Today marks ten years since the American Office debuted on NBC, and to celebrate Uproxx put together a thorough oral history of the show’s second (and arguably best ever) episode “Diversity Day†written by B.J. Novak and featuring consulting producer Larry Wilmore as Mr. Brown. Here’s an excerpt from Angela Kinsey, who looks back on filming Michael Scott’s “sensitivity training†scene in the conference room:
When we were filming it, there was this moment where we were all in the conference room with all these things on our foreheads. Mine was Jamaica. Jenna was Jewish. I’m sitting next to her and I look at her and Steve Carell was, as Michael Scott, giving his speech about diversity, and I just lost it laughing. I just bust out laughing. He was sitting right in front of us, he had turned his chair backward and was leaning forward to us, and I had the hardest time keeping a straight face. I thought, “This is really cool. This feels like lightning in a bottle. This chemistry. This group of people. I think we have something here.†And it was so exciting. I’ll never forget that moment in a conference room when I looked around at everyone and thought, these people are hilarious and the writing is so smart, and, “Oh my God, I think I just won the lottery, as far as my career.†This was a dream job.
Read the rest over at Uproxx.