at this point in your life prompted you to write to tackle such a grand topic . Because I think the world needs it. I think the world needs this message. You know, in all of this time of partisanship and bicker and disunity and and the stakes are growing higher and higher . There's great and greater and greater discord in government. The systems are bre aking down right and left . The whole thesis of the book is that we need a spiritual solution to the problems of the world . And this is both on an individual level and it's also on a societal level. We need to there is great and lasting wisdom in the spiritual traditions of the world in surrender, in serenity in service, in transcendence, in sacredness , in the golden rule, which exists in every single religion of the world, but yet so few people live by it. Everyone touts it, but very, very few people live by it. So the book is called Soul Boom , Why We Need A Spiritual Revolution . And it's really that second part. It's like I feel like humanity needs a spiritual revolution. The way that we do everything , I shouldn't be promoting my book. It doesn't come out until April or May of next year. But these are evergreens. These stay forever. So this is great to talk about it. We need a spiritual revol ution. The way that humans do things right now on this planet, and I think you're in a large agreement on this is really fucked up. It's really based in self interest , competition, one upsmanship , power plays , consumer kind of gross consumerism of just profligate buying and using of resources , the Earth, we're disconnected from nature, from earth and just chewing it up and spinning it out , treating each other terribly . And foundationally , we need to really rethink how we do everything , both again, like on an individual level and on a global level. So I'm hoping this little book just kicks a few people in the butt and opens a few ey es and makes a little bit of a difference trying to urge us all in a different direction. It sounds amazing. Are you done with it already? I'm about three quarters done. Will you know when you're done or do you have do you know what you're writing to? Yeah, I need to I have to finish this one chapter, which I think will be pretty easy. It could be a couple weeks. Then I have to write the final chapter, which is really hard, which is like time to get it all together all together and making it all land and sticking the landing and and that's going to be a bear . And then I need to see if I need chapter in it or not. So but yeah , I have a lot of I have a lot of I use the notes app on my phone. You know that notes app so I just I get ideas or I read things or get sentences and I just I just create this document. I mean, it's it's like one hundred and twenty pages of just notes and ideas around this topic or I'll read a quote online by someone and put it in the put it in the notes app. Do you collect great quotes ? I do. In me too I do, and I write 'em down on here. In fact, I just wrote a couple down the other day. Who? Want to share a couple . Add leave it to Beaver in the section about Eisenhower and the Vietnam War. Okay. That makes perfect sense, Anya, okay, that makes sense . Here David Chalmers who',s the premier er research on consciousness Why should physical processing give rise to such a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does . So I have a whole section on consciousness . Here's a Mary Oliver poem . I have refused to live locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs. The world I live in and believe in is wider than that . And anyway, what's wrong with maybe? You wouldn't believe what once or twice I have seen. I'll just tell you this , only if there are angels in your head . Will you ever possibly see one? I like that. See, because I'm not as evolved as you. You're really not. My the shit that I collected is the one there's the one I wrote down the other day. You're like T,ik Cob.b Yes, Ty Cob. It ain't bragging if you've done it. My mind is , I don't know who's said it's anonymous and Amy Lavis. Attacks fuck it up at the finish line . Ah, nice. It's so good . Yeah, yeah. Like he had everything to live for they were on top of the world . Yep. Yep. I just don't understand . Nadicks . Fuck it up at the finish line. Yeah, I love all that stuff . I'm a huge quote freak. And then plus if you put them in a book, it makes you look really smart, but yes, all you did was like find a fun quote online and put it in the book and people like, wow, he must have read everything by that author. Like now I just read I just read sexy quotes Guys, let's face it. As we get older, we can't just skip sleep and eat whatever we want and still feel great the next day. But if you're entering your men's health era, you know it can feel complicated. Sprouts farmers market makes it easier. 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Variable APIs for Apple Card range from seventeen point four nine percent to twenty seven point seven four percent based on credit worthiness. Rates as of january first, twenty twenty six, existing customers can do variable API in the Wallet App or at Card.. Apple. com Apple card issued by Goldman Schax Bank, USA Salt Lake City Branch Turns more at Applecard. com . The new strawberry watermelon refresher is now at McDonald's. It's made with strawberries and a whole lot of wins y . It's one of many new drinks now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine Do you have any James Spader stories ? That is hysterical . James Spader , for those listeners that don't know , had a limited run on the office of about a season , maybe it was one season and it just God bless him, such a brilliant actor. Brilliant. brilliant. I've been watching him. I remember seeing sex lies and videotape when I was in college and I couldn't believe that you could do that as an actor. I didn't know that that was possible to be that present and still and it's a revolutionary performance for those of you out here. If you've never saw or haven't seen sex lies and videotape in a long time. Go back and look at it. It's I mean, it created the modern independent