Interview: Creators Greg Daniels and Michael Koman on ‘The Paper’

The Paper creators Greg Daniels and Michael Koman stopped the presses for a Zoom chat about their newsroom mockumentary. The duo got into details, sharing a scrapped part of the pilot involving a loose canary that was hilariously identical to an unexpected Australian Office promo. Daniels and Koman addressed the Dunder Mifflin-sized elephant in the room, explaining why they chose to instantly subvert fan expectations by turning a beloved legacy location into a laser hair removal clinic. From navigating the early days of their creative partnership to teasing the highly anticipated second season, the conversation is full of insight on what went into The Paper.

Ayla Ruby: Okay, cool. So before I ask the questions spun off from David, I’d love to talk about your creative partnership and how that came about for you guys and how did that evolve into The Paper?

Greg Daniels: Geez. Well, I think I first heard about Michael because I’m friends with Conan and he worked on Conan for years. I can’t quite remember what Conan was saying about whether it was that this was a person he liked to give noogies to or…

Michael Koman: You might have misunderstood him.

Greg Daniels: So I was very aware and then… I think actually it was the Eagleheart thing. He was just so excited about it when you guys were-

Michael Koman: Oh yeah.

Greg Daniels: … doing it. Yeah. And then Michael-

Michael Koman: That was one of the great nights of my life. We had made this very obscure show for Adult Swim with Chris Elliott and we had one big screening and Conan came to it and it was just one of the great highlights of watching him laugh at this idiotic show we had made.

Greg Daniels: And then he kind of married into The Office because… Except you were already married when Ellie was…

Michael Koman: No, I don’t think we were married when she was on The Office.

Greg Daniels: Okay. And-

Michael Koman: That’s what did it.

Greg Daniels: Yeah. And then we worked together on an animated project. But I remember when we were trying to brainstorm who could do this animated project that I was very into you at that time. So this might’ve been after Nathan-

Michael Koman: Yeah.

Greg Daniels: … because I love Nathan so much.

Michael Koman: I think it was even after How to.

Greg Daniels: Maybe, yeah.

Michael Koman: Yeah.

Greg Daniels: So somebody I always wanted to work with and who in working on an animated show, I realized how blazingly funny he was. And when I tried to tempt him into coming on this, and as he remind me before, when I pitch it to him, I didn’t mention that it was a spinoff at all. I just pitched the idea of doing a mockumentary about a guy trying to restore a newspaper and that appealed to him.

Michael Koman: It seems silly to say nice things about Greg. I really don’t have that… I have no regrets in my work life. I’ve been very lucky. But one thing I think early on-

Greg Daniels: This is a regret.

Michael Koman: I think-

Greg Daniels: This collaboration…

Michael Koman: This might be my only one. But at the time, I remember visiting the set of The Office when we were making a cold open for the first Emmys that Conan hosted. And I just remember feeling like, “Oh gosh, this is great. I wish I could be doing this.” And I was just shy, I think, about even bringing it up and I didn’t want to go down that road. I’m not really sure why I just didn’t at the time completely pursue it because it seemed like the most wonderful place and it was just a very friendly, creative atmosphere. Everybody was funny. So it was amazing to me that years later I would still get to actually work with Greg. It’s the luckiest thing in the world, honestly. So anyway, when we eventually talked about this-

Greg Daniels: We’re in the honeymoon phase, Ayla.

Michael Koman: I feel like we’ve actually gotten through to the point where I genuinely like spending time with the man. But when this came up, originally I thought was just like, “Oh, a documentary in the world of journalism as it is now and a small independent newspaper.” So that idea, just on its own, felt like a really attractive idea because it seemed very easy to picture.

Ayla Ruby: It’s such a cool concept and there’s so much comedy there. I’ve loved watching it. To get into the guy trying to save the paper, and David talked a little bit about, like this intro scene, right? Where Ned is locked in the archive room and trying to find a way to meet the characters and that that was challenging. He said there was a bird version and a glass room version. Can you talk about that? Can you talk about finding the moment to introduce Ned and everyone and bringing us into the world of The Paper?

Michael Koman: Yeah.

Greg Daniels: It’s always hard in a pilot. Right? It’s always hard to take a character who you intend to have many facets and be very three-dimensional, right? But you can’t necessarily introduce their traits all at once. So you have to pick a little pathway where you start with their main drive and then you see how weird they are or whatever, and you’re kind of balancing, you’re trying to lead the audience down this path of introduction without them losing interest or making a snap judgment that’s wrong or whatever. And we had a whole section where he comes in and a character has a canary and he’s trying to feed it because the character’s not around. And he opens the cage and it flies out and he’s jumping all over desks trying to catch the canary. Afterward-

Michael Koman: I think it was Nicole. Do you remember… Nicole Lee is the one who had a bird cage, yeah. And Ned, he was waiting for his initial interview, opened up the cage and let the bird out. So he doesn’t know anybody in the office and he’s released a bird, was the premise of the scene.

Greg Daniels: So then we shoot it and it’s very fun. And then we see an ad or someone forwards us an ad for a foreign version of The Office done in Australia.

