Fancast: Inside TV

What did you do over writers strike?
I finished decorating my house -- almost. Just caught up with friends and relatives and just, you know, went to a lunch went friends, and went on the picket line a few times, of course. So I did that. I just had a chance to catch up on my life. I think this is the first time I’ve ever filed my income tax this early.

When did you guys go back to work?
We start back on the 6th of March. I already have the first script I’m going to be shooting, which is the one that we left off on when the strike was announced. So we’re back on the sticks.

You won a SAG Award…
And the Writer’s Guild Awards.

Where do you keep the hardware?
In my office. They are standing with each other. I call them the twins -- or Romulus and Remus. So they are standing there.

Did the cast have any get-togethers during the strike?
I think some of them played poker. A few of us were out of town. After the Scranton celebration last fall, Phyllis lost her father so she after we left Scranton she went to St. Louis and has been there for an extended stay. She was helping her mother. We’ve been on the phone with her. There have also been a couple of premieres at which we’ve seen each other. Jenna was in Walk Hard, The Dewey Cox Story, so we got together there and the parties for that. And then, of course, the big parties, you know, the awards, everybody was all done up in spite of the fact that we were standing in an inch of water [it was raining], but, you know, it was worth it.

Back in the beginning, did you think it would hit?
As our show began to pick up momentum people were genuinely surprised. But I wasn’t really that shocked. The first day we sat down and met for the table read for the first script, you could feel something special t in the room. It wasn’t anything that I had ever experienced before. But it was something tangible, something that you could feel. It made me say to myself, “This is going to work.” I remember telling Greg Daniels the show was going to be a hit show. He said, “I hope so.” And I was like, “No, it’s going to be a hit.” It’s kind of like getting struck by lightening. It had never happened to me before, but as I was sitting there at the table I thought, hmmm, so this is what it feels like when lightening strikes.

What was going on when you auditioned for the show?
I put on a shirt and tie and had a blazer and went to the audition for [casting director] Allison Jones. She said great and said there’d be a call back. But she told me not to dress as nicely for that. Dress a little rumpled, she said. She wanted me to look as if I’d been in the office for a few hours and was kind of disgruntled.

So the day of the call back I had another audition. Two the same day – one in Hollywood and The Office in Culver City. First I went to Culver City, and there were about 50 people ahead of me. I figured that I had time to run to the other audition in Hollywood and then come back. I got to the other audition, did that, and then on the way back hit every school bus, senior citizen, bad driver, accident, train and red light – anything and everything you can think of that would slow me down. I was like oh my gosh, I’m going to be late.

Once I got there, I went to the men’s room to clean up and when I came out Allison Jones came up to me and said, “Leslie thank you so much. You’ve been so patient waiting all this time.” I didn’t mention the other audition. She said, “You look great, too.” Sure. By then, after having been frustrated by LA traffic, I looked like Stanley. Actually, I was Stanley.

I read with Phyllis, who was working for Allison then. And something happened. I had memorized my sides, but Phyllis and I started going abck and forth and after we got to the end we kept going, making it up. The producers and Greg Daniels started whispering back and forth and when I went outside Allison said excellent, and I went okay. You know, you hear that excellent thing and you never hear from people again. A few weeks later, though, I got a call and the agent said, you got it.

That was for the pilot?
Well, yeah. You know what happens with pilots. You shoot them and they go to the land of pilot world and you never hear from them again. So we do the pilot. The morning we were shooting, Kevin Riley, who was with NBC at the time, and everybody was there, and the suits were all sitting around in chairs and, you know, all right, okay. We sat down and we started to read the script. At that moment I was like, I see it. I feel it. And I think even the suits at NBC were impressed by the collection of people we have here.

You studied psychology in college and then got your masters in Human Services. I take it you didn’t intend to act?
No, I originally started out working intake in psychiatric unit in Chicago. I worked with three psychiatric hospitals as a mental health therapist. Booth Memorial, Chicago Lakeshore and Ridgeway. And I was working with adult and adolescent in patients on the psychiatric unit. And then I taught school for a little bit, and then

Then what?
I applied for a job at the City of Chicago’s Office of Cable Communications. I worked there for about a year-and-a-half and then this position became available in the Health Department. By then, AIDS was in full swing, and I ended up working in the Office of AIDS Prevention evaluating programs. There were 30 agencies – about 30 agencies that got funds from the Federal Government to provide ancillary services, meal delivery, AIDS education, etc., and they needed someone to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs so that they would be able to get more funding through the Federal Government. So because of my background in, you know, health and program evaluation and what have you, I got the position, and I was there for a while.

And acting?
Acting was what I would do to deal with the fact that I was working in the AIDS/HIV arena. You can’t work in that arena and not have some sort of an outlet.

So you started to act for your own mental health?
I did.

What was the catalyst for you moving to L.A.?
It just felt right. I had been to L.A. once before, looked around and taken an acting course at this place called TVI. I signed up for it like a year before and they would bring in casting directors and agents where you meet and you had to do your monologues in front of them and if they liked it then they would want to represent you. So I happened to meet an agent and he was on me to move out here. When I made the move, I didn’t even tell him I was coming. I got here, got settled in my apartment and then I called him one day and I said, “You probably don’t remember me, but”-- He said, “Leslie I know who you are. I remember you. When are you moving?” I said “I’m actually here.” He saw me the next day and I got the first part he sent me out on.

What are your favorite Office episodes thus far?
Basketball, of course. Greg let us act silly. Then the episode on the beach – when John, Rainn, and I were in the sumo suits. That’s a classic. We were so hot in those suits. You couldn’t really sit up because you couldn’t breath. So they had to lay us on the picnic tables. There is a picture of us laying there with these big round stomachs and we are laying there and they are giving us water and toweling us off. And we have these things on our heads that look like big old black donuts. It was very funny.

Since this interview will be on Fancast, an online entertainment destination, I am curious if you are on the Internet much?
A lot. So is Stanley. Our computers on our desks are connected to the Internet. So we have five computers on the set that are just like the ones in your office or at home. So we can sit there at our desks and surf the net and check our email and do all the stuff that you would do at your own office. We have been known to correspond with one another or our families or friends while we’re sitting and filming. I found my house on the Internet while I was sitting at work. Stanley was looking for Leslie’s house and Stanley found Leslie a house in L.A from Scranton.

Stanley doesn’t have his own blog, does he?
No, Stanley doesn’t blog. I have had several people tell me that he needs to start blogging. I thought about it. I’ve asked myself, would Stanley do something like that? And I’m like, no, Stanley wouldn’t do that. Once he left the office he wouldn’t turn on his computer. He’d say, “I’m not doing that. That’s too much like work. I’m going to go and sit down and” -- This is the thing: After he goes home, Stanley likes to listen to his music and have him a little glass of wine. Michael called him one time when he was at home, and Stanley was just flabbergasted, like what are you doing calling me at home? This is my sanctuary.

Will there be a Stanley bobble head soon?
Actually, a couple of weeks after we went on strike, I got an email from NBC with the prototype of my bauble head. They wanted me to add some comments about what needed to be done with it, and I need to tell them to make the adjustment on the eyes, because you know, as Steve says, Stanley has baleful eyes. And the eyes weren’t looking baleful enough, you know. They were looking more sad than disgusted. And the clothes needed to be done a little bit, because you know, Stanley does dress. They had him looking kind of homeless. So I told them to bump these clothes up a little notch.

What about bobble heads for the others?

I talked to people, and they didn’t mention that they had gotten an email, so I have no idea.*

*Ed note: Per NBC, a full cast of Office bobble-heads is expected in the fall.