‘The Office’ Once Rented a Soundstage but Not for Filming the Show
The Office really looked like an office. Whoever designed the Dunder Mifflin set really got the details right. Okay, that’s because they didn’t build a set at first. The Office was filming in a real office for the first season. They would eventually recreate Dunder Mifflin in a studio, but for the first season, the soundstage had a different purpose.
The Office Executive Producer Ben Silverman was on a Television Critics Association panel in 2005. As the show was just beginning, he shared how they rented a soundstage that was not even being used for filming that first season. The Office is now streaming on Peacock.
While ‘The Office’ was filming, they used the soundstage as a cafeteria
Dunder Mifflin is a Scranton, PA paper company. The office where they filmed season 1 was in Culver City, CA but it was a real office. The office belonged to Century Studios Corporation, and it came with soundstages. Those soundstages became the lunch room. Since 2005, the space has been upgraded to an open floor plan so it, too, has left Dunder Mifflin behind.
“I mean, there’s no greater joy than hanging around in this very unique environment,” Silverman said. “We shot in a real office. We had to get a sound stage, but we used the sound stage to eat lunch, and we actually shot in the office around where we work.”
‘The Office’ writers hung out during filming
The Office had one of the largest ensembles of a television sitcom because they filled Dunder Mifflin cubicles with actors. Some of the show’s writers got picked for on-camera roles because they were already hanging out at the soundstage.
“B.J. Novak is a writer and a performer on the show.,” Silverman said “Larry Wilmore, who appears in our ‘Diversity Day’ episode, is actually a consulting producer and writer on the show who, as we hung around and trying to decide who do we get to do this, let’s bring Larry in because he’d be a great Mr. Brown. We look at those kind of things, and that’s so unique to any experience I’ve ever had making any television show.”
Laying the foundation for nine seasons
Little did Silverman know in 2005 that The Office would run for nine seasons. The British original only ran for two, and those were far shorter seasons than the American 24 episode order. So yes, from season 2, The Office moved into studio space but they maintained the communal attitude achieved by filming the first season on location and making the soundstage a hangout space.
“And I’m not sure whether they did that in the U.K. or not, but I mean, it really just found its own freshness and originality,” Silverman said. “Hopefully, you guys like it.”
