Ayla Ruby
Continuing with our conversations about The Paper, co-executive producer, director and editor David Rogers has now stopped by via Zoom to discuss what it’s really like to step back into The Office universe without ever truly leaving it. Rogers breaks down the technical headaches of transitioning from Dunder Mifflin’s cramped, walled offices to a wide-open where nobody can hide and camera whip-pans have to travel massive distances. He talks about the extreme production secrecy behind the series, including how Oscar Nuñez’s returning role was at first hidden under the script codename Felipe to avoid leaks. From comparing their scrapped pilot bird stunt to a surprise Australian Office promo to debating the faster pacing of a streaming comedy, Rogers offers an in depth look at making The Paper.
Ayla Ruby: The episodes were a ton of fun. The season was a ton of fun and I have to ask because it seems like such a close-knit world and just so many of the same voices and people, what’s your journey back into this project? Because you directed the finale of The Office, you did so much with The Office and now-
David Rogers: I directed the penultimate episode of The Office, the second to last episode. Yes, yes,
Ayla Ruby: Sorry.
David Rogers: Yeah, that’s okay. And Ken Kwapis came back to do the … He did the pilot, a lot of the seminal episodes like Casino Night and he came back to do the finale. And then for this, for season one of The Paper, Greg did the pilot episode of The Paper and I was lucky to get … I got the penultimate one of season one also. The ninth episode,
Ayla Ruby: Right? Yeah.
David Rogers: Where Ned and Mare take a little road trip and we see them get on each other’s nerves a litle bit and meanwhile, Esmeralda is … She’s got an incubus visiting her.
Ayla Ruby: It’s very in character for her.
David Rogers: Yeah. And just a fun … And I mean, God, the other stories were good too because just having Nicole get to do stuff with Ken, which started from the ice cream truck that Ken’s idea of apologizing is to make an ice cream truck where the kids are being served toilet paper that smell like ice cream and then how that blows up and then he’s got to make another apology. That was really fun to do too, just a lot of big episode with a lot of things going on. So it was fun to direct and to just get to do my director’s cut on it after the editor, Sasha, did a great job building it. So yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Ayla Ruby: I have a lot of questions about that too.
David Rogers: So to answer your question about stepping back in, it’s a weird … Stepping back into that universe of The Office, so to speak, I’ve never really left.
David Rogers: And I’ll tell you why, just because when the show ended, when The Office ended, I went to do The Mindy Project. So I worked with Mindy and then I did a few years working with her, which was great. And then Greg Daniels called and said, “Hey, I’ve got a show.” So we did Upload and Space Force. We got to work with Steve Carrell again. And so this was all in the span of a few years and then the pandemic hit and Greg at this point, and this is where it all comes to, is that The Office was bought exclusively to be run on Peacock. And to launch, Greg came up with this idea that was like, “Hey, let’s give the fans something special and we’ll keep Dave employed during the pandemic.” So he came up with the idea of these super fan versions. So he’s like, “Who’s better than Dave who eats, sleeps and drinks The Office to work on this?
So I was like, okay. So we went back into our old projects and went through and for the first time it was not just putting in deleted scenes into the show, things that already exist that were put on DVDs, which we had plenty of, but it was also getting to restore a joke here or there that would never make it onto a DVD because it’s not a full deleted scene, it’s just a line here or a line there. And so it was great to get back into our old projects to see everything that we had to get the media back up and be able to see these things. And also there were talking heads that sometimes we would have like four or five talking … Talking heads a testimonial when they’d be in the room.
Ayla Ruby: The documentary style, right?
David Rogers: Yeah. And we’d have different texts for it. So they would try different things and we would just come up with what we’d call it like a must shoot alt or a candy bag alt. This was the terminology we would use. And when we made the show, it didn’t matter which one, if it was scripted or if an actor improv did on set or if a writer wrote something or if it was … The editors would put in what we thought was the best, which ones were the best. And then as you go through the process of editing with the director and the producers, you would get the best or what you believed was the best one and you’d put it in. But there might have been three others that were equal that only one can live in the show, but now we’ve got more room and more time.
