[Editor’s note: This piece contains spoilers for The Paper.]
The Paper opens at Dunder Mifflin, but those familiar desks are now occupied by the employees of One And Done Laser (and they’ve got “less drama, that’s for sure,” per Robert R. Schaffer’s Bob Vance). Instead of taking place in Scranton, this Office spin-off finds the same documentary crew in Toledo, Ohio, to follow volunteers at a local newspaper (including Office accountant Oscar Martinez, played by Oscar Nuñez). While there are connections between them, Greg Daniels (who co-created the series with Michael Koman) tells The A.V. Club thata main goal was to give The Paperits own identity, despite a similar visual style and structure.
Daniels, whose enduring TV legacy includes hits like The Simpsons, King Of The Hill, and Parks And Recreation, has been plotting his return to mockumentaries for a few years now. Peacock’s series, which dropped all 10 season-one episodes on September 4, feels familiar but successfully charts its own path. In the show, Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson) begins his job as the editor-in-chief determined to return the Toledo Truth Teller to its glory days, even if the staff around him isn’t prepared for that.
The A.V. Club spoke to Daniels about his desire to revisit this format, how he navigates writing workplace romances, his career evolution, and all the Lost nods in The Paper‘s fifth episode.
The A.V. Club: In the 20 years since NBC’s The Office launched, it feels like both mockumentaries and cringe comedy have become more mainstream on TV for American audiences. Did this evolution inform your approach as you began formulating The Paper?
Greg Daniels: I started thinking about The Paper in 2017 because The Office was so big. It was the number one show on Netflix for like four years or something. There was a lot of pressure from the company to come up with something. I needed to reserve the topic area and sketch out the treatment of things first. At the time, I was also committed to running Prime Video’s Upload. Still, I pitched the notion of this newspaper show to Michael Koman, for whom I have the utmost respect. He’s a hilarious writer and a person of great kindness and integrity. I knew it would be fun to work with him. We had this desire to bring mockumentary back to its rigorous roots, with an insistence that the cameramen are in the room, that it’s not just a stylistic thing where people are looking into the camera and doing talking heads as a narration. You have to really believe that the documentary crew is there with them, think about what the characters are doing off camera, and why they’re behaving the way they are. We were happy about this newspaper idea because it was a legitimate topic. We could imagine documentarians being excited about the notion of a guy like Ned Sampson, who’s going to try and paddle against the stream and restore this paper. It seemed like a good subject without even any comedy or romance in it yet.
Once we figured out this theme, we were committed to inventing new characters. Obviously, Oscar is a piece of the connective tissue. I went to Oscar Nuñez to ask him if he’s about to take a job that would prevent him from joining us. But the rest of them are brand new, and we tried hard not to repeat any of the 16 or so series regulars from The Office. We also knew it wasn’t like a cringe comedy, so that pressure was off. So much of The Office is about changing the standards for what’s appropriate in the workplace. Michael Scott is constantly putting his foot in it because that’s the theme of that show. An aspect of any mockumentary is that it’s great at uncovering the difference between how people want to be perceived and how they’re actually perceived. That’s still a factor in The Paper, of course, so there are natural opportunities for embarrassment and awkwardness. I guess it’s adjacent to cringe comedy, but we never thought of it like “Oh, what do we do to make people uncomfortable?” We knew we didn’t want to tell Michael Scott-like jokes.
AVC: Once you confirmed this newspaper idea, were you tempted to do the show as its own separate thing entirely?
GD: There are a lot of reasons why I didn’t want to tie it back to The Office initially. I never wanted to open up the story of these former characters. I thought we closed it so well, and even the cast wasn’t really interested in doing it. I’m very, very bonded to those people because of the wonderful experience we went through, and I didn’t want to let them down or do anything that would reflect poorly on the show. But then I wanted to retain the rigorous mockumentary aesthetic of The Office for The Paper, as I said, so either way it was going to come out looking similar. So the idea that it’s the same documentary crew became an excuse to do a new show while tipping the hat to the original. We just felt like, why not acknowledge that we want to use that style?
