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The Office
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If you’re one of the many, many people who believe that The Office went downhill after Steve Carell‘s departure, take your concerns straight to NBC. According to Collider, Andy Greene’s new book, The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, reveals that Carell “really wanted to stay” on the show past Season 7, but when network executives declined to renew his contract, he had no choice but to leave. “It was absolutely asinine,” casting director Allison Jones reportedly says of NBC’s decision. “I don’t know what else to say about that. Just asinine.”
Collider reports that The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s takes a deep-dive into Carell’s exit in Season 7. Greene writes that in April 2010, Carell accidentally told the BBC that Season 7 would “probably be [his] last year,” a remark that ignited a media circus. The Office boom operator/sound mixer Brian Wittle says that Carell “didn’t plan on saying it out loud and he hadn’t decided anything,” but afterwards, NBC treated him as if he had made up his mind.
“What he said was the people connected to the show had no reaction to it. They didn’t call and say, ‘What? You wanna leave?'” Wittle tells Greene. “When he realized he didn’t get any kind of response from them, he thought, ‘Oh, maybe they don’t really care if I leave. Maybe I should go do other things.'”
Hairstylist Kim Ferry reportedly corroborates Wittle’s account. “He didn’t want to leave the show. He had told the network that he was going to sign for another couple of years. He was willing to and his agent was willing to. But for some reason, they didn’t contact him,” she says, adding that NBC’s decision not to give Carell an offer “was insane.”
Ferry goes on to say that the narrative surrounding Carell’s exit is incredibly disappointing. “[Carell] was like, ‘Look, I told them I want to do it. I don’t want to leave. I don’t understand,'” she recalls. “I think aHe really wanted to stay. And it devastated all of us because he was the heart of our show.” lot of people think he did leave the show on his own merit and it’s absolutely not true. I’m telling you. I was there. I was there. He really wanted to stay. And it devastated all of us because he was the heart of our show.”
According to Collider, NBC was in the midst of a leadership transition throughout the 2010-2011 season, with Bob Greenblatt stepping in to replace Jeff Zucker as president and CEO. The Office producer Rob Cordray reportedly says that Greenblatt “was not as big a fan of The Office as we wished he would’ve been” and took the show “for granted,” which may have contributed to the decision to let Carell’s contract lapse. For his part, Greenblatt tells Greene that he can’t remember exactly what happened, but says, “I think Steve was already departing the show when I arrived. I couldn’t do anything about that since it preceded me.”
Andy Greene’s The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 200s is available now on Amazon.
