Obligatory Pun Using The Word "Rainn"

Listener Kevin Murphy tipped me off to this interview that Rainn Wilson did with The Onion AV Club to pimp "The Rocker." He ends up spending MUCH more time talking about The Office, though.

AV CLUB: Was it difficult to not be influenced by the actor who played the equivalent to your role?

Rainn Wilson: I get asked that question a lot, no offense, but the situation was—the guy playing Gareth is very distinct. He looks like a whippet, he's 97 pounds and has very intense eyes and demeanor, and I knew I'd never be able to copy him. We have totally different energies and are very different as actors. He's just absolutely brilliant for what he did. I knew for the American show, what we were going for was Seinfeld-like success. People who compare the English and American Offices—there's so much ignorance in that comparison, because the English Office made 13 episodes. We make that many episodes in three months. We've made 89 episodes at this point. Their show is more like a miniseries, and our show is like an American TV show, because the demands of the market are so different.

It's like comparing a book and a movie. Gone With The Wind the movie and Gone With The Wind the book, it's difficult to compare them, because they're different forms. So I knew that ours needed to sustain, but I also knew that the Dwight needed to play a similar role, and I knew that [Steve Carell's] Michael Scott needed an acolyte and a foil, and I knew that Jim [Halpert, John Krasinski's character] needed someone to butt heads against. I knew that the office needed someone who was a real stickler for rules, and at the same time was a nerd and had weird, oddly obsessive-compulsive ideas about the military and gaming and fantasy worlds, but also needed to be a real in to the hierarchies of office life. I also didn't want him to be—one thing I really appreciated about the character of Gareth was that he wasn't a loser. The guy had a lot of friends, he could go to bars, he could get girls. He wasn't like the office nerd that we've seen so many times before, so I knew that—this is a very long-winded answer—I knew there were certain needs that needed to be fulfilled. I wanted to find my own way of doing that. I wanted to find my own bad haircut, my own way of kissing the boss' ass, my own way of butting heads with Jim, and so I tried to forget Gareth as much as I could.


Check out the full article HERE.