AVC: What are some takeaways or dos and don’ts from your previous experiences that you kept in mind while crafting these specific characters and finding the right actors to play them?
GD: The casting is huge. To me, it’s 80 percent of what makes a show like this work. We spent a lot of time on it. There’s a lot of secrecy involved because I was so anxious about not messing up the original’s legacy. I had all these protections in my deal where if I didn’t think it was turning out well, I could kill it. Our casting director, Leslie Woo, kept looking and looking. We did secret sides that had nothing to do with what was in the script, just pure new scenes. Once we started to find some really great people, that’s when I knew we could make this happen. It started with Domhnall Gleeson. He personified everything we wanted Ned to be, and he became the tentpole. We then started to do chemistry reads with him and other actors to match them up. We did that with Melvin Gregg and Ramona Young for Detrick and Nicole. Sabrina Impacciatore matched every thought we had for Esmerelda, both on- and off-camera. When our Zoom call started and she started asking us questions and teasing us about the sides, it felt like Esmeralda Grand was in the room with us. Once we got our cast together, our confidence just grew because they weren’t just Xeroxes. They’re interesting and watchable all on their own, which was my big takeaway. I liked the idea of having all of these people from around the globe and putting them in a made-up building in Toledo because they make you believe they know each other and work together.
AVC: On The Office, you guys sometimes shaped and re-shaped characters based on the actors’ personalities. Was it a similar process here?
GD: That worked out so well in The Office that I would consider it just good producing behavior to incorporate suggestions from the cast and be open to changing stuff. Hopefully you’ve done enough thinking about each episode and each character to know where they are in their story even before filming. Writers are imaginative people and come up with the story, but when you sit down and start shooting, you see that a lot of actors are also very imaginative people. They understand their own characters when you tell them what the game is and what the point of the story is. So why would you tell them they’re not allowed to use their brains if they’re being creative? I don’t know if that’s only a mockumentary thing, either. We used to try to do that in recording sessions on King Of The Hill. If the cast had additional funny things to say, it’s not too hard to record the sound.
AVC: Do you have any jokes or running gags you’re glad you were able to fit into season one? A personal favorite is the fake meeting cold open, followed by Ned loudly saying “I love you” to Marv later in the episode.
GD: Oh, we shot so much more than what you see on the screen. One of the wonderful benefits of a mockumentary format is that it’s pretty easy to light, so you get lots of time for the cast to try things and do some improv. There’s a lot of good stuff we couldn’t even use in the final cut. But there’s some stuff I love, like whenever Mare is judgmental of Ned. I really like the way she looks at him and the camera when he runs or can’t change a tire, and she has a look that says, “Oh, this is tough to watch.” I also love how the Esmeralda and Ken relationship is because of what Sabrina and Tim Key bring to their joint talking heads. They’re just talking over each other, and they both kill me with their comic timing.
AVC: Can you tell me how the Lost references in episode five originated, including that Josh Holloway cameo?
GD: When The Office was kind of starting to catch on, as we were still filming, the same thing was happening with Lost. I would run into Damon Lindelof all the time at various events, and we share a lot of mutual respect. There was also a great Emmys opening in 2006 where Conan O’Brien goes down the hatch in Lost and comes out of the Dunder Mifflin ceiling. So there’s always been a certain amount of affection between the two shows in my mind. When we were thinking of who would be a super attractive man that Esmeralda would believe would be interested in her, but he would also be a blind spot for her, Josh Holloway’s name came up. He was super cool about it and just signed on to do it. We also liked the notion that once she finds out the truth, Esmerelda watches clips of Sawyer getting shocked in the cages and gets a bit of her pride back.
AVC: The Paper has a couple of will-they/won’t-they relationships in the vein of Jim and Pam or Ben and Leslie. What’s your trick to make this kind of romance land in a workplace environment?
