Last week's season premiere of The Office revealed some personnel changes that took place over the summer: Robert California has taken over as CEO, and he hired Andy Bernard as the new regional manager in Scranton. GlobalTV.com talked to Ed Helms, who plays Andy, and executive producer Paul Lieberstein (who also plays HR manager Toby), about what's ahead for this season.
After doing all the searching how did you finally decide that Ed Helms should be the choice? What was it about Andy Bernard's character that you thought "this is the guy that should have had Steve Carell's mantle."
Paul Lieberstein: Well, there are a lot of aspects to the Andy Bernard character to make him extremely suited to manager. One, I think it's that he cares about people more than he does about the product I guess; you might say that. And of course he wants the place to run successfully. But he can take the role of father and a family because he partly insecurity, partly through genuine affection and being kind of an adorable human being, you know, talking about Andy - is one who is really caring and interested in empathetic. And he - any little problem that anybody's having, he would feel very deeply, which makes him very suited to be a comic lead in the show. One of the things we're most delighted about is how Andy manages upward, you know, and he - how both scared he is and courageous he is at the very same time when dealing with Robert California.
Ed, did you know ahead of time?
Ed Helms: I knew about three or four weeks before we started shooting. That's when it kind - the news sort of broke internally. And Paul and I had lunch actually and that's where I learned of the news.
What are Andy's plans in terms of what to do with Dwight now that you're the manager and you guys had a checkered past?
Ed Helms: Well, let's just say the checkered past carries over to a checkered present. Dwight is someone who responds very well to a firm hand of leadership, which Andy is still sort of searching for a little bit. But I'm really excited that in that first episode we started to just see the very first inklings of a backbone in Andy. And that I'm really excited about because it sort of makes Andy's leadership more plausible in a way and also kind of shows you a lot of where Andy still has to go and where he has to travel. Dwight provides a constant friction for that.
Are Andy and Erin are going to continue to be a storyline as well?
Ed Helms: They're a pretty odd pair because they have very strong emotions and very poor communication skills. And so there's something - there's always been something kind of charming about watching them try to connect and try to communicate. Of course now with Andy's new boss position, there's a power dynamic that comes into play which just makes all of that tension and awkwardness that much more difficult. And things do get tricky, especially around Halloween.
Will Andy and Toby get along and actually have a relationship unlike Michael and Toby?
Ed Helms: That's a great question and I was wondering the same thing. I feel like in some respects Gabe is Andy's Toby but I don't know - we saw a little hint of that on The List episode. But Gabe certainly has been Andy's nemesis in love with Erin. But I don't know that Andy has any specific beef with Toby.
Paul Lieberstein: I'm not sure he does. It's very hard to say why Michael hated him. But I think it's had a lot to do with the way Michel saw the world was completely emotional, not rational. So we got to find something new for Toby.
In what ways will we see Andy differ from Michael as a boss?
Ed Helms: I think that the biggest difference right out of the gate is that Michael was a well-established manager for much of his run at Dunder Mifflin and that Andy is just finding that. It's a fresh new thing. Andy's leadership is a little bit of an open question and that's what I'm really excited to flesh out - and it was really fun in that opening episode to kind of see a little bit of that backbone and see a little bit of the - see a little bit of a poignant turn about what might be ahead. But I also think Andy comes from a place of - comes from a place of privilege and that informs his world view and he's also prone to anger management issues. But what he always is trying to do at the end of the day, he's trying to do the right thing.
You and Steve Carell have had a very similar career path from the Daily Show, and then film career. Have you had a chance to talk with Steve since the announcement?
Ed Helms: Yes. Steve and I have a few sort of signposts along our careers that match up. And I really credit Steve certainly going back to The Daily Show. When Steve did 40 Year Old Virgin, that really broke the mold for all of the correspondence on The Daily Show in a really wonderful way. And it allowed the general public as well as the entertainment industry to suddenly see The Daily Show correspondents as something more than just these sort of snarky news reporters. And that's just something I'll always sort of be grateful that Steve did. I've known Steve for a long, long time and I've always really admired Steve both creatively and personally. He's always just been really supportive and even going into this new season remains so. And I even got a really lovely note from Ricky Gervais the day after the premiere. So that means an awful lot.
Can you talk about Josh Groban's appearance on the series?
Paul Lieberstein: It started when we were casting Andy's brother. It was Mindy Kaling's idea, she thought of Josh and it seemed like a natural click. And he was excited and he wanted to act.
Ed Helms: The choice of Josh is kind of a fun teaser because obviously he is musical and we all know that Andy has a certain penchant for music. Josh's appearance is part of a really exciting episode for me and for Andy because it's really where we learn a lot about Andy and not all of it's good and some of it's sort of poignant. Of course some fun music that gets mixed in there too. You can see an aspect of Andy exaggerated in Josh, which is a guy who's even more naive and socially sweeter if you can believe it. So it's interesting to see the two of them together.
What is it like to work with James Spader, when his character is a man of few words?
Ed Helms: James Spader has played a lot of very creepy and odd characters throughout his long and wonderful career. James Spader the man could not be more different from those guys. He's a wonderful sort of benevolent and cheerful guy. And so that is a fantastic energy to have on set. And it's wonderful. It's a kind of fun new energy for us all to respond to.
Now his character of course, Robert California, is different than that. Robert California is a kind of aggressively confident person who seems to take a lot of pleasure in exerting his power and that is a really crazy energy because it's so new to Dunder Mifflin and it's not something that Andy Bernard is particularly well-equipped to deal with and that is exactly why it is so fun.
In the first episode there was a big mystery behind Robert California. What surprises will we see in his character?
Paul Lieberstein: You know, if someone starts off very enigmatic and hard to read, you start to get to know them after a while. So yes, we'll see other aspects. We're going to kind of hold onto that for a while and then we'll start to see other aspects of him come through. And he's the guy who's just very interested in the interactions with people and playing out power dynamics and watching people squirm and putting them in situations where they're tested and watching them. Unlike Kathy Bates who is just interested in results, he is a voyeur of the process.
Ed Helms: And I think the episode that we're shooting right now actually I'm having a tremendous amount of fun with because we're - as Paul said, like you do just in observing a character of the course of - from what, Episode 7, 6 or 7 or 8...
Paul Lieberstein: Yeah. And nine.
Ed Helms: ...and nine. And so we know Robert California pretty well by now. And there's still some revelations happening. And it's really cool. He's not a one-note character by any stretch.
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The Office airs Thursdays at 9.00 et/pt.