Steve Carell shares why he loved playing Michael Scott on ‘The Office’

The Office is regarded as one of the greatest comedies in television history, but it wouldn’t be nearly as beloved today without Steve Carell.

Carell, who played the deeply misguided albeit genuinely well-meaning boss Michael Scott, was the heart of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch. Had anyone else been cast in the role, the American version of the show might not have made it past Season 1 — let alone become the massive cultural phenomenon it is today.

In Welcome to Dunder Mifflin, an oral history of The Office by Brian Baumgartner (aka Kevin Malone) and Ben Silverman (an Office executive producer), the show’s cast, crew, and writers reflected on the series, its characters, and how it felt to say goodbye. Carell looked back on his time as Michael Scott, shared why he loved the complex character, and recalled bidding farewell to the World’s Best Boss.

An early sense of greatness

Though many people — including Paul Rudd and the majority of the cast — had their doubts about The Office early on, Rainn Wilson said Carell always knew the show was something special.

“After shooting the pilot, John, Jenna, Steve, and I went out for a sandwich, down the road in Culver City from that crappy little studio we were at, to this crappy little sandwich shop,” Wilson recalled. “Steve was like, ‘I think this thing could be really special and I’m betting that these are the roles that will define us for the rest of our lives. No matter what we do for the rest of our lives, this is what we’ll be known for.'”

He was right.

Finding depth in Michael Scott

Carell was able to make a character as problematic and offensive as Michael Scott beloved, because he had a deep understanding of Michael’s heart and true intentions.

When chatting about one of the show’s most controversial episodes, “Diversity Day,” which shows Michael hijacking a professional diversity training in the office, Carell and Baumgartner stressed that despite Michael’s tone-deaf and cringeworthy moments, he’s always trying to be good.

“It’s why I bristle a little when people try to compartmentalize Michael as a racist. He’s a person with an enormously good, kind heart who lacked a great deal of information about the world around him. He was as asleep in a woke world as you could be,” Carell said, laughing. “[Michael’s] trying his best! There’s a difference between being intolerant and being ignorant. Sometimes intolerance and ignorance go hand in hand, for sure. But I think he was a very earnest and decent human being. He just didn’t… get it all the time, you know?”

When asked if he always looks for the good in the characters he plays, Carell essentially said yes.

“I think you have to, because otherwise you’re just demonizing or judging them. And if you’re doing that, you’ll play it differently,” he explained. “You don’t want to editorialize about them.”

He went on to say that while Michael made mistake after mistake, at his core, he loved people and wanted to make everyone happy.

“[Michael] put his foot in his mouth all the time, saying inappropriate things, but I don’t think he ever valued one type of person over any other,” Carell said. “And in that way, I think he was a very pure character. He’s very dumb in terms of political correctness and being appropriate in public. But at the same time, I just don’t think there was hardness in his heart towards anyone.”

Credit: Paul Drinkwater / NBCU Photo Bank

It’s all about intention

Showrunner Greg Daniels and writer Mike Schur, who also played Dwight’s cousin Mose Schrute on the show, agreed with Carell’s thoughts on Michael. They, too, cited the character’s intentions as one of his most redeeming qualities.

“It’s always about intention,” Daniels said. “If Michael has a purity of intention, he can do the worst things in the world for comedy. But as an audience, you sense that he didn’t do it in order to be cruel or to be a jerk. He’s trying, and he just has poor social skills.”

“The idea of shading and nuancing and layering the wacky boss was revolutionary. When Ricky [Gervais] and Stephen [Merchant] did it, it was revolutionary. And I think the American version did it even better,” Schur mused. “We got to invest the time in just getting into the psychology of Michael Scott. I remember Greg saying to the writers in that speech, ‘We can do what we did last time and get canceled [referring to the canceled UK version, which had a less lovable Michael Scott character], or we can change it and we can run for 10 years.'”

The oral history also notes that certain episodes, such as Season 2’s “Take Your Daughter to Work Day” — which shows Michael reminiscing on a sad moment in his childhood — give viewers insightful glimpses into his psychology and hint at the ways his upbringing shaped the adult we meet in the pilot.

“I think Michael’s a decent dude with a lot of heart, but based on his childhood and the things he lacked growing up, things he was deprived of, he was so hungry for acceptance,” Carell said. “I don’t think he had the strongest templates in the world to go by, but I think he also learned and evolved and became a better person along the way. He became more aware once he was able to start stepping outside of himself and his own little eccentricities so he could see a little bit more of the world around him.”

Saying goodbye to Michael Scott

Carell was genuinely invested in Michael’s character growth throughout the series and wanted the character to have a meaningful, noticeable arc. 

“Michael Scott, at his core, wants to be loved,” Carell explained.

As a person, a boss, and a friend, Michael certainly evolved from the start of Season 1 to the end of Season 7. But it wasn’t until he found his soulmate, Holly, that things really clicked with the character development.

“I think Michael was just a bit myopic and became more aware once he was able to start stepping outside of himself and his own little eccentricities. He could see a little bit more about the world around him,” Carell said.

Credit: Justin Lubin / NBCU Photo Bank

Six months before he left the show, Carell talked to Daniels about how he wanted Michael’s story to end.

“The idea I pitched was, obviously, he’s going to move on and he and Holly would be together. We had talked about that before. But on his last day, I thought there should be a party being planned, but Michael should basically trick people into thinking he was leaving the next day [and then, in reality, leave before the party]. I thought that would be the most elegant representation of his growth as a human being,” Carell explained. “Michael lives to be celebrated throughout the whole series. That’s all he wants. He wants to be the center of attention, and he wants pats on the back. He wants people to think he’s funny and charming and all of those things. But the fact that he’d walk away from his big tribute, his big send-off, and be able to, in a very personal way, say goodbye to each character, that to me felt like it would resonate.”

Carell also said that he felt that Michael’s storyline ended as it should have when he left the series in 2011, but saying goodbye still tore him and his colleagues to shreds.

“It was emotional torture,” he said. “Imagine saying goodbye for a week. It wasn’t ‘See you later’ and you wave and you’re out. It was just fraught with emotion and joy and sadness and nostalgia. But it was also really beautiful because it did allow me to kind of have a finality with everybody.”

Though some fans of the series surely wish Carell had never left and that the show could have gone on forever, Michele Dempsey, a co-chair of The Office Convention (a fan convention that launched in 2007 and ran for more than a decade) and The Office wrap party, shared some Carell words of wisdom with Baumgartner.

“I heard Steve Carell say to a little group of people at the wrap party, ‘Don’t be sad it’s over, be happy it happened,'” she said.