GD: I love writing realistic, relatable stuff. I also like to involve the cast and spend a lot of time with them, talking about the psychology of it. There are an awful lot of conversations we have. I spoke to Chelsea Frei a lot about what kind of person Mare is, what she wants in her life right now, and why she would find Ned compelling. She was in the army and appreciates good leadership. She wants to be inspired, and Ned comes in with an audacious goal that makes her light up. So what does that translate to? Is it professional, or can it maybe be more than that? On his side, we spoke about what his hangups are and why he does or doesn’t want to pursue something with Mare. Working out all this psychology before going into filming is just the tip of the iceberg. The whole cast is also smart about it. Everyone’s an emotional human being. That’s why they’re actors, I suppose. I appreciated their ability to articulate their feelings and examine what’s going on in a scene. We had so much fun with it, especially in the finale with Ned and Mare just debating what they’re feeling and thinking in that moment [of the kiss]. Hopefully, when you watch all of this stuff, you see these behavioral moments that are so truthful that you forget you’re watching a TV show. At least that’s how it is for me.
Greg Daniels (Photo: Charley Gallay/Getty Images)
AVC: With season two on its way, have you considered bringing any more The Office cast members in? Maybe one of his former co-workers will pay Oscar a visit in his new digs.
GD: I felt like, for season one, the show needed to stand on its own feet. It would be lame to call old friends and go, “Help us, help us.” I don’t think we should jump from guest appearance to guest appearance. That would be a weak way to do something new, even though the audience might enjoy it. I’m certainly excited to possibly do a reunion one day with the former cast, but at the moment, I don’t think a lot of them want to revisit it either. It was such a wonderful experience, and I think people are nervous in a “you can’t go home again” kind of way.
AVC: You started your TV career with Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. And now, you’re doing various streaming shows, including the King Of The Hill revival on Hulu. What was it like to jump into this new era and manage challenges like the engagement numbers? Of course, the Toledo Truth Teller‘s volunteers are also dealing with something similar.
GD: It’s true that you write what you can relate to. The idea of Ned trying to restore the glory of a newspaper that was great earlier, and trying to do a spin-off of a show that everybody loved, there’s a certain parallel there that I could relate to. [Laughs] I primarily consider myself a writer, and as a writer, you’re often put in a box. I remember trying to transition from sketch comedy to half-hour shows after I left Saturday Night Live and how difficult that was. People were saying, “No, no, no, you’re a sketch writer.” And I remember thinking back then that I’m only 24; I don’t have to be just one thing. I loved shows like Seinfeld, Roseanne, and The Larry Sanders Show, so getting a job on The Simpsons was awesome professional training. I love James L. Brooks. The quality of joke writing was very high on that show. When I was able to do King Of The Hill, that was my first time being a showrunner. That was very exciting. I could put into practice the aesthetic stuff I used to think I would do a bit differently or whatever when I was on The Simpsons. Getting to work with Mike Judge was huge, too. He’s so creative and such a good person.
After that, I remember thinking, “Okay, I’ve done an awful lot of cartoons now.” I love working with actors and the nuances they’re able to bring to a project. I felt it’s harder to get that in cartoons. When we would draw the animatics, which is when there’s an artist on our staff doing it, we’d have to ship it to another country, and by the time the final results came back, a lot of the acting had been ironed out of it, and we couldn’t change stuff. It was very frustrating. So it was great to then jump to The Office and Parks And Recreation, doing 12 years or so of mockumentary stuff where I could collaborate with the actors. I was doing a lot of directing then and wanted to up my game with that, possibly do something with visual effects and not just handheld. That’s when I had the idea for Upload. It was around the time when everybody wanted something like Game Of Thrones. Amazon was into doing something with world-building. That’s what they talked about a lot, and there was a big budget. You don’t often get an opportunity to play with something like that. So I’m glad I got to live out my sci-fi phase, too, instead of doing just one thing. So now I’m happy to return to mockumentaries after all that.
