Before The Office became a rewatch staple and mockumentary classic, it was among the worst-testing pilots in network NBC‘s history, Steve Carell recently recalled.
In an appearance on Good Hang with Amy Poehler, the two comedy powerhouses reminisced on their respective series hits.
“There’s really only two people that I’ve been told I am a poor man’s version of, and one of them is you, which I take that as high compliment,” said Poehler, who portrayed the ever-optimistic Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation.
“I would take that as a huge insult,” Carell replied, both of them laughing.
The podcast host noted that the Greg Daniels and Michael Schur-created successor Parks and Recreation “had the worst launch ever” and that she “dissociated” amid the negative feedback.
Carell recalled that he was in the same boat: “Our pilot was the lowest-testing pilot in the history, I think, of NBC. People really hated it. They actively hated this show, and I don’t quite know how it got legs after that.”
When it was announced The Office was getting a U.S. version based on Ricky Gervais’ original, Poehler, then at Saturday Night Live, remembered that everyone was convinced it was a bad idea — until they heard Carell was cast in the lead role.
“Everyone was like, ‘This is a terrible idea, this is a terrible idea. No one can be as good as Ricky Gervais, no one can do that show,’” she explained. “And then we heard it was you, and we were like, ‘Oh. Oh, whoever’s making this show wants it to be funny.’”
As such, Carell was careful not to study Gervais’ approach to the insufferable middle-manager, saying he watched “a minute” of the U.K. version before he turned it off as the comic was “so good and so specific and so funny” that he felt it would unduly affect his audition process.
“I remember [Paul] Rudd pulled me aside and was like, ‘Don’t do it man, don’t audition, don’t audition. There’s no way,’” the Rooster actor said, laughing.
Despite the rocky start, The Office has since gone down as among the best comedies in recent history, earning 42 Emmy nominations and 5 wins, including for Outstanding Comedy Series. Running from 2005 through 2013 for a total of nine seasons, the sitcom just cracked 200 episodes, following the hapless and offbeat employees at a fictional paper company.
In 2025, creator Daniels and Michael Koman originated the spinoff The Paper, in which the same documentary crew follows the workers at a local Midwestern newspaper. Season 2 is currently in the works.
