To protect the privacy of all the different interviewers in this conference call, we've replaced their actual name with "Interviewer". We've also taken out most of the "Hi's" and "Thank You's" for a quicker and easier 'read'. Thank you to those involved for the opportunity to interview such great guys! And, by the way... these two really go at it at times (jokingly of course) and when Rainn speaks... try to imagine him speaking in "Dwight Speak" because he's usually kidding around with some of his answers! These two were just a blast to talk with!

With us today from "The Office" are Rainn Wilson and Executive Producer, Greg Daniels.

Interviewer:        My question is actually for both of you. I’m wondering, you know, with the sitcom sort of becoming a lost art, what is the key to making a good one like you've done with The Office?

Greg Daniels:       Rainn, what do you think?  

Rainn Wilson:      Go ahead, Greg. It’s all you.  

Greg Daniels:      Well, there’s the flip answer and the real answer, I guess. But, you know, I think it’s a lot about trying to be original and trying to be funny, and not being scared of also, you know, having some emotion in it or being real and taking the characters seriously.

                        And developing a hit that was a hit in another country already.

Interviewer:        Right. And Rainn?  

Rainn Wilson:      I can’t top that, but I will say that I think the multi-camera sitcom format, as it kind of petered out over the last couple of years, may just - we’re sticking to a - kind of tried and true formula.  

                        And then the shows became more about the formula than about what the show was trying to say or trying to do. So it was more about a group of characters sitting in a common area.  

                        Kind of - we’ve set up some punchlines and kind of making fun of each other. And it just got tired and worn out. And it just is - it’s the genre right now that needs some reinvention.  

Coordinator:       By the way, Greg and Rainn, can you each say your name before you answer because it’s two guys so the guys…  

Greg Daniels:       Okay.  

Rainn Wilson:      My voice is the deep, husky male voice and Greg’s is the like…  

Greg Daniels:       The whiny, nerdy, unfamiliar voice.  

Rainn Wilson:      Yes.  

Interviewer:      Yeah, Greg, if you could just continue on that for a minute because you were talking about how you want to be unique and different, and yet you also want to be funny?  

                        I mean, you really did make some interesting - found a place along the spectrum here because if you had just done it with - as the British version with the very slow, dry humor, that wouldn’t have worked, right?  

                        I mean, you found an American version which is a little sharper in the humor, a little quicker with the humor. Could you kind of talk about how you find that line?  

Greg Daniels:       Yeah, sure. Well I think the British version is really, really great and I actually love the British version. And they intentionally - when you look at the scripts for the British version, it’s - you know, they - I think they resemble the scripts for the American version.  

                        But they made some decisions to really go very bleak with the production of it and it matched what they were trying to do which was to be very satiric and, you know, paint a very bleak picture of what this world was like.  

                        And, you know, we had an aim to be more of a character comedy that was less satiric and more about the, you know, the ups and downs of the characters. And knowing that we were going to be on for a lot longer, you know, we wanted to see positive sides to the characters, too.  

                        And I don’t think we really got it 100% right until the second season in terms of the mix and the tone, although I really like our first season. I think it’s really funny.  

                        But, you know, once we started to have moments, you know, where - for example where, you know, Dwight is crushed at leaving his work or stuff like that, it kind of opens the characters up in a way where you feel a little bit more for them and you’re also, I think, uncertain as to what’s going to happen next because he might have a moment where you feel for them and then on the other hand, you might have a moment where they’re really just being played for laughs.  

Interviewer:       Hi guys. I love the show. In fact, the other night I watched the Phyllis get flashed episode just because I was jonesing for an Office. Anyway, Rainn, I’m sure you’ve been asked this before, but have you ever worked in an office - even if only as a temp when the, you know, the acting work got thin?  

                        And if so, what kind of office worker were you? Were you a Dwight or a Jim, or a Ryan, or what?  

Rainn Wilson:      Well I was kind of - 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 Assistant Office Manager and Special Events Coordinator. And I was also…  

Greg Daniels:       Assistant to the Officer Manager and Special Events Coordinator or Assistant Office Manager?  

Interviewer:        Way to go, good one.  

Rainn Wilson:      I was Assistant to the Office Manager and Assistant Special Events Coordinator. Thank you. You got it?  

                       And then - thanks, Greg. That was a good setup. The…

Greg Daniels:       Just trying to throw you off.  

Rainn Wilson:      And then I was also a Receptionist from the Pam Beesly mold at Kirshenbaum, Bond & Partners, an advertising agency in New York .  

((Crosstalk))  

Interviewer:        And I didn’t expect that. So you were the office Pam?  