film movement and for good reason. Yes, Stephen Soderberg . And he played Robert California on the office and greatest name ever. Robert California beyond belief . It just didn't, it didn't work. It didn't ultimately work. It wasn't really he didn't fit in . He had a wonderful presence. I think there were some great episodes and some great moments that he was in . I mean, he does he does mysterious creepy kind of better than anyone . I do pretty good mysterious . I know. I like to see you guys in the Battle of the Network Stars and instead of the Dunk Tank it will, be mysterious creepy competition. He would he would beat me every time. I mean, I'm good, but he's he's the master. He's the master. I do I dof my Kangle hat to him. He's got that famous you know, Jiff , meme, whatever, he's like, I'm the fucking lizard king. That speech. Yeah. From the office, it's that was great. That was great. That party at his house when he had that swimming pool was really was really a great episode. But it didn't really work because also like James the way that he works, he works in a very particular way that's very specific. He's not an improviser, you know, Steve Correll is all about he's all about second city. He's all about like being nimble in the moment. And you could throw anything at Steve. You could just in the middle of a scene, you could kind of say , I've got a polar bear in my butt and he would just be like he would just take it in completely, not the polar bear, but the line and just run with it. But James would get thrown off. It didn't fit into the way he worked as an actor, which I think is important in casting that you have to you have to also cast for the world . Yes . Well, that's the one of the things I learned observing Mike Schur , who was one of the head writers in the office along with Greg Daniels when he did Perks and Rec, and I've tried to do in putting together this new show is find actors who they may not even like find the actors and then build the characters around them and make sure you have actors who can play like that because I think it's super important in comedy to be able to do what we used to call in our show, The Fun Runs. I don't know if you guys did them on Sure on the Office where you would yep shoot the scene, but then you would just do a fun room and like say whatever the hell you wanted and see where it went. Yeah, we did more fun runs than regular takes on the office. I was going to ask you what the ratio was, like, how much respect did you pay the actual script on any given day ? Well, Greg Daniels and Mike Schore had a philosophy which was like these writers have worked really hard on these scripts and we should sure that we get all their lines . And so we made sure that we had it as scripted . But as soon as we did, and that could have been the second or third take, then we start making it our own. So probably what you see on the screen is quarter improvised . And then Greg also had another theory, which is like the show is made in the editing room. So whatever's funniest wins . So it's not whatever's scripted wins. It's whatever's funniest. So at the end of the day, it's like, here's a scripted line, here's an improvised line. Here's a scripted blow to the scene . Here's an improvised blow to the scene. And he would bring people in the caterer, the accountants , people would bring their relatives by the set. Hey, watch this. Which of these is funnier? And funny wins and the episodes are made in the editing room. And that's why Dean, who worked on your show and Dave who worked on our and Claire, like the editors really are the unsung heroes of both Parks and Rec and the Office. Dean Holland was kind enough to show up on our Parks and Recollection podcast that I do with Alan Yang . And he's just one of my favor ites, just an absolute genius. Would you have any qualms about doing a reunion like we did for the West Wing , one time only staged rating, anything for the office? I would love to figure out some way to do some office stuff. That's not a reboot . I don't think anyone's really that interested in that. Also we're so much older. Like everyone is all people are going to see when they see it my God they got old. They've aged for sure. Oh, that's definitely a thing and and it's not going to be as funny . So this isn't as funny and god, they're old. That's all the people are going to say. So maybe that's the title. Oh, that's good. But I do think like there was a script that I found that we wrote for season one and never shot called Pet Day . And it was people bringing their pets to work . And it never got green lit, but it's the only extant office script that never got shot . And I would love to do a reading of Pet Day. Yes. Do a live stream , charge people ten bucks to come listen to the original cast, read Pet and give the money to charity. Well, that's why is that not already happening? I don't know. There's been some resistance . Who? I want names. It's NBC and who has the rights to the script and what about the writer who wrote the script ? And it's such a great idea. Yeah. I want to hear your James Spader story. I told mine. I did a movie called Bad Influence with Spader and the late great Curtis Hansen . And I just have a great picture in my life with Christopher Christian Clemenson. Christian Clemenson. Yes, an amazing actor. He is so under rated and undertouted and undervalued. He's amazing. He was great in that. You were great. I like that film, but he was amazing in that. Thank you. He was great. It's I love I love that movie. It's one of the ones of mine that I can stomach. He's it was way ahead of its time, that movie .ad B influence if you haven't seen it . And by the way, written by David Kepp, it was like David Kepp's second script and David Keppel went on to be one of the most lauded film writers we've ever had . But somewhere I have a picture that is one of my most prized pictures. It's me and Spader and Curtis Hansen on the set . And it's so clear what's going on and it's what happened every day where you would show up. You got your, you know, your sides of

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