If the devious Dwight Schrute doesn’t have the inside scoop on the comings and goings at Dunder Mifflin, does anybody?
It’s now an open secret that, as EW.com reported and NBC has since confirmed, the May 19 season finale of “The Office” will be overstocked with special guest stars, including Ricky Gervais, a co-creator and star of the original British “Office” (who turned up on the U.S. series for a nanosecond in January) and Will Arnett, the “Arrested Development” star whose wife, Amy Poehler, lives just down the NBC block on “Parks and Recreation.”
So should we expect more guest stars to come for that episode, and might any of them end up as the permanent replacement for the bumbling manager Michael Scott, when Steve Carell departs “The Office” next month?
We put the question to Rainn Wilson, who plays the show’s Machiavellian underling, Dwight, and who suggested that all bets were off as the “Office” producers race to figure out their plans for the finale and beyond.
“They have ideas,” Mr. Wilson said in a phone interview on Tuesday, “but I think they’re definitely scrambling a little bit: let’s end this season with a bang and then we’ll see what happens next. But they don’t know. There’s a lot of great comedy names that just love ‘The Office’ and want to be part of it, whether it’s for one episode or a short arc, for four or six or eight episodes. Or longer. It’s exciting that after seven years, people still want to be a part of our show.”
(For starters, there’s Will Ferrell, who begins a four-episode run on the show next month.)
Though it seemed a given that many “Office” employees would step up for Michael Scott’s position, Mr. Wilson said it was unlikely that Dwight would land in the manager’s chair.
“Dwight’s not really designed for that,” he said. “Maybe someday I’ll do another TV show where I play a character who’s designed to be the comic engine of a sitcom. But I don’t know that this is that show.”
(When his modesty was pointed out to him, Mr. Wilson added: “I don’t mean any of what I just said.”)
Mr. Wilson said his goal was for “the show to go on for a while, and I don’t know for how long, but I want it to be fresh and funny and keep audiences coming, and keep getting new fun stuff to play as Dwight.” He added: “If that means Brad Pitt is the new boss, so be it.”
So, we asked, can we run this article with the headline: “Brad Pitt Coming to ‘The Office,’ Says Rainn Wilson?”
“Perfect,” Mr. Wilson replied. “Fine. Run it. Go to press, I don’t care. I give my approval.”