Ellie, I’m a big Subtle Sexuality fan and I was wondering if we can expect any new music from them?
Ellie Kemper: Me too. I am also a big fan. I’ve been wondering the same thing. I’ve heard rumors that they are going to write another song and
maybe make another video but I’m not sure that those rumors are accurate. So I actually know as little as you do. I hope they do. I think it’s fun to dress up in those clothes and sing. But I’ll put in that request for sure.
Angela Kinsey: When I saw those I was like ‘dang it, why doesn’t my character ever have any fun?’ because I never get to do any of that stuff.
Ellie, when you first joined the cast did you find there was instant chemistry when you started working with everyone or did it take a bit of time to develop?
EK: Well everyone there luckily is so welcoming and so kind. I would imagine that that sort of dynamic or warmth doesn’t exist on every set. And I have to say they did all the work to make it great and then I just got to come in [during] the fifth season and be a part of it, it’s really lucky for me.
So I don’t know about chemistry or whatever, I just feel really fortunate that they wove me into the fabric.
AK: And, I mean, come on there was a hazing process…You got through it so…
EK: I never mentioned that part. Angela in particular hazed me the hardest.
AK: Yeah, a lot of pranks.
EK: A lot of pranks with this one. But she’s letting up. I think she’s finally starting to let me into the fold. I don’t know. Every day is a challenge.
Angela, we know that you have a bit of a maternal instinct with cats on the show however do you think that Angela might have a motherly human maternal instinct soon?
AK: Oh my goodness, I mean, I can’t imagine Angela Martin as a mother. I think that would be very interesting. I remember a few episodes – a few seasons ago she said that she might like two very small well-behaved boys so she could parent those.
Listen, I would love to see her try to nurture a human. I think that would be a lot of fun to watch her go through those motions. I love the Anne Geddes photos – my character [does]. But you have to remember my character has a weird thing about photos of babies dressed up. Remember that Christmas episode where she got exactly what she wanted which was two babies dressed up as jazz musicians?
There have been lots of special baby episodes on different shows throughout the years; how is this one going to be different? And then from there what do you think will change about the show once Jim and Pam have the baby?
AK: I think what’s the great thing about our show is that they find ways to make our characters grow without really changing a character’s arc, you know. And that’s always a fine line in television. But if you change a character too much the audience falls out of love with the character.
But yet characters need to evolve and grow over the years. And I think our writers are brilliant at doing that. So I think Jim and Pam having a
baby…you’re going to see new aspects of them but it’s not going to change the dynamic of our office and what’s funny within the office.
I loved this baby episode. I actually went to the writers and tried to pitch them some breast feeding jokes because I actually came back to work
and – when my child was eight weeks old – not to over share – but I had to pump, you know, I mean, that’s a working mom’s life is you want to
breast feed. So we had to take pump breaks all day and I had to go to my trailer. I did that for like 11 months.
EK: Oh my gosh.
AK: Yeah, I went into the writers because we don’t have – our female writers on the show don’t have children, so I pulled like Mindy (Kalling) and BJ (Novak) aside and I’m like ‘okay are you guys going to have this happen? What about this in the hospital because this and this happens to you right off the bat, you know.’ I don’t know what all they used or didn’t use but it’s a fun episode. And I think what’s great about it is as far as
different baby episodes on television there’s a little bit of reality there. I mean, we can have some more real moments because we are a
mockumentary, you know, and we can go into some subjects that maybe your standard sitcom would skip over. And so I think it’s going to be really fun for people to watch.
EK: Yeah, I thought the same thing when I was watching Niagara, the wedding episode, I thought what a – just a signature sort of perfect
way the writers put the whole thing together in such a way that it is this monumental event, it’s this landmark thing that’s happening.
And these two huge things to be happening in such a short span of time, the wedding and now having the baby. But again treated like Angela just said, bringing out moments that other sitcoms may skip over but that are very real and combining them to make this like realistic portrait of what it is to go through this.
It is strange to have watched a show on your futon for five years and then to be on it is completely surreal. And I think that it’s so weird because I go to work and I see these people every day.
But every now and then I have a moment where it’s just ‘oh wait a second these are the people on the television show that I love.’ It’s weird. But everyone couldn’t be warmer. It’s a huge relief.
What do you love about shooting webisodes versus television? Is there more freedom in what you can say and what you can do? Is there more improv? What attracted you guys to that medium?
AK: Well I know the very first webisodes we did were the accounting [ones]. And at that time it was a very new genre…we came in on our day off and it was me and Brian (Baumgartner) and Oscar (Nunez) and we had such a small skeleton crew. I remember our crew – we were all just kind of cracking up. It felt very free and loose; it felt like something you might have done in college.
And now they’re more organized, they’re more structured. But there’s still that real sense of freedom and a real sense of play because it’s kind of like going to school during off hours. There’s no one really there and you all kind of cut up a little more and maybe you get your work done but instead of sitting on your chair at your desk you sit on your desk.
What do you think the motivation was to actually take Ellie’s character under your wing and be her mentor?
AK: I sort of feel like Angela Martin wants a friend but she’s so prickly that it takes such a tall order to be her friend. But she’s not a robot. She misses Dwight, she misses her friends. I think he was her best friend.
I’m sure her ladies group at church is catty. Or if she does have one friend outside of work I think it’s always nice to have an ally at work.
And she doesn’t have that. So I think she sort of jumped at the chance, plus she loves accounting so this is some person who seems bright enough to understand concepts. It’s not like she wants to mentor Kevin. I think she sort of jumped at the chance to maybe mentor someone who’s interested in something she loves to do.
Ellie, how much of that warm bubbly personality of Erin is actually you?
