‘The Office’: Why 1 of the Stars Was Nicknamed ‘The Statue’
It’s not a secret that The Office is a very funny show. The stars also found it pretty funny and sometimes that made it hard to film scenes. Jenna Fischer admitted she couldn’t make it through Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) scenes. Find out which one of the stars didn’t have that problem and was nicknamed “The Statue.”
Angela Kinsey said Steve Carell was sadistic while filming ‘The Office’
Fischer and Angela Kinsey talked about the episode “Email Surveillance” on Office Ladies podcast. They pointed out a scene where Michael (Steve Carell) is doing the robot for a long time.
“Oscar’s (Oscar Nuñez) trying to get a word out and Steve just keeps doing the robot thing,” said Fischer. “I remember shooting that. So in the script, that was not supposed to go on that long. That was supposed to be like a quick little thing but Steve really dragged it out and that was an example I think of some of his just brilliant comedic timing.”
She believed there was a reason behind him doing things longer than what was scripted. “I honestly think that Steve would drag things out like that to see when he could get all of us to break,” Kinsey said. Fischer added, “And we would break.”
Kinsey joked, “He’s a little sadistic that way. He would be like ‘Oh you haven’t broken yet? How about this?”
Kinsey called Oscar Nuñez ‘The Statue’
The podcast hosts got to talk about another episode where Carell improvised with Nuñez. That would be “Gay Witch Hunt,” which starts with Michael having to apologize for using a gay slur while talking to Oscar. Nuñez was a guest on Office Ladies.
“Oscar, you never break,” Fischer said to Nuñez. “You never break!” She said they could count on one hand the number of times he broke while filming the whole show.
“My nickname for Oscar was the statue because he never broke,” Kinsey revealed. She did point out that his tell for when he wanted to laugh was a small grunt that no one could really hear.
This was a good skill for this episode because Carell improvised a lot with Nuñez. That included the scene where Michael kisses Oscar on the lips.
“Originally he hugs you and he was supposed to go in for a kiss,” Fischer said. “But he chickens out and is supposed to like kiss you on the forehead or something.”
She then added, “But I remember sitting in that room and when Steve said the line ‘I want you to burn this into your brains’ that was the moment. We were like ‘That was not scripted. What does Steve have in his head right now?’”
Nuñez thought Carell was going to hug him and it caught him off guard that it was a kiss on the lips. He still managed to keep a straight face throughout the scene and so did most of his co-stars.