Ayla Ruby: Really?

Greg Daniels: And in that, in the ad, a bird gets loose and people are chasing it through the office and we were like, “Dammit.” And-

Michael Koman: But it was crazy. To be making something connected to The Office this many years later. Somebody releases on the pilot episode a bird and then tries to get it back, and it’s a very large set piece in the episode. And to then open your web browser and watch that happening on the set of what looks like the original Office, where people are speaking in Australian accents and they’re chasing a bird. It was surreal.

Greg Daniels: Yeah. So what we did… It ended up being great because it provided us an excuse to get reshoot days and we didn’t do the scene that he’s talking about in the morgue until after the whole show was shot. So by that point it would’ve been episode 11 and we knew the character so much better and all the actors knew who they were so much more than would’ve been the case in the pilot.

Michael Koman: Yeah.

Greg Daniels: So that scene was written with the awareness of what the characters were going to become that made it much more effective and…

Michael Koman: It was a very strange piece of luck because the bird scene would’ve told us a lot about Ned and he would’ve met people a little bit. But to have a scene that… It just did so much more work for a first episode where we got to meet five characters instead of one, I think overall in the end it’s really fortunate.

Ayla Ruby: Yeah, I can’t imagine it without that. It’s just such a lovely way into all of them. I love it.

Michael Koman:  Well, a couple of times in a movie, a scene will stand out to me as just the greatest scene in the movie. I almost wonder if that scene made them want to make the whole movie and then I’ll find out that that was a reshoot, that something from the movie wasn’t there and they went back and put in this piece. I don’t know. I think sometimes it’s a really good policy, I think, especially with a pilot, if you can have that time to look at everything you have and then go back and add a piece.

Ayla Ruby: So to go a little bit back to, I guess, continue with the pilot. And talking with David, we talked about the opening. Like you have this version where you go to Vance Refrigeration and then he pointed out that the, I think, NBC airing just starts out in Toledo and I didn’t realize that because I watched it streaming. Can you guys talk about that or how do you work that creatively when you don’t have that runway into the background?

Greg Daniels: Well, I think that the point of that was because we were braced for a lot of comparison to The Office. The show was really a new show by the same documentary crew. So the part that is similar is in the sensibility and the aesthetic really more than the stories or the characters or the subject matter. But big entertainment company’s going to want to promote it as connected to the other show, right? So we felt the need to dispel the notion that there was going to be this kind of a spinoff where old Office characters were going to show up all the time. We wanted people to get over that real fast and then concentrate on this new thing. So we have this opening and you find out that the time has passed and it has this, I think, powerful poignancy to opening the door and finding a laser hair removal place instead of a paper company.

Michael Koman: As far as this…

Greg Daniels: … they didn’t need it because…

Michael Koman: Yeah. The biggest thing with the decisions for NBC was just that the time limit was very strict and you just had to make choices.

Ayla Ruby: Well, that makes sense. So new characters, I want to ask about Esmeralda because I love her, even though she’s kind of a saboteur, right? In a lot of ways. Can you talk about why bringing her into the world was necessary? How do you write the character? And I think David mentioned there was an interesting acting way that, I think, Sabrina had for the character. Can you talk about that?

Greg Daniels: Like an audition you mean?

Ayla Ruby: No. He said she had an interesting method of acting and I didn’t follow-

Michael Koman: I think what David is probably referring to is that she liked… When she’s talking to the camera, sometimes she likes to have somebody next to the camera as the documentarian talking to her. But that person has to be completely convincing. She got really impatient with Dave one time because he was reading lines and he was just looking at a piece of paper and saying them. And she found it impossible to act that way. But I feel like… Her acting style to me, what I really like about it, I mean I like everything about it. But she is really acting. The character can be very big and the character can do things that are extreme, but nothing she does is mechanical. She finds an emotional reason for everything and she always takes herself to that place.

So I feel whatever you’re watching, a lot of the times in documentary people tend to be… It favors very naturalistic nuanced performance. And sometimes you can do smaller performances in a documentary style than you might be able to do in, especially a multi-camera, sometimes even a single camera show. But I feel a little less common to see really big performances. And I feel like she has a way of doing things that are both big and emotionally true.

Greg Daniels: It’s also thematic, her role, because Ned is very optimistic and very convinced that the truth is a holy thing that you chase. And Esmeralda is much more… She’ll do what is expedient in the moment. The truth is great, but if something else is more entertaining or if she needs to pick a different tack for getting what she wants, that’s okay too. She has a different attitude towards it. So it’s a good foil. And the interesting thing is some of our writers… We have a writer, Amanda Rosenberg, and she was very much like, “This is my mom.” And what we were drilling down to for that is, also the fact she’s Italian, in a more maybe… I don’t want to get in trouble with the Italians, but in a more traditional macho type of culture. Sometimes the women are not as upfront because they don’t have the social power to be as upfront and Amanda referred to it as internalized misogyny.

