Rainn Wilson Says The Office Became ‘Chaotic’ After Steve Carell Left

The Office almost had a major problem.

On the June 19 episode of Good Guys Podcast with Josh Peck and Ben Soffer, Rainn Wilson, who played Dwight Schrute on the beloved comedy series, opened up about his time on The Office and how the cast and crew found the tone over time.

Wilson, 59, said he felt the series, which premiered in 2005, “fell into gear” midway through season 2. “If you watch season 1, it’s very drab. It’s very dark. It’s darkly lit. People don’t have any makeup on. There’s nothing like American television about it whatsoever,” he said of the show, which was based on a previous British version. He even remembered that during the first season, before they filmed the script, they would have the cast improvise being in the office and doing their jobs for a half-hour so they could “sink” into the reality of the show’s “documentary” style.

In season 2, Wilson said, “Steve [Carell] does his hair a little better. We’re wearing a little nicer suits. [The] set gets a little warmer in the way that it’s lit. It’s shot just a little bit friendlier. And it did help a lot.”

“The show changed and just became a little bit warmer and a little more human,” he explained. A big part, he said, was revealing that Carell’s Michael Scott had “a big heart.” Wilson said, “He’s a doofus, and he says he always says the wrong thing, but, you know, he’s a lovable guy.”

But since Carell, 62, was such a central piece of the show, when he decided to leave during season 7 (his last episode was “Goodbye, Michael,” which aired in April 2011), Wilson said things got tough. 

“When Steve left, then it was a little bit chaotic of trying to figure out the tone of the show and who’s the lead and how are we telling these stories without the comic engine of the show, which is Michael Scott, and without one of the greatest comic actors in American history at the center of our show,” Wilson said. “So that was also a struggle.” 

The podcast hosts asked if it was a “gut punch” to learn Carell was leaving. “We knew it was coming for a long time,” Wilson said, because Carell was “such a big movie star.” The actor starred in The 40-Year-Old Virgin just months after The Office premiered and then in movies like Little Miss Sunshine, Dan in Real Life, Get Smart, Date Night and Crazy Stupid Love. 

“Of course, he’s gonna leave The Office when he can. So we were prepared for it, but that was definitely a struggle to find the tone of the show without Steve,” Wilson said. The series ultimately ran for two more seasons without Carell — helped in part by a series of guest stars — before ending in 2013 with season 9.

Back in 2023, Wilson shared on a podcast that he “spent several years really mostly unhappy” on The Office. “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?’ ” he remembered.

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“When I was on The Office … I was making hundreds of thousands,” he said. “I wanted millions. 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.”