Steve Carell has recalled being warned by an A-list actor against trying out for the lead role in The Office, amid concerns that an American version of the hit British sitcom would flop.
“I remember [Paul] Rudd pulled me aside and was like, ‘Don’t do it, man. Don’t audition,’” Carell, 63, said on Tuesday’s episode of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast. “It was like, ‘There is no way.’”
Rudd, 56, and Carell are longtime friends and frequent collaborators. They have co-starred in several comedies together, including Dinner for Schmucks (2010) and the Anchorman franchise.
“Yeah. Everyone was like, don’t even touch this,” host Poehler, 54, said of the workplace mockumentary. “[With a] 10-foot pole,” the Morning Show alum added.
At the time, Poehler, who was a cast member on Saturday Night Live, remembered hearing backstage that “they were going to make the American version.”
“And everyone was like, ‘This is a terrible idea; terrible idea. No one can be as good as Ricky Gervais. No one can do that show,” the Parks and Recreation star said. “And then we heard it was you, and we were like, ‘Oh, whoever’s making the show wants it to be funny.’ You know, like it was this thing of, ‘Oh that’s a very, very good choice.’”
Carell went on to play Michael Scott, the unprofessional and incompetent regional manager of fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
The role served as his television breakout, earning him six consecutive lead actor Emmy nominations from 2006 to 2011. The show, which ran for nine seasons, from 2005 to 2013, also featured Jenna Fischer, John Krasinski, Rainn Wilson, Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak. It was an adaptation of the two-season Ricky Gervais-led British original of the same name.
Carell appeared on the show from 2005 to 2011, before departing at the end of its seventh season. At the time, it was reported that Carell had left to pursue further career opportunities; however, the show’s hairstylist, Kim Ferry, rejected these claims, insisting in Andy Greene’s 2020 book, The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, that he was written off because NBC let his contract lapse.
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“He didn’t want to leave the show,” Ferry claimed. “He had told the network that he was going to sign for another couple of years … He told his manager and his manager contacted them and said he’s willing to sign another contract.”
She added: “The deadline came for when [the network was] supposed to give him an offer and it passed and they didn’t make him an offer. So his agent was like, ‘Well, I guess they don’t want to renew you for some reason.’ Which was insane to me. And to him, I think.”
Casting director Allison Jones also remembered the incident, recalling: “He was going to do another season and then NBC, for whatever reason, wouldn’t make a deal with him. Somebody didn’t pay him enough. It was absolutely asinine. I don’t know what else to say about that. Just asinine.”
Carell returned to the series for its 2013 finale.