Rainn Wilson:      I was Pam.

Rainn Wilson:      So I’ve done a lot of those things. I would - I guess, who was I closest to? I guess I was most like a Jim because my heart really wasn’t into it. So - but I was also very capable which is a lot like Jim, too.  

                        I think Jim is very capable. So - but I don’t think they missed me. And then…  

Interviewer:        Yeah, you’re probably past needing to sell your capability in an office receptionist job.  

Rainn Wilson:      Well I guess I am, but I’m - I guess I’m kind of…  

((Crosstalk))  

Interviewer:        I like that you’re worrying about it.  

Rainn Wilson:      No, I’m not really worried about it. But I guess I’m proud of the fact that in my past 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 & Hardware). I got in a couple car accidents and kept losing stuff.  

Interviewer:        Well it’s comforting to know that if the show, you know, just drops off the map and the movie doesn’t do well you have options.  

Rainn Wilson:      Yes, exactly.  

Interviewer:        Except in the marine delivery field.  

Rainn Wilson:      Yeah. Thank you.  

Interviewer:       Thanks for your time. I’m kind of following up on that question. I find a lot of creative people who go slightly mad when they’re in office or corporate jobs. What is your opinion about that or from your own personal experiences?  

Rainn Wilson:      This is Greg Daniels. I’m Greg Daniels. I created The Office. I’m so cool. This is Rainn Wilson. That’s a great question. Yeah. You know, 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 and here’s my imitation of Ed Helms saying albondigas as Tom Brokaw.  

                        Meanwhile, albondigas…  

Greg Daniels:       I think his Tom Brokaw is better than his Greg Daniels. I was going to say…  

Rainn Wilson:      Does he have a Greg Daniels?  

Greg Daniels:       No, you.  

Rainn Wilson:      Oh. And this is Greg.  

((Crosstalk))  

Greg Daniels:       This is Rainn - duh. I’m dumb. There you go.  

Greg Daniels:       Hey we’re at each other’s throats now. It’s a good thing that we’re not in the same physical location.  

Rainn Wilson:      I know. I’d be pummeling him.  

Interviewer:        I actually watched some bloopers last night to get myself all jazzed up for this.  

Rainn Wilson:      All right.  

Interviewer:       So funny - Rainn, you are so funny in your outfit. I love your sheriff outfit.  

Rainn Wilson:      Oh.  

Interviewer:       Your (unintelligible) sheriff outfit. It’s so fantastic. But my burning question is -- and TV viewers would love to know -- is there going to be any love interest for Dwight that will be introduced right now because right now? You know, Angela has kind of moved on and - or she’s trying to move on, and it looks like it’s just breaking Dwight’s heart. Do you think that he’ll have a love interest come in and try to make Angela jealous?  

Rainn Wilson:      I don’t know, Greg. That gets into some dangerous territory there. What do you think we can say about that?  

Greg Daniels:       Well, do you remember in your audition when you improv’d his - some of his ex-girlfriends?  

Rainn Wilson:      Yes.  

Greg Daniels:       Because I’ve always - we’ve always had that on the board and that, I think, you know, it's part of his character that he has some exes out there. So…  

Rainn Wilson:      Yes. Dwight - I improvised in the audition for the pilot which Greg -- by the way -- thanks for casting me.  

Greg Daniels:       Oh, just wanted to bring that up again, yeah.  

Rainn Wilson:      Thanks for casting me because…  

Greg Daniels:       No problem.  

Rainn Wilson:      …I have a career now. So thanks for that. And yeah, I had a - we had an improvisation of me and Jenna, and I told her that I had an ex-girlfriend who was stationed in Kuwait City , you know, as a Reservist.  

                       So I don’t know if that is coming into play, but ex-girlfriends - yeah. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more sides - a lot more facets of Dwight when it comes to dating and women.  

Interviewer:        Absolutely. And I hope that they make it out to the beet farm.  

Rainn Wilson:      Maybe so. I want to say that this is something that I love about this show is that, you know, every season, every - even every episode - every couple of episodes, there’s always some new aspect of Dwight that Greg and the writers want to explore.  

                        And that’s such a rare thing, you know. So many shows have their comic sidekick character and this is - they do XY and Z. But I get emotional stories and comedic stories, and family stories - and lots of different textures.  

                        And I really appreciate getting to do that as an actor.  

Interviewer:        I know. It was a great scene between you and Jim in the hallway where he finally opens up to you about the destruction of Pam and his heart, and all that stuff.  

Rainn Wilson:      Yeah.  

Interviewer:        You’re very, very touching, so that was great.  

Rainn Wilson:      Oh, thanks.  