We don’t have the same constraints as a 22 minute network episode. So suddenly I can go to a Pam talking head where she says this, cut to like a Jim talking head where he says this, and then I can go to another Pam talking head and get this other text in like that’s so funny and then go to another person. So it just kind of opened up things that we could get more stuff in there. And then even going through, there were scenes that were deleted that didn’t make it onto the DVDs and it wasn’t because of quality sometimes we saved stuff and every once in a while you would find something that I didn’t even know existed and those were like these jewels. I’ll give you just a couple examples. I know we’re talking about The Paper, but just a couple examples with that was like Steve Carrell did, he ad libbed during the business school episode where he’s just ad libbing talking to the audience and he goes to Ryan’s business school and he starts going off and just this wasn’t scripted.
I think these were just improvisations that he had. And I’m like, “Oh my God, these are great. These are jewels to put back into the show.” And then one of the best things was that we had, there was a cold open we shot with a toilet buddy, toilet guard,
Where Michael’s stuff falls in. This was originally in the episode where they go golfing, Job Fair, where the guys go golfing, Michael goes to the job fair. It was such a long episode. I think the super fan version’s like 31 minutes.
David Rogers: There’s this cold open where Michael drops his stuff into the toilet and then he basically comes up with an idea on how to fix this, this toilet buddy. And it was a cold open. We didn’t use it. We didn’t put it on the DVDs because we thought, “Oh, maybe we’ll save it for another episode.” We didn’t save it for the rest of the season and then we thought, “Okay, we’ll use it next season.” But then everything changed. Toby was no longer there. We introduced Holly so it didn’t fit in continuity. So it just was gone. It never made it and we didn’t put it on the DVDs at the time because we thought we’d … So suddenly I’m looking, I’m like, “Wait, this is not in an episode. Oh my God, this is a great two minute full cold open scene.” So it was great finding stuff like that.
So I have been doing nine seasons of that I just finished. I would do a season, I would then go do a season of Upload, do another season of The Office superfans, do another season of Upload. And then finally we got into The Paper. So I’ve always kind of been tied to The Office and not like that universe, I’ve been involved in that universe. I had never really left, especially fans everywhere I see people all the time or if I’m wearing like a Dunder Mifflin shirt or jacket, I have a lot of stuff from the show. People will always come up and really say just, “Oh, I love the show.” And big fans, it seems to have gotten bigger and bigger since airing on, after there, Netflix and Peacock Comedy Central. But now then Greg had pitched to me, he said, “Hey, we’re thinking of doing this.
They want to do some sort of reboot or continuation of The Office or a spinoff.” And he’s like, “What if we just kind of had Oscar and we bring him along and we have a whole new environment.” And it was like, “Yeah, I’m game, of course. Let’s do it. ” So he had pitched this to me and then I think it was like a year, year and a half later before he’s like, “Okay, we got the green light.” So we started casting, he brought me in to look at a couple of people towards the end of casting and the next thing I know is like we were shooting the pilot.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, fantastic.
So we were back into it and I was worried at first just I was like, oh, is the audience, how are they going to feel like … Because it’s not The Office. I feel like they want just … We want more episodes from season three. You know what I mean? And it’s not that and it’s not like, “Oh, hey, they’re back. Everyone’s back.” This was really just something new. So I was a little worried at first. I’m like, “Are they going to be okay with this? ” But I think Greg was smart in threading this needle of like, “No, this is a different thing.” Yes, Oscar is here and it is the style of The Office and it’s the same doc crew and they’ve got a new subject. And I was like, okay, now I’m like, yeah, this is smart. This is a way to do something that’s in the spirit of The Office, but it’s not The Office.
