If Steve Carell had listened to Paul Rudd's advice, Dunder Mifflin would have looked vastly different. Despite Michael Scott becoming one of Steve's most iconic roles, he revealed that his 40-Year-Old Virgin costar wasn't initially in favor of him auditioning for the series in the early 2000s. The reason? Steve said Paul felt that the show, an American adaptation of the U.K. series starring Ricky Gervais, would be hard to live up to its predecessor.
"It's funny that you guys all heard, 'Oh they're doing an American version,' and everyone had the same reaction," Steve told Amy Poehler on the March 24 episode of her Good Hang podcast. "Rudd pulled me aside and was like, 'Don't do it, man. Don't audition.' He was like, 'There is no way.'"
Amy, 54, admitted she could understand where Paul, 56, was coming from as she noted, "I'm sure everyone was like, 'Don't even touch this.'" With a laugh, Steve, 63, added, "With a 10-foot pole!"
But the Crazy, Stupid, Love alum clearly did not listen to his friend's advice and went on to star as the regional manager of Dunder Mifflin paper company for seven seasons. During his run on the show, which also starred John Krasinski, Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak, Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer, Angela Kinsey, and Ed Helms, Steve picked up dozens of Emmy nominations, including six for Outstanding Lead Actor. And surprisingly, he did all that without having a frame of reference from the original series. In fact, Steve revealed that he never watched the British show before taking on the role.
"I watched about a minute, and [Ricky] was so good and so specific and so funny," he explained. "I thought if I watch a second more, I'm just going to go on an audition with that. I won't be able to even imagine it [in] a different way."
The Rooster star also joked about the American show's initial success—or lack thereof. "Our pilot was the lowest-testing pilot in the history of NBC," he said. "People really hated it. They actively hated this show. And I don't quite know how it got legs after that."
Following his departure from the series in 2011, The Office aired for two more seasons before concluding in 2013. Ultimately, Steve felt "the timing was right" for his decision to leave the comedy. "It was time for other characters to step to the forefront and other storylines to be pursued," he said on the Office Ladies podcast in March 2023. "There was just a sense of joy for me that we had experienced all of this and we were getting—I was getting a chance to take a lap with everybody."
"The way those last two episodes were structured," he said of the episodes in which Michael said goodbye to the office, "it felt very rich to me to simultaneously be saying goodbye as Michael and us as friends in this moment of work together. It was a lot; it was a very emotional thing."
