SBO Interview with Rainn Wilson and Greg Daniels

It's been weeks since my call with Rainn Wilson and Greg Daniels, but in celebration of the second new post-strike episode of "The Office" I've finally gotten around to share our conversation with you! Many of you have read the full transcript of this media session, but this was my own one-on-one(two?) part of it all.

Rainn Wilson plays Dwight Schrute on "The Office" and was seen in movies such as "Juno", "The Last Mimzy", "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" and can you find him in "Galaxy Quest"? He joined "The Office" executive producer/writer, Greg Daniels, to speak with the media a few weeks ago. Daniels has been a part of "The Office" team since the beginning and is also responsible for the FOX hit "King of the Hill".

Enjoy!

ScrantonBranchOffice: Hey, welcome back guys. It’s been too long.

Greg Daniels: Hey, thank you.

Rainn Wilson: Hi.

Greg Daniels: Can I just say - have you heard that before because I mean, I don’t know if it was just me but I heard a lot of people saying that’s the thing that they missed most during the strike?

Not for me to say, of course, but if you wanted to say that on the other line so other people would write it, I’d be - you know, I’m not going to stand in your way.

SBO: Absolutely. I would say that 90% of the questions into my website were about The Office during the strike. You also were the faces that the audience was going to on the strike lines.

Every website has a quote from some Office writer or something. I don’t know. Maybe you’re funny. Who knows?

I also want to let you know that, Rainn, my three and a half year old niece calls you squishy head because she has the little stress ball with your face from Target.

Rainn Wilson: That’s funny. My wife calls me squishy head, too, sometimes.

SBO: Well there you go. I’ve been lucky enough to sit through the Scranton convention and I was curious - a lot of the actors have said that they had this great adrenaline rush and the writers coming back from that convention and were really kind of gung-ho.

And then all of a sudden the strike hit at the exact same time. So my question, I guess for Greg is were you able to kind of recapture that at all when you guys got back? Is there anything from the convention, from being in Scranton that you’re going to add?

And maybe Rainn, you could talk, too - were the people who were at the convention - what kind of stories have you heard? Those kinds of things - if you guys could talk about that for a couple minutes?

Greg Daniels: Sure. The convention was very fun and, you know, it was a real wonderful experience to see how many thousands of fans came from all over the world and there were people from Ireland and Oregon. And, you know, all - really people came from a really great distance.

And, you know, and this was my first time in Scranton although we’ve done so much research on the Internet. And I was really struck by how beautiful Scranton is, which is not what we really have been portraying in here from our (unintelligible).

And the street here in California. But we saw some of the sights like Nay Aug Park and the Treehouse, which is this amazing wheelchair accessible treehouse that they’ve built over this gorge.

And there’s a lot of weird kind of Scranton-specific things that we saw, that, you know, will I’m sure come into different episodes. And the entire writing staff was there and they all had different experiences at, you know, driving around and going to Scranton bars, and meeting the policewomen.

And, you know, stuff like that. So I think it was very good for the creativity of everybody here.

Rainn Wilson: Really it’s a lovely town. Like there are big old buildings, 100 years old, all over the downtown - big brick buildings that have a really cool industrial look, and a lot of iron work. And stuff like that.

And there’s beautiful hills all around Scranton. It’s like down in this little valley and there’s lovely trees and hills all over the place. A very green city.

SBO: Yeah.

Rainn Wilson: Brought to you by the City of Scranton Tourist Bureau.

SBO: Thank you very much.

So, there you have it. Many thanks to Rainn and Greg for taking the time to chat with me like that. Be sure to watch for new episodes of "The Office" on NBC every Thursday until the end of the season!