We’re not trying to make The Office or remake The Office. We’re doing something new. And yes, there are some familiar things that you’ll see and some familiar elements and a couple of Easter eggs sprinkled here and there, but overall it’s its own thing. And I think we have a terrific cast. There are a lot of people behind the scenes like myself, Greg Daniels, the assistant directors, some of the writers, other directors who had worked on The Office. So it was a good sprinkling of people from the past, from the original office who came on board. And so that’s been nice. It’s been really nice. And yeah, it’s fun to play in this world and this universe again. And it’s been a while since we shot the original office. I hadn’t done any mocumentary style shows. So I’m like, the same things come up where I’m like, “Oh, can’t these guys hold the cameras a little steadier?
We got to whip all the time.” And we discovered new things in this environment, the set of The Office was kind of a smaller set and The Offices had walls. They had walls. Michael had his own office where it had windows with blinds, but there were solid walls.
Ayla Ruby: But it’s more open in the newsroom.
David Rogers: It’s completely … So this is a big space where we established the pilot. It used to have a hundred people working there. Now there’s like six on one side. So The Office is wide open, lot of space and all the private offices are all glass. So it’s like you can’t hide. There’s no like, “Oh, this person’s behind a wall here.” And I’m saying it’s tough to like, you have to close the blinds in a room, but then it draws attention to itself like, “Oh, someone’s hiding in there.” I was like, “Oh, nobody can hide anywhere in this space.” But the other thing was we realized even just doing spy cam stuff where it’s like, yeah, all these windows even that we’re looking through where people are in a private office, you can’t block too much with the blinds. We always have these issues of like, you don’t want to block the eyes or anything like that.
It’s a little tricky shooting certain things. So it’s like, okay, it’s not completely the same as shooting The Office. We have to adjust certain things. And the other thing is in The Office you would whip pan from one person to another. They weren’t so far apart. Now even the closest two people are as far from as Pam and Stanley, do you know what I mean? Yeah. Where they were across the room from each other, that’s almost like the closest two people are on this set. So these whips are like, oh my God, we’re whipping all the way across a room. It’s different. It’s a little tricky. So we might not do as much of that as opposed to just pushing in, zooming other tricks to connect people that are further apart.
Ayla Ruby: I feel like that’s, like you mentioned, it’s a very difficult thing, but it doesn’t feel heavy. Sure, the premise of the show is you’ve got a documentary crew there. As viewers, we know there’s a camera because that’s part of the show, but you don’t feel very heavy editing if that makes sense. It feels very natural and light and it just fits beautifully with the story. How do you do that? What’s your philosophy? Because it’s just great.
David Rogers: Oh, thank you. I mean, with the editing of the show, I mean, it’s the same premises as any type of project you’re editing. What’s the best performance? What are the best camera angles and what makes it feel fluid and what makes sense? I mean, even from a directing standpoint, it’s like you have to approach a scene. Where would the camera be? Is this a spy shot? Are we here closer? Does it make sense for a camera to be closer? And what level of camera awareness is the cast showing for this scene? So that’s a process that happens from on the script level, I think, and then a director prepping. And then when we get the footage and editing and go through it, again, we’re just trying to build the best scene we can. And again, what makes sense that I’m looking at performance. I mean, that’s what I’m looking at.
I’m looking at what’s the best performance. If I need energy, what’s got the most energy? If I’m looking for just the best deadpan reaction, I got to go through everything and to cross a take, stick something in. And it’s like with anything. And to make it feel, like you said, we don’t want it to feel heavy. We don’t want it to be super cutty. I don’t want it to feel choppy ever, just kind of smooth. These cameras are here and yes, there is this handheld feel and there’s motion and some things are a little, let’s say sloppier than a traditional cinematically shot drama or sitcom because of this- But it’s
Ayla Ruby: Intentional. It’s like that’s part of the world, right? It’s part of the storytelling.
David Rogers: Yeah. What’s nice is sometimes someone speaking, we don’t see them on camera necessarily. If someone’s here speaking and someone’s here, sorry, I’m looking … This person should speak. That’s what makes the camera go to them. You know what I mean? The camera shouldn’t know that this person’s going to speak if the camera’s looking at this person. So it’s nice to be able to grab something in motion like, okay, they’re starting to speak and that’s what grabs the camera’s attention. And there are a lot of, I think, instances like that that happen. And there are other times where it’s like, look, we’re cutting out time, so we’ve lost that first line where the camera moved over. And so it’s still okay to be, okay, this person is speaking. You can assume that the editors of the documentary edited something, but it is definitely, it’s a trickier thing where just camera placement and not making it feel like that there are seven cameras shooting a scene.
