Rainn Wilson told Bill Maher on the latter’s “Club Random” podcast that he spent “several years” on NBC’s “The Office” unhappy because he failed to become a movie star. Wilson, who starred as Dwight Schrute on the beloved sitcom, was a main cast member on all nine seasons of the show.
“When I was in‘The Office,’ I spent several years really mostly unhappy because it wasn’t enough,” Wilson admitted. “I’m realizing now, like, I’m on a hit show, Emmy nominated every year, making lots of money, working with Steve Carell and Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski and these amazing writers and incredible directors like Paul Feig. I’m on one of the great TV shows. People love it. I wasn’t enjoying it. I was thinking about, ‘Why am I not a movie star? Why am I not the next Jack Black or the next Will Ferrell? How come I can’t have a movie career? Why don’t I have this development deal?'”
Wilson continued, “When I was on ‘The Office,‘ I was clutching and grasping at, okay, I was making hundreds of thousands. I wanted millions, and I was a TV star, but I wanted to be a movie star. It was never enough. Humans have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, and ‘never enough’ has helped us as a species.”
“The Office” aired for nine seasons and 201 episodes between 2005 and 2013. Wilson said on “The Drew Barrymore Show” earlier this year that he wishes “The Office” could’ve aired through the COVID pandemic as he has great ideas for how the sitcom could’ve mirrored real-world events.
“It would’ve been so much fun to film ‘The Office’ during the pandemic,” Wilson said. “If we had pandemic episodes, that would’ve been amazing. ‘The Office’ writers were so great — they would’ve been able to spin that in some beautiful ways.”
Wilson’s own idea for a pandemic episode of “The Office” features Dwight recruiting the staff of Dundler Mifflin to return to work after the pandemic.
“I think it would be: [Dwight] gets the call from corporate to get everyone back in the office and everyone is resistant,” Wilson said. “So, one at a time, Dwight has to kidnap every ‘Office’ cast member and bring them into Dunder Mifflin in some kind of obscure and somewhat inappropriate way.”
Watch Wilson’s latest interview appearance on Maher’s “Club Random” podcast in the video below.