EK: That’s a good question. We were just talking about this a minute ago. So far it seems the situations Erin has been in we’ve only sort of seen her bubbly side. I think that I have a bubbly side. I also know I have a not bubbly side. And I hope coming up that they do explore that non-bubbly side.
We keep hearing little bits and pieces of her back story, you know, where she came from, what this girl is all about. And I think she might be a
little bit weirder than we might think.
AK: Maybe a little more damaged. I have to say because I’m sort of on the outside looking into this question I can tell you from being on set and going and having margaritas with Ellie and just hanging out on a daily basis that this sort of very genuine sincerity that is Ellie definitely comes through her character. It’s a really wonderful thing you bring to Erin.
EK: Oh, Angela, that’s like the nicest – thank you. That’s so nice. You know, Angela Martin doesn’t smile that much and then when I walked on set and I actually met Angela like in person oh my gosh a warmer person you do not know.
AK: I’m just a spaz, that’s the hardest thing for me about being Angela Martin is to turn off the spaz.
So is there an aspect of comedy then to playing the opposite of yourself?
AK: Well it’s definitely a lot of fun because I find that when I play characters much closer to my own personality I’m a little bit more
self-conscious because I feel a little bit more exposed as myself. But when I play a character that’s very different from me I can really have fun with it because it’s such a departure from how I would react.
I am horribly non-confrontational. I’m from the South. I usually start most sentences with ‘I’m sorry’, so, you know, it’s like very fun to play
someone who would quickly tell you off or definitely knows exactly what her thoughts and opinions and is going to share them.
Just reading both of your bios and remembering how everyone from The Office comes from different comedy backgrounds. Is it all sort of compatible when you all get together?
AK: Oh yeah, without a doubt. And in fact it’s such an asset when you do improv or sketch or standup in LA the town shrinks quite a bit. And almost all of us on set…some of us knew each other before The Office because we had been at comedy clubs together.
And then when we get on set and we start doing the name game we’re like, ‘oh yeah, I did a show with him one time’. It’s really a great synergy.
Is Erin just a nice person? Is this the way she makes friends because obviously she’s really nice and she’s really great at playing along but where is this all going to go?
EK: I’m not sure she thinks she’s playing along. I think that Erin is so – I guess the word desperate to be accepted in the office and also so eager for a friend and a mentor, for someone to show her the way. At first it seemed to be Kelly, the cool girl who buys her clothes at the mall and is willing to – not really befriend Erin but sort of make her her subordinate.
So then when she like finds another mentor/friend in the form of Angela I think it’s again trolling for – I don’t think she thinks she’s playing
along. I think it’s just like ‘oh, I want to be accepted. I want to be good at what I’m doing. And oh, Angela is willing to take me under her
wing; this is amazing.’
AK: What’s been revealed about your character, I mean, you were in an orphanage like there’s been some little things dropped here and there that would definitely lead me to believe that she’s looking for family, you know, in whatever shape. It is somewhat similar to the way that Michael Scott sees the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch as his family.
He completely believes that they are much closer than they are. And in that way I feel like Erin is going to be someone who’s looking for things that most people have at home but she’ll look for it at work.
The show started off as a mockumentary and that there was a documentary period this taking all this footage. And now in these episodes, you know, like the – you guys barely interact with the cameras except in the testimonials. How do you and the other actors handle that?
AK: Handle the camera crew there and not…
Like the now non-presence of the camera crew?
AK: It’s kind of an interesting thing that happens just to you as a person. When there’s a camera around you all the time – and I think we see it in reality TV because all of a sudden, you know, several episodes into a reality show some – one of the personalities will do something and you’re like ‘holy crap they would never do that, there’s a camera right there. Come on.’
And then what happens to you as a person is when there’s cameras around all the time they just start to become like a fixture, like a couch or a lamp. And you find yourself getting more and more free. And whatever boundaries you set for yourself at the beginning get pushed and pushed and pushed. And I think that is a natural progression of our show with our documentary crew. And so I actually think it’s very realistic.
I just wanted to ask you – for both of you, certainly at the heart of the show there’s the needy insanity of Michael and the really crazy insanity of Dwight.
But when you think of Jim and Pam, Michael and Jan, Dwight and Angela, Andy and Angela, Kelly and Ryan, even Toby and Pam in a way, how much do you think that the romantic tension that the show has had has contributed to its longevity?
AK: I feel like romantic tension can fuel a whole season. That’s very apparent in sort of the Ross and Rachel of Friends and definitely with Jim and Pam. In the beginning of seeing them go from friends to people who had crushes on each other to finding each other I think there’s a good part of us as American viewers that are hopeless romantics.
Is there any episode that like gave you jitters or was really hard not to laugh or that you had to go to a really dark spot? I remember Angela talking about that in Season 3 and women’s appreciation when Michael Scott kept trying to buy her panties.
AK: Oh God.
And she did not take them. So my question for both of you is there an episode that was just really hard to do in the sense that you just tried not to laugh?
AK: Oh my – that’s every day for me by the way.
EK: Yeah. Yeah.
AK: I crack up every day on set. And it’s not just me, I mean, we all have moments where we’re trying to dodge the camera lens because we’re laughing so hard and we don’t want to ruin the take. I mean, Ellie, what was the…
EK: This hasn’t aired yet. There’s something Michael is doing – now I can’t remember what impression he’s doing. It’s maybe like Jack Nicholson. He’s doing some impression but he was improvising it. But it was just – he and I were the only ones in the scene. And I just kept laughing. And in a way I’m like I want to laugh because it’s funny. I think it’s one of the most terrible feeling to have to hold in laughter. But you really can’t – you have to hold it in because you have to get the scene done.
And then I’ll go through specific hours where I’m giddy and it’s just too much because the whole thing is just this like comedy show I get to go to everyday to watch.