Usually there are two cameras. We don’t want to see the other camera. So you have to position them in a way that one is hidden, so to speak, doesn’t get into the shot of the other one. And basically you’re going for this feel of that it’s just a small crew in there. And then maybe there’s two cameras in this scene, maybe a bigger scene would have three cameras and that you would believe where their positions are if a position changes. You can believe that when the angle goes to the other camera, that’s when this camera moved into position. And often that’s what happens.That’s how it works.
Ayla Ruby: Realistically, when shooting, that’s like …
David Rogers: And there are times, it’s funny, there are times where Greg will look at a scene and be like, “No, no, this is off.” We would see that camera. I’m like, “Greg, here’s the split screen. The camera is hidden. We didn’t cross takes here. This is happening. We have two cameras rolling at the same time and this one is hidden behind the doorframe and this camera does not see it. ” And he’s like, “Okay, all right.” So that happens.
Ayla Ruby: Well, what’s that collaboration like? Because you have the director’s vision and you’ve had the director’s hat on too. How does that merge together in the editors bay? How does collaboration work?
David Rogers: So the editor does the first cut themselves. We go through the script, we’re cutting stuff together and we build the show. And I will say this, these shows are longer. The assemblies are longer than..
David Rogers : And in The Office, we had long assemblies, which like I said, we have these Office Super fans. It’s a whole other version of the show because we had so much footage and that’s due to the shooting style. We can move faster than a traditional setup show where lighting and everything like that just takes more time because we’re shooting 360 at one time. So everything’s lit all at once. So the editor builds the show, then the director will send in notes or come in and sit and you’ll look at stuff and you’ll change takes, you’ll play with timings of things. Well, okay, let’s make some trims, pull some stuff out and the director will ultimately make what they … I don’t want to say they’ll make the … Usually now they do two cuts. They’ll make a cut that they feel like, “Hey, this is the best version, best full long version of the show.” And it’ll be long.
Sometimes an assembly could come in and be like 40 minutes for a show.
Ayla Ruby: That’s a lot of time to cut to get down to that.
David Rogers: Yeah. And then so the director will, they don’t want to necessarily remove scenes from the director’s cut unless they’re really like, “Yeah, I don’t like this. We really don’t need this. ” Sometimes there’s just extra stuff or extra exposition or a talking head we don’t need. They’ll pull that up. They’ll pull that out of the show, but they want the executive producers, Greg and Michael, to see everything that they’ve shot. So there’s their version that’s similar to an assembly with their tastes and takes that show everything. And then they’ll do another pass where they’re like, “Okay, if we got to get it closer to time of the show, I can lose this scene. I can trim this out. This is a little dry here. Let’s pull this out and we’ll get to a shorter cut.” And then Greg and Michael will come in and a lot of times they’ll have watched the directors cut one, directors cut two and they’ll watch the assembly as well and just to compare and see.
And they’ll see what’s working well, what makes them laugh, where can we take out time, what things need a little help, what needs some rewriting. And so that’s where sometimes we’ll shoot a new talking head, sometimes we’ll add some ADR into the scene and that’s sometimes there’s visual effects, we need to see what they look like or a mocked up version, will this scene work with the visual effects or not? So that’s really what the process is. And we go back and forth and stuff and sometimes, I mean, even in season two, Greg will have a note and he’s like, “All right, try this, ” or Michael will have a note and you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to try to execute what they want. ” And you do it and it’s not exactly how they perceived it. And you battle a bit because you’re like, “Well, I’m doing it this way because if not, it’s going to be this.
