Count Rainn Wilson in for The Office revival/reboot/reunion. For the past few years, fans of the NBC comedy series have been clamoring for some sort of reunion that would bring the employees of Dunder Mifflin together again, largely thanks to the show’s enormous success on Netflix. Indeed, for years now The Office has consistently been one of the most-viewed shows on Netflix, as fans binge the entire series and then head back to the beginning to start their binge over again. Ironically, the show wasn’t the massive ratings hit it once was during its last few seasons, and is arguably more popular now than it ever was.
The cast has been somewhat split on the idea of revisiting The Office. Steve Carell has gone on record as saying he’s not interested in returning to the character of Michael Scott, but other folks like John Krasinski and Anglea Kinsey have voiced their support for revisiting their characters. And now you can add Rainn Wilson to the “pro reunion” column, as the actor recently told Collider’s Christina Radish – during an interview for his work on the Amazon series Utopia – that he’d love to revisit the show in some form:
“I’d love to revisit The Office. I’ve told [creator and showrunner] Greg Daniels that I would love to do something. They’re gearing up for putting it on Peacock. Maybe someday we’ll do something. It’s funny, I hear things like, ‘We can’t do anything because we ended this show perfectly, and we don’t wanna do anything else.’ But then, someone will send some idea that’s just preposterous and I don’t know what to think. Hopefully, one day. The fans would really love it. That’s the thing that counts the most. The fans would really love to see those characters again and have an experience with them.”
Daniels himself said earlier this year he “can’t rule it out” when asked about returning to The Office, although he’s plenty busy right now working on the second season of his own Amazon series Upload.
But Wilson makes a good point about The Office coming to Peacock. The series will leave Netflix later this year and will exclusively stream on Peacock starting in January, so NBCUniversal would no doubt love to have extra incentive to get people to check out their streaming service – like a The Office reunion special. But filming said special in time for a January launch may be impossible due to COVID-19 restrictions, and Peacock has already said they’ll have extra “bonus footage” for The Office available in January, so perhaps the Office reunion could happen sometime later next year.
In the meantime, the show continues to endure, and when asked if he has a favorite Dwight moment from the series, Wilson didn’t hesitate:
“I really love the moment in the episode called “Money,” where he’s heartbroken and he’s taken Jim and Pam to his bed and breakfast. There’s a moment when he’s really emotional and Jim gives him some words of kindness and empathy, and then he doesn’t notice it but Jim has left. He reaches out and Jim’s not there and he looks around. To me, that moment perfectly encapsulated what we did on The Office. It’s a Chekhovian, priceless little human misconnection that was really special.”
He's not wrong. Part of the reason The Office endures so well is how human the characters are, no matter how goofy or cartoonish they sometimes can be. And boy it sure would be nice to see what they’re all up to now.
Look for our full interview with Wilson on Collider soon. For more on The Office, check out our ranking of the show’s Top 50 episodes.
