In case you’d somehow forgotten, stars of The Office, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey have launched a podcast where they talk about behind-the-scenes secrets from the show.
In this week’s episode of The Office Ladies, they revealed that the cold open in Season 2, Episode 8 where Jim (John Krasinski) pop’s Dwight’s (Rainn Wilson) “fitness orb” was a total mistake.
The scene sees Jim and Dwight working at their desks, except Dwight is using an exercise ball instead of a chair.
Obviously, Dwight is super annoying about this fact, so Jim grabs a pair of scissors and pops it completely so Dwight falls to the floor.
But, it turns out, that wasn’t what was meant to happen at all.
Jenna told the listeners, “Ladies and gentleman, it was not meant to pop… The idea was that John would stick the scissors into the fitness orb, it would deflate very slowly and the camera would be in front of Dwight’s desk, and you would see him just very slowly sort of melt to the floor.”
During rehearsals, Wilson and Krasinski practised the scene three times and then shot 13 takes. Every time they got the desired effect.
“So they practiced three times, it worked perfectly. And they had 14 [orbs] left for the scene, and Phil [Shea, The Office’s props manager] said to John, ‘as long as you don’t hit the seam of the ball with the scissors — which would be like a one in a million chance that you could do it — the ball will slowly deflate, and it will work as planned.'”
It was the last take where Krasinski cut the ball and it popped and, thankfully, that’s the take they decided to keep.
“They did 13 takes and it worked just right and everyone was ready to move on,” Fischer said, but Shea decided to remind everyone he still had one more ball left. Director Paul Feig replied, “Oh what the heck, let’s just do one more,” Fischer said.
At the end of the scene, you can see Kransinski breaks character, gasps and runs away.
“You can see the shock on Rainn’s face, and he fell to the floor,” Fischer said. “We were all completely shocked, like, ‘oh my god.’ And you can totally see John break — his shoulders — and very quickly, [because] he’s such a pro, he turns his back and just like leaves.”
Speaking with Esquire in 2007, Krasinski said it was his favourite prank of the show, “He fell down and hit his head. If you watch the episode again, I literally lunge out of the frame because I’m laughing so hard.”
Apparently, the episode wasn’t going to feature the blooper, but when they went to edit the show together, the writer of the episode Larry Wilmore, fought to use it.
“That is an example of a perfect cold open,” Fischer said.
Watch one of the greatest moments of The Office below and listen out for a shocked John Krasinski saying, “What?!” after the ball popped…