And then you show why you didn’t do it a certain way. And like, okay. And so then they’re like, “All right, what about it? True.” And it is a process where we have to work together to figure out, “Okay, I know what you want me to execute. These are the pieces we have to do it. ” And again, sometimes this involves rewriting a scene to change something integral to the scene in a way that because we wrote it, we shot it and then you see it and you’re like, oh, this is … Yeah. Suddenly you’re like, “Oh wait, this is having this effect. We didn’t expect this. ” So it’s like, okay, what can we do to just slightly change this and fix it? And it’s like, okay, if we take this piece and move it here and we … Even the other day we were editing a scene and we’re like, “It’d be great to break this scene into two.” So it’s a long scene, but it’s great.
But if we have this first half of the scene, then we cut away, then we come back to a second part of the scene. And it was like, “But how do we end the first part of the scene?” And we were looking, it’s like, “Oh, do we go off on this or a reaction shot?” And he’s like, “Yeah, but the end of the second part of the scene is kind of a reaction shot. So we didn’t want to be the same.” And then I pitched, “Hey, what about if we take these two lines here that were earlier in the scene and we move those to the end?” He’s like, “Do it. Let’s see it. ” You do? And he’s like, “Yeah, looks great. All right, good. Moving on. ” And so sometimes it’s as easy as that. Other times you could spend hours like, “All right, I’ll mark it.
I’ll go back to it. Let me work on it. I’ll build some alts. We’ll look at it later.”
Ayla Ruby : So was there anything in the three episodes that you edited for The Paper that was really hard to not answer the note, but go with the note and figure out the vision and make happen, all the difficulty that you talked about just then to make that scene work, to make those moments work that you’re really proud of making happen?
David Rogers: I don’t think there was anything that was a super like, oh my God. But we shot some stuff. We had a different scene in the pilot and it wasn’t really working and we had multiple versions of the scene in the pilot and we were just struggling. It was one of these things, and I’ll tell you what it was, but we had a scene where a bird got loose. Nicole had a bird and this bird got loose and the cast was trying to catch this bird and we were struggling. We had a version where it was really chaotic and everybody was like, it was just really, to me it was funny, but it was a lot of energy and chaos. And then there was another version that we cut where it was like, “No, that’s too much. It’s not like there’s a bat loose in The Office,” which we had on The Office where people are freaking out.
It was like, “No, this is a bird.” And we established in the scene that it’s happened before. So then we had another version and it was like now there’s kind of no energy. It’s so mundane that it’s common and it’s not super funny. So we were trying to combine the two versions and then we saw a promo for the Australian office and there was a bird that got loose and then we were like, “All right, we got to do something different because people are going to assume we copied them because they were coming out before us and it was like, all right, we got to do something different.” So we still made our best version of this scene with the bird. It had elements of some more common stuff of people just reacting like, “Okay, this happens.” And some other moments that were a little bigger and chaotic, but ultimately we came out with another scene.
They wrote a scene and we shot it where Ned gets locked into the archive room and it was just a great way to introduce the whole cast earlier that Ned went into this thing that they’re a little paranoid. He’s not
Ayla Ruby: Claustrophobic, right?
David Rogers: Yeah.
Ayla Ruby: In that scene.
David Rogers: Yeah. And so that was really a great way to kind introduce Ned to the rest of the staff and to really get a good pop at everybody in the staff. We get to see Travis earlier in the show as he frisks him and just everybody reacts and you see Oscar has a moment, I’m not going to be involved. And we kind of AB’d both versions, our best bird version and this version. And ultimately this version won. I mean, it was just funnier and just I think one of the best scenes in the pilot just introducing Ned to everybody.
There are other scenes that I think need work where you play with it and you try different versions. In episode I think it’s episode four where the kids, so Wesley, the blogger and the kids to the high school come. And even just their introduction to the staff we have different versions of how they came in and meet the staff for the first time. And there were more questions that they were asking and that our staff was answering. And so you’re playing with just different versions and that’s it. There wasn’t a lot of, I wouldn’t say other than the stuff for the pilot, which happens, I mean where you reshoot stuff just because it’s the first thing. But we didn’t do a ton of reshoots on things. Every once in a while, I think maybe there was a talking head or two at the end of the season that were like, “Hey, let’s pick this up.” And we shot them.