So there’s an innocent explanation for her not being quite as upfront with the truth as Ned. And it’s because that’s a survival mechanism in a society where you’re not listened to as much. You have to be a little more devious. It’s a little bit of an old-fashioned thing. So the great thing about Sabrina is I think she understands that and finds all these different ways to protect the innocence of the character, even when she’s doing things that make Ned furious and make him feel undermined and outmaneuvered. I think you can see her coming from a place of having to try and defend herself from being replaced by this new guy. I don’t know. It makes us laugh.

Ayla Ruby: It’s fun to watch.

Greg Daniels: Yeah.

Ayla Ruby: So I know we’re getting close on time, but I wanted to know what was the most fun, I guess, you had with the season or just bringing this to life?

Michael Koman: With the first season?

Ayla Ruby: Yes.

Greg Daniels: By the way, we are in editing room for season two.

Ayla Ruby: I know. So it’s hard to go back and forth, I totally…

Greg Daniels: A tiny bit. We’re constantly saying, “Well, in this scene in 106.” And someone else will say, “106?” And now the 206, whatever. But what was the most fun? Gosh.

Michael Koman: To me, I think it was probably the casting process. Making it was a lot of fun. But when you’re actually meeting the people who are going to be in the show, I found it as extremely exciting when somebody comes in and they fit and you just realize like, “Oh my gosh, this person is so talented and they’re going to be here every day.” So when you write a scene, it goes from just being this thing that you’ve written to, like, “I’m going to watch this person perform it. They’re going to make it look good.” And that to me is pretty amazing, when it’s the actors that…

Greg Daniels: You get very greedy, I find, in casting. I don’t know if you follow basketball at all, but there was a trade like a year or two ago where the Lakers ended up with Luka Dončić from the Mavericks and-

Greg Daniels: … this is like the number one young player-

Ayla Ruby: Okay.

Greg Daniels: … and somehow..

Ayla Ruby: I know nothing about basketball. So just…

Greg Daniels: All right. Well, listen, I don’t own much. I’m getting this mostly from my son. There was no reason for the Mavericks to make this trade. It was a foolish trade and Luka is a huge thing. And when they were approached about it, the Lakers were like, “We’ll negotiate with you, but you can’t tell any other team.” Because they knew that if Mavericks talked to any other team, they would be told, “Don’t make that trade, you idiot’s. He’s the best.” So there is that… You find an actor, like you find Melvin [Gregg] or something and he’s just so great in the character and you’re a little bit on tenterhooks until he’s under contract. You know what I mean? You’re like, “Oh, this’ll be so good if we can only get him. If we only have enough money to put this team together.” That is totally a fun part of that casting process. Gosh, what were some of the top moments just to… In fact he like…

Ayla Ruby: Well, even-

Greg Daniels: There were so many..

Michael Koman: Well, when we shot the finale, the 10th episode was just such a nice experience. I think the only episode that we shot entirely on the location. It wasn’t a spectacular look. We were in this nice hotel, but everybody was together. You know there’s no going back for anything if you miss anything when you’re in that place. But the very ending between Ned and Mare had not entirely been decided on exactly what was going to happen, and it was very collaborative and the cast and the director, we were all together deciding precisely what would happen between these two people and how this would end. And it’s so lovely. I think when it’s a condensed period of time and you have to make a decision and it goes from an idea to the thing you film to being what it is.

Greg Daniels: We had the time to be there on set the entire thing because it was the last episode. We weren’t worrying about the next week’s table read or anything.

Ayla Ruby: The luxury of time is amazing.

Michael Koman: The other thing that was really exciting, early on we filmed the 1970s version of the newsroom.

Greg Daniels: Yeah. That was amazing.

Michael Koman: The black and white. And Tracy Letts, who obviously is just a great actor and a writer that we admire, was there as the old editor-in-chief of the newspaper and we had an entire newsroom filled with reporters. That was just a incredibly fun thing to shoot.

Greg Daniels: And Michael plays the young printer, the young pressman.

Michael Koman: Oh, yeah, you’re probably nervous about talking to me or watching that performance.

Ayla Ruby: You’re a celebrity.

Michael Koman: I’m happy to go into details if you’d like.

Ayla Ruby: Was that the first time you had been on camera or…

Michael Koman: I’m glad you noticed. Might as well have been, I don’t care. But I had-

Greg Daniels: My son’s a big fan of when Conan went to Michael’s apartment to try and see if he was really sick when he had a sick out day.

Ayla Ruby: Oh, I missed that one.

Michael Koman: No, when I worked with Conan, everyone on the staff was really good… They were all from Second City. They were really good performers. And I was the only person who was terrible, and you’d still get cast in things all the time because they would honestly forget that I didn’t have any performing ability. I would have these terrible panic attacks before going on in these little sketches. So after that, I was like, “I’m never doing this again.”

Ayla Ruby: And then you did.

Michael Koman: With Tracy Letts.

Ayla Ruby: This has been wonderful. Thank you both for chatting and I’m excited for season two, and many more.

Michael Koman: Thanks.

Greg Daniels: Thank you. Thank you.

Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.