Mm-hmm.

But it also had to be very romantic for Jim and Pam, and the show always had this, uh, slight anomaly that was Jim and Pam because it was so fairy tale inside their relationship, but then everything else in the show was up for grabs for, for jokes and, you know, was very realistic.

And Niagara Falls is within a drive, like, a conceivable four-and-a-half-hour drive of Scranton, so it made sense that you could invite people from work, and they would drive up, you know.

And it was a doable thing.

And so I did a lot of research on Niagara Falls, uh, way early, and what's amazing about Niagara Falls, it's, like, the most classic wedding location for people, you know, in the, the Northeast.

And it's been that way since the 1800s or whenever it was discovered, and it's, it's incredibly naturally beautiful and, and, like, take-your-breath-away majestic.

But because everybody used it as their wedding thing, there was this really kinda commercialized, like, kitschy-

[laughs]

That's so realistic too that we don't explain what that was.

Th- This was also the first time that after they had a little conflict, they, at the end of the scene, they both look to the camera and try and win.

Oh, cool, got the 360

... yeah, and that it was outdoors, which we, the set was so beautiful.

Donal Lee Harris made this, and Michael Galiber-

Okay.

I had a hard time, because I was laughing, and I was filming Michael Scott, and my laughter was jiggling the camera.

And the, the DP would always run up and be like, "Are you jiggling the camera on purpose?" But my shoulders were shaking.

Well, that is such a funny little scene.

It's in the deleted scenes-

I love it

... with cards on their heads all day, that, that was almost impossible to get through the day without laughing every time you looked at someone.

It is the, just the most ridiculous visual ever.

(laughs)

I've returned, yes.

We got, people send me like Beachcombers shirts, like all the crew that I worked with there.

Yeah, so we, and then, and we had to get to Gibsons, uh, be, be, like in time to go back to Seattle to get our flight.

And we, we were running out the clock trying to figure out how to get to the set.

And, um, uh, we missed the ferry that goes to Gibsons.

And it was the last ferry, we were, there's be no way to get there.

Yeah.

Everybody's always so embarrassed on Michael's behalf and looking so uncomfortable because of what he's doing.

Well, we didn't have a normal audition process.

We, or or we did have a normal audition process, but afterwards, we did, uh, screen tests.

And we actually took three days and combined all the different finalist actors in different combinations, and we filmed them, uh, improv-ing scenes together.

And that was definitely one of the great things that distinguished us.

For example, Jenna Fischer, the, the pained looks that she would give to camera.

In, in the seasons that The Office has been on, on, are there ways that the characters have changed that you never would have expected? And are there ways that Michael has changed, the main character, that you, you didn't plan on? It just kind of evolved that way?

Um, hmm, that's a good question.

Well, Greg, one of the questions we always ask our guests, how did it come about that you got your job creating The Office?

Um, yes.

Okay.

So basically what happened was, um, I had been doing King of the Hill, and it was very, you know, good experience for me.

And, um, uh, it was probably around season eight, and I was not really needed there.

And my deal at 20th was up, and so I was a free agent.

And I was looking around at all sorts of different things to be the next project, and, um, I had some real interesting meetings about The Muppet Show, which someone else did later, and a couple of other things.

Mm-hmm.

How did we do that?

That is Kent Zbornak.

So Kent was our line producer, and, um, he was also in the DGA, and w- you know, he managed to launch us on the budget that we had, which was tiny, you know, into Long Beach Harbor on a boat for days and get hotel rooms for everybody, and he realized that we really needed that, a shot like that, and he shot that himself with his own equipment, um, you know, while we were shooting the rest of it, uh, 'cause he just had an instinct that there was no way the production could get that and stop everything and, you know.

So that was kind of a guerrilla move and super valuable, and Kent was, you know, fantastic at doing those kind of things.

Like, he was always stitching together amazing stuff on our little budget.

Oh my gosh, pressure

... yeah, there was a lot of pressure.

And so I, I had, uh, initially kind of thought that The Office was such a special, unique show, which I had so much respect for, that I wouldn't change very much on it, and I realized that w- I needed to change something.