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.
Craig Robinson can pinpoint the exact moment he realized that Steve Carell is a genius.
The sitcom star recently sat down with Entertainment Weekly to discuss his run in the Broadway live sketch show All Out alongside Heidi Gardner, Sarah Silverman, and Jason Mantzoukas. During the conversation, Robinson reflected on his years in The Office, playing the wise warehouse worker Darryl Philbin, who continually frustrated manager Michael Scott (Carell) with his confidence and nonchalance.
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.”
But it was one off-script line that made the true depth of Carell’s comedic prowess really sink in.
The cast of ‘The Office’.
Mitchell Haaseth/NBC
“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 — it was on the lady clothes episode.”
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.
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.”
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“The Negotiation” sees Michael try and fail to employ hardball salary negotiation tactics he scraped from Wikipedia in his talks with Darryl. Needless to say each backfires spectacularly. When Darryl finds out the real thing stopping Michael from bumping up his pay is the fact that he would then out-earn his boss, he urges Michael to ask for a raise himself.
It’s then he urges Michael to call a meeting with his own boss, Jan, with whom Michael is locked in a messy situationship. That’s when the famous exchange occurs.
“Make it happen, captain,” Darryl encourages Michael, who stares into the camera with a look of pure dread on face, responding meekly, “I am making it happen, sergeant.”
Steve Carell on ‘The Office’.
Chris Haston/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank
“That was something he just popped out with,” Robinson recalls. “Just to get a scene with Steve, I was always like, ‘Oh s—, I’m going to do what?'”
Robinson’s Office costar Creed Bratton also recently told EW about the moment he realized Carell was one of the greats. He pointed to a “six-and-a-half page scene with Steve Carell” from the season 2 episode “Halloween” that made him realize the comedian was “an improvisational genius.”