{"id":346920,"date":"2026-03-25T11:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T11:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/346920\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T11:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T11:05:09","slug":"paul-rudd-warned-steve-carell-against-doing-us-remake-of-the-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/346920\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Rudd warned Steve Carell against doing US remake of The Office"},"content":{"rendered":"
Carell decided against watching the British version of The Office because he had caught a glimpse of Ricky Gervais \u2013 who co-created and wrote the programme, as well as having the lead role of David Brent \u2013 and worried he would feel too much pressure to match his performance.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI watched, like, a minute of one of the shows of [Gervais] and he was so good and so specific and so funny, I thought, \u2018If I watch a second more, I\u2019m just gonna go on an audition with that.\u2019 I won\u2019t be able to even imagine it a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Office went on to be a huge success in the US, but Carell is still amazed because he remembered it having the \u201clowest testing pilot\u201d on NBC.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople really hated it. They actively hated it. And I don\u2019t quite know how it got legs after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve Carell avoided watching the UK version of The Office so he wouldn’t imitate Ricky Gervais’ performance. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
The actor also revealed he had a lot of input into his own exit from the show and made suggestions a year before he departed.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cA year before I knew I was going to leave, I talked to [producer] Greg [Daniels] about what potentially the last arc for him would be. And I did want there to be a sense of growth for him.<\/p>\n
\u201c[I pitched] that the last day is not the last day. Everyone thinks that they\u2019re gonna have a party for him. But he leaves the day before, because he doesn\u2019t need it. He wants to say goodbye on his own terms … that I thought would be an interesting way for him to go out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carell decided against watching the British version of The Office because he had caught a glimpse of Ricky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9092,95988,184550,31787,156,111,139,69,1118,6270,17357,112368,62082,5132,223,11226,3040,8222],"class_list":["post-346920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-against","tag-audition","tag-carell","tag-doing","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-office","tag-paul","tag-remake","tag-rudd","tag-steve","tag-the","tag-urged","tag-us","tag-warned"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}