Paul Feig Knows How Steve Carell Smartly Saved ‘The Office’

Americans are no strangers to unlikeable leads. Sometimes we want to see them fail. We’ll watch hours of a movie or TV show, resenting someone for being despicable, eagerly awaiting their downfall, but admitting that we love watching them be bad. Don Draper, Walter White, Dennis Reynolds, and Mel Gibson are all reprehensible men who still attract viewers with ease. Even still, we can have our limits, especially when it comes to comedy.

There are plenty of comedic shows and movies about lame dudes who magically turn things around in the third act. They’re so immature and not ready for life but then something happens and now they have a job and don’t spend all their time smoking pot with Jonah Hill. However, sometimes they can’t wait until the third act/fifth season to begin changing someone for the better. That was certainly the case for The Office.

The American remake of The Office was practically identical to its UK counterpart early on, including the lead character, Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott, being as reprehensible as Ricky Gervais’s David Brent. It has been talked about before, but the show quickly realized that Scott would have to be softened if the show was to have any longevity. Director Paul Feig credits Steve Carell for making that switch possible.

Following The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Carell was blowing up and the show wasn’t reflecting that success. “So Steve was this huge star all of a sudden, and they had this huge star in the show that they thought wasn’t working and it wasn’t working in the ratings,” Feig recently explained to Entertainment Weekly, recalling his time directing the show. He noted that American audiences won’t tolerate a “bore” the way UK audiences will. “They’ll tune it out. They just won’t watch it,” he said.

Feig cites an episode titled Office Olympics as a turning point for the character, thanks to Carell’s performance. “It was the scene we were shooting when everybody was supposed to be working and they’re screwing off doing this thing. And in order to not get in trouble with Michael, they’re going to give him a gold medal,” Feig told EW. “But we’re shooting it and Steve gets emotional. Steve as the character, ‘cause he’s had this terrible day,” Feig remembered. “And so he starts like kind of crying, like a tear goes down his eye and we’re like, ‘Oh my God.’ And I’m going like, ‘Oh, do that again. Do that again. This is great. And I think that was this moment of like, that’s him.”

Michael Scott would continue to grow and change as the show went on. “He’s got a humanity about him and everybody figured out, ‘No, he’s not an asshole. He’s a misguided idiot who is an asshole because he’s trying to be funny.’ Right. So you go like, ‘Okay, he means well,’” Feig explained. From there, The Office became a juggernaut of a show that arguably couldn’t recover after Steve Carell left. Pretty good for a guy who does a Hitler impression in the first episode!