Craig Robinson is recalling the moment he knew Steve Carell was one of the greats.Robinson tells EW that he first recognized Carell’s “genius” during an improvised exchange in the season 3 episode “The Negotiation.””Make it happen, captain,” Robinson’s Darryl tells Carell’s Michael in the scene, to which Carell ad-libbed a fan-favorite line.<\/p>\n
Craig Robinson<\/a>\u00a0can pinpoint the exact moment he realized that Steve Carell<\/a> is a genius.\n<\/p>\n The sitcom star recently sat down with Entertainment Weekly to discuss his run<\/a> in the Broadway live sketch show All Out<\/a> alongside Heidi Gardner, Sarah Silverman, and Jason Mantzoukas. During the conversation, Robinson reflected on his years in The Office<\/a>, playing the wise warehouse worker Darryl Philbin, who continually frustrated manager Michael Scott (Carell) with his confidence and nonchalance.\n<\/p>\n Robinson says his and Carell’s winning dynamic developed “because of the writing. That was all in the writing, just imagining you’re this warehouse worker who’s like, ‘Yo, what are you doing, bro?!’ But you can’t react like that. So that was Darryl.”\n<\/p>\n But it was one off-script line that made the true depth of Carell’s comedic prowess really sink in.\n<\/p>\n The cast of ‘The Office’.<\/p>\n Mitchell Haaseth\/NBC<\/p>\n “One thing comes to mind that Steve said in the moment,” Robinson says. “He could just turn it on and off, but one thing that comes to mind, which I didn’t even realize he said until I saw it on the show \u2014 it was on the lady clothes episode.”\n<\/p>\n Robinson is talking about “The Negotiation,” season 3’s 19th episode, in which an act of attempted violence forces Michael to fire warehouse worker Roy (David Denman), and an act of idiocy (accidentally blabbing about Darryl asking for a raise over speakerphone) puts Michael in a corner to negotiate with Darryl over said raise.\n<\/p>\n Robinson recalls getting into character as Darryl, “just trying to get a raise, and I was trying to talk to him. I was like, ‘Come on, man, go talk to Jan [Melora Hardin]. Make it happen, captain.’ And he said, ‘I will make it happen, sergeant.’ I don’t remember reacting to that. I saw it [later] and was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ The genius of that in that moment. That was all him coming up with that.”\n<\/p>\n