Rainn Wilson Says He Spent Many Years on THE OFFICE Feeling Miserable Because He Wasn't a Movie Star
Rainn Wilson is best known for playing the role of Dwight Schrute on the mega-hit TV series, The Office. The Emmy-winning comedy ran for nine seasons on NBC and has a die-hard fanbase that lives on. It’s a seemingly cushy deal for an actor trying to make it in Hollywood, but Wilson says he spent many years on the series feeling very unsatisfied with where his career had landed.
Wilson recently spoke to Variety, saying:
“When I was in ‘The Office,’ I spent several years really mostly unhappy because it wasn’t enough. I’m realizing now, like, I’m on a hit show, Emmy nominated every year, making lots of money, working with Steve Carell and Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski and these amazing writers and incredible directors like Paul Feig. I’m on one of the great TV shows. People love it. I wasn’t enjoying it. I was thinking about, ‘Why am I not a movie star? Why am I not the next Jack Black or the next Will Ferrell? How come I can’t have a movie career? Why don’t I have this development deal?'”
He continued:
“When I was on The Office, I was clutching and grasping at, okay, I was making hundreds of thousands. I wanted millions, and I was a TV star, but I wanted to be a movie star. It was never enough. Humans have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, and ‘never enough’ has helped us as a species.”
Wilson said on The Drew Barrymore Show earlier this year that he wishes The Office could’ve aired through the COVID pandemic as he has great ideas for how the sitcom could’ve mirrored real-world events.
“It would’ve been so much fun to film The Office during the pandemic. If we had pandemic episodes, that would’ve been amazing. The Office writers were so great — they would’ve been able to spin that in some beautiful ways.”
Wilson’s own idea for a pandemic episode of The Office features Dwight recruiting the staff of Dundler Mifflin to return to work after the pandemic.
“I think it would be: [Dwight] gets the call from corporate to get everyone back in the office and everyone is resistant. So, one at a time, Dwight has to kidnap every ‘Office’ cast member and bring them into Dunder Mifflin in some kind of obscure and somewhat inappropriate way.”
That would have been hilarious! I always hold out hope that they will reboot the series one day so we can revisit the employees of Dunder Mifflin one more time. As for Wilson, I hope he was able to come to terms with the greatness of his career, and I hope he’s happy with where he’s at. I’m sure he’s still getting paid pretty well for playing the character Dwight Schrute.