The Office returns this Thursday after a long hiatus, but it won’t take Rainn Wilson long to get back into the swing of things. “I just put on the calculator watch and the glasses and just be all inappropriate and then it just works out fine. You go right back in the flow,” he says of getting into character as Dwight Schrute.
When Hollywood.com caught up with comic actor he opened up about working office jobs, the Dwight spin off show, sex games and more.
Hollywood.com: How was your first day back after the strike?
Rainn Wilson: It has been a huge love fest. It’s kind of crazy. It doesn’t make for great print journalism, but I will say that everyone, it’s like our other family. And our family got together like at a big family reunion, and it’s been really, really fun, and we’ve had a blast these first two weeks. It is great to see everyone again, and our batteries were definitely recharged.
HW: How did you spend your days off during the strike?
DW: I did a little bit of picketing. I played a lot with my three and a half-year-old son, which was good. I think the strike was terribly painful for the families of Los Angeles, the working families of Los Angeles, but it was also great for the families of Los Angeles. And I went to Israel, and I did some writing, and I worked on my backhand with my Zen tennis coach. [PAGEBREAK]
HW: What does your son think about you being on television? Does he get confused?
DW: He is occasionally, I’ll be up on the TV screen for whatever reason, if I’m like watching myself from a talk show appearance or an episode of The Office is playing or something like that. And he says, “That Da Da,” and then he goes back to whatever it was that he was doing, playing with a train or a ball or hitting one of our dogs with a golf club. But yeah, it’s pretty normal for him. There’s also a Dwight bobblehead up the shelf that he used to be really into, but now he couldn’t care less about it.
HW: What about your wife? Does she like your persona as Dwight or does she tell you to leave your character at the office.
DW: We actually play funny sex games of Dwight, and she will pretend to be anyone else in the office pretty much. We have outfits for all of the different characters. And now it’s going to be all over the media. That’s probably the worst thing I could have said. I don’t really tend to bring Dwight home with me so much, because I would say we’re too much alike…My wife has a great absurd sense of humor, and she really appreciates me playing wierdos and oddballs. And she is a novelist.
HW: Has she ever expressed interest in writing for The Office or anything like that?
DW: Yes, she has written a 400-page spec script…It’s very prose heavy, it’s written from the perspective of Oscar’s boyfriend, Gill. And in it, he’s suffering from emphysema. It’s very moving. It’s very, very, very sad. [PAGEBREAK]
HW: Your former lady love — Angela — is now pregnant in real life and very much showing. Is that something that is going to be written into the show, and could that possibly be a little Schrute or maybe an Andy Bernard?
DW: Angela [Kinsey] is like, well, it’s like a little person swallowed a watermelon. And everything about her looks exactly the same except she has this enormous tummy. And I think all of her scenes from here on out are going to be staged with her behind the copy machine.
HW: Could you imagine doing a spin off show with Dwight? Maybe something about beet farmers or it could all take place in Second Life.
DW: There’s something appealing about just watching Dwight going in an opposite direction, not having it be a comedy or a sitcom – but just having it be a reality show about a beet farmer. Kind of like Ax Men, it’s this new hit reality show about lumberjacks. You could just watch a beet farmer. [PAGEBREAK]
HW: As a bunch of creative types stuck on an office set, do you guys go stir crazy?
DW: We all go a little bit mad even in The Office setting. About eight hours into sitting under those fluorescent lights on the set of The Office and surfing the web, and there’s only so many times you can check CNN.com to see if a bomb has gone off somewhere. We start to go a little bit stir crazy, and things start to get out of hand. So I think that is true. But recently, we’ve kept ourselves entertained by doing Brian Baumgartner imitations and coaxing Ed Helms to do all of his imitations. He does an incredible Tom Brokaw, and we love to have him say “albondigas” – the soup albondigas as Tom Brokaw. [PAGEBREAK]
HW: Have you ever worked in an office? If so, were you a Dwight or a Jim or a Ryan?
DW: Well, I’ve worked in many offices before in my New York days of being a starving actor. I worked in a major New York charity as an assistant office manager and special events coordinator. And then I was also a receptionist from the Pam Beesly mold at Kirschenbaum Bond Partners, an advertising agency in New York.
HW: I didn’t expect that. So you were the office Pam?
DW: I was Pam. So I’ve done a lot of those things. Who was I closest to? I guess I was most like a Jim, because my heart really wasn’t into it. But I was also very capable, which is a lot like Jim too. I think Jim is very capable, but I don’t think they missed me.
HW: Well, you’re probably past needing to sell your capability in an office receptionist job.
DW: Well, I guess I am…I’m not really worried about it, but I guess I’m proud of the fact that I was actually a really good waiter. I was an excellent waiter, like I could have really gone somewhere as a waiter. And I was pretty decent in my office work too. I was not very good at marine supply delivery, which I did for about eight months at Ballard Marine Supply and Hardware. I got in a couple of car accidents and kept losing stuff. [PAGEBREAK]
HW: You mentioned the Dwight bobblehead earlier, a Star Trek actor once told me that the best part of having his own action figure is that he could play with himself in public.
DW: Can I use that line?
HW: That’s a great line. What do you think of having your own bobblehead? Is it great? Is it surreal?
DW: I walked by the NBC store in New York and there’s a wall of Dwight bobbleheads in the windows. It’s the number one selling thing in the history of NBC Universal merchandising. And it’s pretty crazy. I feel like Mr. Potato Head. I think in the future, I will be known not for the character of Dwight, but just for the bobblehead. And I think after, in the far future humanity, like ten thousand years from now, will like uncover Dwight bobbleheads and think that I was a great leader of men. It’s going to last through any kind of Apocalypse of anything like that.