Greg Daniels:       That was just lovely.  

Interviewer:        Thank you.  

Greg Daniels:       We're going to play with time a lot, I think - like Lost.  

                        In the next six episodes.  

Interviewer:        Flash forward.  

Greg Daniels:       It’s going to get suddenly weirdly sci-fi.  

Rainn Wilson:      There’ll be a hatch under Dwight’s desk.  

Interviewer :        So The Office is going to turn into Lost, huh?  

Greg Daniels:       Well, you know…  

Interviewer :        Actually, Greg, I was just wondering are there any signs that Stephen and Ricky will write more episodes for the show or make a cameo, do you think?  

Greg Daniels:       I don't know. It’s a really good question. Stephen was going to direct one…  

                        …in December and, you know, we’re hoping to get him back next year. And, you know, as to cameos, we haven’t written any in. We - at one point, we had written in one for the character that played Gareth a couple of years ago.  

                        But we couldn’t get him on because he was doing Pirates of the Caribbean or something.  

                        But it’s a possibility. But we don’t have any plans right now.  

Interviewer:       Okay. Just one more quick thing for Rainn.  

Rainn Wilson:      Yeah.  

Interviewer :        Now the upcoming episode is - Pam and Jim show up to Michael’s dinner party. I was just wondering where was Dwight?  

Rainn Wilson:      Where was Dwight?  

Interviewer :        Yeah. Well he didn’t go to the dinner party, right?  

Rainn Wilson:      Well, you have to tune in on April 10 to find out. It’s amazing what happens. It’s going to rock your world.  

Interviewer:        Can you talk a little bit about how you spent the break and what the first day back was like?  

Greg Daniels:       Well mine was very boring. I just walked in circles a lot waving the placard and didn’t, you know, travel anywhere or do anything. But the first day that we came back was very good for the writing staff because this was the longest break that we had had since the show started and people, you know, had time to kind of recharge their batteries in a good way.  

                        So we had a lot of fun tossing out ideas on our first day back.  

Interviewer:        And Rainn?  

Rainn Wilson:      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.  

Interviewer:         And what was the first day back like?  

Rainn Wilson:      You know, it’s been - it has been a huge love fest. It’s like - 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 we - our other family got together.  

                        And - 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 batteries were definitely recharged.  

Interviewer:        And I know you go through it every summer, but is it tough after a break like that to get back into being Dwight?  

Rainn Wilson:      You know, it’s - it does - there’s like ten minutes when it’s like okay, wait, who is this guy again, right? And then, you know, I just put on the calculator watch and the glasses, and just be all, you know, inappropriate. And then it just works out fine.  

                        You go right back in the flow.  

Interviewer:        How did the strike affect any of the larger story arcs for the season?  

Greg Daniels:       Well, you know, we had some stuff that we were planning for the end of the year and we didn’t end up having enough time to do what we had planned. But we came up with some other alternatives - things which we really like a lot and it’s probably good that way for the creative process.  

                        So I mean, you know, there - we didn’t have a lot of stuff that we scrapped because we only had the one episode, you know, ready to be shot and that’s the one we came back with where they’re, you know, invited out to the dinner party. And…  

Rainn Wilson:      I heard there were plans for a Christmas episode…  

((Crosstalk))  

Greg Daniels:       You know what, we did? We had a whole Christmas episode…  

Rainn Wilson:      …Christmas episode and (unintelligible) different.  

Greg Daniels:       No, that’s true. It wasn’t 100% finished, the script. But we’re going - you know, we’ll cannibalize it and use pieces of it, and stuff.  

Interviewer:        Yeah, hi guys. You talked a little bit about the three camera sitcom formulas and Rainn talked a little bit about how Dwight is not just kind of the standard foil that you - you know, the wacky neighbor that you see on a lot of sitcoms.  

                        Greg, could you just talk about - it seems to me the natural tendency where you have some sort of breakout characters, a lot of shows tend to like gravitate towards where that sort of attention is going very much.  

                        You know, it - the public reaction sort of shapes how the stories get played out. But it seems like these guys…  

((Crosstalk))  

Greg Daniels:       Well the problem is that we started off, you know, with Phyllis just being one of the salespeople and we’ve kind of peaked too early by marrying her off to Bob Vance. And so it’s hard to capitalize on the breakout.  

                        But who are you talking about? Which character?  

Interviewer:        No, I was just kind of talking generally as you seem to be very - actually very generous with all of those characters. I was going to say that you hadn’t really fallen into that trap.  

                        I mean, that’s something else that happens in the typical sitcom.  