But most of the other things were able to just be worked on and in editing. And again, just post-production and ADR line here or there and that was it. So not huge, huge challenges. And again, there’s an argument for having these episodes, the assemblies be so long because it’s like, yeah, if stuff isn’t working, you still have plenty of other stuff to make a show.
Ayla Ruby: That makes sense.
Ayla Ruby: Now for you though, because you’ve obviously edited a bunch of stuff, you’ve had this amazing directing career too, but so you did episode nine of The Paper. How does that work for your director’s brain shifting from the editor’s brain? When you’re sitting there with the editor, I’m blanking. Sasha, right? That was the editor’s name. How does your approach change? How does that work for you?
David Rogers: I mean, it’s interesting on this show because I’m a co-executive producer.
David Rogers: So I mean, it’s my thing. We have experienced editors, so it’s not like, oh, they need handholding or anything like that. I’ll watch cuts if I see something or I’ll help out when I can if someone’s struggling with something or, “Hey, let me take a crack at this. ” But generally everybody just does their own thing and that’s it. With this episode, Sasha did his pass and I was like, look, there are things. I said, let me just do a pass on it and edit physically as opposed to just giving … I gave some notes, but I was like, let me just do a version, which is the same thing. So he gave me the assembly. I did a director’s cut and then I sent it back and I was like, “Whatever you guys do is fine at this point, but at least I did my thing.
They can see both versions.” And I think ultimately there was stuff that they used from the assembly, stuff from the director’s cut. And so that was it. And again, I think I ended up finishing the episode. I think Sasha, he left before we ultimately locked the show. I think he did most of the heavy lifting. And there were things that I was fighting for and arguing.
And again, that’s something where we shot more scenes that were cut out of the show and even the ending is we had a scene where the show ends with them getting the news about that-
Ayla Ruby: The awards, right?
David Rogers: They got awards and they make up and everything. And we had a couple extra lines I think in there that got cut out because we didn’t want it to step on something that happened in the finale.
I don’t know. I thought they were nice lines like, who cares? I didn’t think it really stepped on something in the finale, but it was, all right, whatever. And then even we had a couple of scenes that we had shot after that where they go into a convenience store and both they get floats because the whole thing was that they go to this diner and they don’t drink the root beer float because … And then so they end up in a convenience store and they make their own. And it was a cute scene, but it was like a little smarmy, I guess, like a little self … I don’t know if self-congratulatory is the right word, but it was a cute scene. I didn’t mind that we cut it out when it was all said and done. I was like, “Yeah, it works without it.” But it was shot. It looked good. I mean, it had a heart in it and the actors were great. It’s just one of those things that you-
Ayla Ruby: It’ll be in the Superfan edition.
David Rogers: Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. But yeah, so there are a lot of things like that that happen. I mean, sometimes there is a sense of, oh, we got to pick up the pacing and make it faster. And sometimes I feel like we’re going a little… This is interesting. On the original Office, I used to be the one to be like, “Oh, this is too slow. We got to move on, move on. ” Really? And Greg would be the one to tell me, “No, it’s got to slow down. It’s got to breathe.” And now I feel it’s the reverse. I’m like, “Let stuff breathe. Oh, we need to pace it up.” And it’s just interesting where I’m just like, it may feel that way when you’re editing it and you’ve seen the show, you’ve watched this version of the cut and this version and this version so you’re used to everything.
But when you step back and if you’re watching it for the first time, it’s interesting and engaging. I don’t feel like certain scenes are like … They’re not as slow as you think they are. Do you know what I mean when you’re perceiving it. And so sometimes I’ll win those battles where I’m like, “Hey, slow stuff down.” And there are other times where I’ll cut something faster and Greg will be like, “No, no, no, open it up. Let’s make some room here.” So it still goes both ways.
Ayla Ruby: I’m thinking back to the scene you mentioned where we get a sense of who everyone is, where he’s locked in the room and I feel like just the pacing of that scene and just in general, the pacing of the series, you care about the characters, the moment where you’re breathing, it does a lot of lifting with the storytelling too. These are not just random people, they’re people you want to hang out with.
