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Many of the classic lines from The Office were said by Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell, and you can bet there were plenty of instances where the cast couldn’t get through a scene because of Carell’s hilarious delivery. During the Office Ladies podcast, co-hosts Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey shared one particularly funny line that made everyone in the cast break.

'The Office' cast during season 3 Grief Counseling episode
‘The Office’ cast | Photo by Justin Lubin/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images

‘The Office’ Grief Counseling episode

During the June 17 Office Ladies podcast, Fischer and Kinsey talked about season 3 episode 4 “Grief Counseling,” in which Michael works through his emotions surrounding the news that his former boss Ed Truck died. Michael clearly has a lot to work through so he makes the entire office participate in grief counseling, including a scene where each person is given a turn to share their feelings about someone they knew who passed away.

The scene involves several employees taking a movie plotline and pretending it’s their personal story, with Pam sharing the plot of Million Dollar Baby, Ryan sharing the details of The Lion King, and Kevin taking a page from Weekend at Bernie’s. Finally, Michael catches on that they aren’t taking the exercise seriously.

They had a hard time getting through the scene

While the movie synopsis prank on Michael was hilarious, it was his own personal story about his feelings that made the cast crack up.

Michael shares his experience with his employees and it’s one particular line that Kinsey and Fischer said made everyone crack up.

“I lost Ed Truck and it feels like somebody took my heart and dropped it into a bucket of boiling tears. And at the same time, somebody else is hitting my soul in the crotch with a frozen sledgehammer. And then a third guy walks in and starts punching me in the grief bone, and I’m crying and nobody can hear me because I’m terribly, terribly, terribly alone,” Michael says in the scene.

“Michael is going to lead us in some grief exercises,” Fischer said about the scene with Michael going first. “Angela, when he says his feelings about Ed Truck, it’s so good — he goes on and on,” Fischer explained.

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‘We all disintegrated’

Kinsey noted that she had written in her journal at the time how Carell’s line made everyone break. “I wrote in my journal that in this scene, this particular moment, we could not get through… there’s one line that I wrote in my journal — we all disintegrated.”

The Office Ladies co-hosts wondered if the line was improvised by Carell or not because it wasn’t in the original script.

“Every one of us broke when he said that his soul was getting hit in the crotch with a frozen sledgehammer,” Kinsey said of Michael discussing his grief. “We could not keep it together,” the actress added.

“It feels like that’s a Steve improv. That feels like Steve to me,” Fischer noted, though she was unclear if the writers had changed it from the original script or if Carell had ad-libbed the line.

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