Greg Daniels:       Oh yeah. No, I understand what you’re saying. Yeah, no. Well that’s part of trying to, you know, kind of keep people off balance. You know what I mean? It’s like you, you know, obviously it’s - Dwight is super funny and people love Dwight.  

                        And they buy Dwight dolls and stuff like that. But if it just became the Dwight Show, you know…  

Rainn Wilson:      There would be nothing wrong with that.  

Greg Daniels:       But yes, I think that’s a complete quote there.

                        As long as you know that the speaker shifted in the middle of the sentence.

Interviewer:        My question is for Greg.  

                       The question I wanted to ask is that because the show has always had such a tremendous online following, I decided to go to one of the original Office fan sites --

                        And I asked the fans there what they’d most like to know about the show right now. And the one question that came back a couple of times is whether there’s any plans or at least any intention to have the characters see the documentary that’s been filming in their office for the last three years and what kind of reactions you think that would have?  

Greg Daniels:       I think - I mean, it’s great. We have talked about it. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I definitely love it as a big, kind of game-changing story move. But, you know, hopefully when we do press that nuclear button, you know, it’ll be prepared for and everybody will be - you know, people will think it’s worth it.  

Rainn Wilson:      I think it’s hard. Once they see the documentary - I’m just speculating here because I know nothing about those conversations. But I think once they see the documentary and you kind of deal with the fallout of that, I don’t know how much longer you can then continue storylines, you know, with all the characters kind of living in the - being in the public eye and stuff like that.  

Greg Daniels:       Well there’s certain things that we have, like in our back pockets and I feel like if we ever got to a place where we were discussing storylines and we just had nothing, you know, then we would say all right, time to scramble the…  

Rainn Wilson:      Right.  

Greg Daniels:       …scramble the world and see what comes out of that. You know, time to shake the Boggle set.  

Interviewer:        So, Dwight, your former lady love -- Angela -- is now pregnant and very much showing. A question for both of you and more so, probably for Greg. How are we going to deal with that when the show returns?  

                        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?  

Greg Daniels:       Well it’s possibly in real life a little Schrute or Andy Bernard. I’m not sure. But the actual - the character of Angela is different from the, you know, the human being Angela, even though they have the same name.  

                        But I think it’s confusing on our show because there’s a lot of people with the same name. You know, Oscar is an actor and then there’s also Oscar the person. And of course, the real confusing part is that Creed is the person. There is only Creed. He’s not aware he’s in a show.  

Rainn Wilson:      There is no separation between Creed the person and Creed the actor.  

Greg Daniels:       No, not at all.  

Rainn Wilson:      And Creed the character - whatsoever. Angela is like - 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.  

Greg Daniels:       I think it’s going to be a nice drinking game for people to see if they can see the belly.  

Rainn Wilson:      Spot the fetus.  

Greg Daniels:       Yeah.  

Interviewer:        Too funny. And just a real quick follow-up. Do you guys have any special plans for the night of the big return?  

Greg Daniels:       We should, shouldn’t we? That’s like a really good idea.  

Rainn Wilson:      I heard Stephen was going to have a party, so maybe we could get all 50 of the folks on the line right now - we should just give them Steve’s address and April 10th. He’s at 1313 Luck Street . That’s Burbank , California - 91401.  

Greg Daniels:       Second floor in the back.  

Rainn Wilson:      Yeah, so come on by. Come by early, too - like in the morning even. I’m sure he’d appreciate that.  

Greg Daniels:       So April 10th is the date.  

Rainn Wilson:      Yes.  

Greg Daniels:       And we’re having four - the last four episodes we run on April 3rd and I think John Krasinski is going to host it and show scenes from Leatherheads. That’s true, though.  

Rainn Wilson:      Really?  

Greg Daniels:       Yeah. And then we’re going to do - then we’re coming back with originals - all originals, all in a row starting April 10th.  

Rainn Wilson:      That’s funny. That’s weird.  

Rainn Wilson:      Hey, it’s John Krasinski. I play Jim. I’m on a mockumentary of The Office and here’s scenes from my new movie.  

Interviewer:        Good. Rainn, you talked before about multi-camera, traditional sitcoms. CBS seems to be having quite a bit of success with their Monday night lineup following the more traditional format.  

                        Do you guys feel like you’re in competition - kind of an informal competition? You know, Thursday night on NBC was King of Comedy for so long. Do you feel like you’re - there’s a compare and contrast between CBS’s Monday lineup and NBC’s Thursday lineup?  

Greg Daniels:       I feel intensely competitive with the Girls Gone Wild series of videotapes, myself - not so much the CBS lineup. But I don’t know. If you were to look at the numbers and stuff, there - we might have different demographics.