David Rogers: Yeah. I mean, the pilot is a great example of just introducing the characters and spending some time with each of them and how the story flows. Okay, we start out with, I’m trying to remember now how the show starts the cold open is like we see..
Ayla Ruby: Vance Refrigeration, right?
David Rogers: Right. Yeah. The pilot has the whole … Okay, I mean, we really set up, here’s the crew. They went back, we see what happened to The Office. And none of that’s in the NBC cut of the show, by the way.
Ayla Ruby: See, I haven’t seen that. I’ve seen the Peacock version.
David Rogers: Yeah, that’s in the Peacock version. But the NBC one just kind of starts, I think it’s got some text and it just starts with us in Toledo already.
Ayla Ruby: That feels very different.
And we played with that. Honestly, even in the Peacock version, we played with that as well because I was like, do we really want to see what happened at Dunder Mifflin? Is it sad to see The Office has been changed and they’re not there or do we want to keep it just kind of a secret? And we don’t know and maybe it is still functioning in some capacity. So we kind of went back and forth with that, but ultimately it was like, “It’s a good joke. It’s fun.” And it’s nice, again, seeing Bob Vance and him kind of explaining what happened and who bought what. And it’s almost like a little detective work for the doc crew and how they end up in Toledo.
Ayla Ruby: It feels like it. Yeah, there’s a style of documentary where they’re uncovering stuff and I’m blanking on it, but that’s what it feels like at the beginning.
David Rogers: And then we get into Toledo and then you see the history of The Paper. We established from another documentary of what this paper was like back in the ’70s and how bustling it was. And then here’s our characters now in the present.
Ayla Ruby: And nobody does news except the one guy.
David Rogers: Yeah. And we introduce Esmeralda and then Mare and we see what all these people are like. And then Ned comes and it’s like a gradual way of just introducing the characters and who we see and okay, you get a sense of who they all are right away. I mean, Tim Key as Ken is to me, it’s so funny and seeing him kind of just give a quick tour and how he dismisses the truth teller staff and obviously just seeing Sabrina and how excited she is about her basically clickbait article, it just makes me laugh. And again, it’s like it’s introducing these new characters to the show and you see how … And to me, it’s this great reveal when she goes to the accountants and you see Oscar and he’s like, “Oh no, not again.” And originally we wanted to keep that a secret. It leaked that he was in the show.
We were not going to announce it. He was not going to do press beforehand. Even the scripts did not have his name. They didn’t say Oscar. We had a fake name for him.
Ayla Ruby: What was his fake name? Can you say?
David Rogers: It was Felipe. I don’t know if he had a last name, but it was, I can’t remember, but the name was Felipe. So if anybody got ahold of a script-
Ayla Ruby: They wouldn’t know. Wow. That’s fantastic.
David Rogers: And we also were secretive. We did our best not to draw attention to ourselves as we were shooting also. We didn’t want to get people to sneak … We were on the universal lot. We didn’t want people to sneak onto the set and just peek around and stuff.
Ayla Ruby: That makes sense.
David Rogers: But that was the plan was to keep it a secret and you wouldn’t know until you saw this scene that he was there, but ultimately it leaked and it was good. It was good to have him for publicity, I think, and got people excited. Oscar’s back? Oh my God, wow.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, that’s cool. Is there anything that you want people to know that we haven’t talked about, about your work on The Paper or your work on the show? Anything that you want to share?
David Rogers: Yeah. I mean, what do I want people to know? Yeah, I just think the show is worth checking out. It is. Especially if you’re a fan of The Office, I think it’s worth checking out. It’s different. It’s not The Office, but this is what I’ve kind of said to people. I’m like, we’re not trying to be The Office, but we’re also not trying to be The Office. It’s like we’re just doing our own thing and if some things are similar to The Office, great. And if some things are different, great, but we’re not making a conscious effort either way. We’re just kind of making our own show. And the important thing is I think there are good laughs in the show and I think it’s also got some depth similar to The Office with some romance and things like that. We have a few things happening.
I think also you start to care about the people’s lives and what’s going on.
The one thing that’s a little different in a bigger sense of television is that we’re only doing 10 episodes a season, whereas in The Office we do 22, sometimes as much as 26 episodes. So sometimes things on this show, things happen a little faster in people’s lives. If we’re starting a romance or if a character is going to be promoted, let’s say, or something like that, it might happen sooner rather than waiting multiple episodes or building it slower. Things will happen a little faster. But I think people now, when The Office was on, there wasn’t streaming. There wasn’t binging in the same way of just the ease. Yeah, you could binge something, you could buy it on DVD, I guess, and watch episodes in a row, but it’s not as easy as just sitting back and streaming something.
Ayla Ruby: Just streaming it.
David Rogers: We don’t have to get up and that’s why we aired everything. There was the decision to drop all the episodes at once because they said people are used to binging and so many people binge The Office where they’ll watch multiple episodes. So let’s get them something. So even if they’re like, oh, they’re intrigued by episode one, if two has a flavor that they’re not … If they’re excited about great and they’ll go to three. If they’re not, they can still go to three and see a different flavor of the show. So that was kind of the thinking and I think it’s good, put it all out there.
Ayla Ruby: That’s a great point too, because I remember watching The Office on TV a very long time ago, weekly when it aired. But for this, I just binged it all because, and I’ve told several people to watch it because it’s lovely.
David Rogers: Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve got some … I mean, Taylor Swift is a fan.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, fantastic.
David Rogers: That’s exciting. She made a couple of comments about the show. Listen, I think there are a lot of great comedies on right now. We watch a lot of stuff from … I mean, God, Hacks is a great show. I love Shrinking, but I think there’s room for as many comedies as we can get and things that have a different feel. And if some things are a little heavier or dramatic and they bring out something in people and an audience, great. And if somethings are a little lighter and maybe just deal with more comedic moments, that’s great too. So there’s something for everybody out there. And so that’s it. We’re just striving to make the best show that we can make in our universe and what The Paper is. I mean, just this environment of The Paper and this mocumentary style. And I mean, it’s again, one last thing with differences from The Office, I feel like The Office had a lot of episodes where there were somewhere we would have something serialized, like Michael Scott Paper Company arc where, okay, Michael’s left the company and what’s going on.
But there are a lot of episodes that just dealt with like, oh, somebody was slighted because someone didn’t come to their birthday party. And I feel on The Paper, there’s more plot, there’s more things going on, whether it’s cracking a story or we’ve got to come together to get The Paper working. There’s a little more plot involved. So that’s the other way that it’s different from The Office, a little more plot and story heavy than just like, “Hey, this is just a random day at The Office and this is what’s going on. ” Some people want a new copier, some people want a new chair, what’s it going to be?
Ayla Ruby: Again, it goes back to the characters and getting involved with the character. So I love that.
David Rogers: Do you have a favorite character?
Ayla Ruby: Yes. I like Ned. Actually, so I like Esmeralda, but it’s not necessarily for her characterization. I used to have a neighbor next door to me who was Italian and she used to say Alaura all the time. So I giggle every time I hear Esmeralda say that because that just reminds me of my old neighbor who’s a very sweet lady, but a little different than Esmeralda.
David Rogers: I mean, she’s fantastic and she’s polarizing to a lot of people because in some ways she’s a villain. She’s sabotaging.
Ayla Ruby: But she got catfished so you have to feel for her.
David Rogers : Yeah. And so then the other thing she does, but I think that she’s so different from everybody else and even as an actress, she’s different. I think he approach and technique is different than most actors I’ve ever seen before, but she’s fun to play with and she brings her all to every scene. I think the whole cast, they’re all fantastic. I mean, everybody cares. Everybody’s passionate about it. It comes true. The cast, they’re not just phoning it in ever. I mean, we have discussions with them about scenes and it’s a good environment. We’re all glad to be working and we’re all glad that the material is good and that we get to do this.
Ayla Ruby : Well, thank you so much.
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