TV

Watch Some Pretty Big Names Try To Play ‘The Office’ Characters In Resurfaced Audition Videos

Seth Rogen as Dwight??? Adam Scott or John Cho as Jim??

by Jared Richards  30 July 2020
The Office

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It’s hard to imagine anyone but Rainn Wilson as Dwight, or Steve Carrell as Michael Scott, but resurfaced audition videos for the US The Office give us a little peek into a reality where Seth Rogen and Bob Odenkirk, among others, made the characters their own.

In footage below, you can watch a set of now-familiar faces audition for the show back in 2003, with most of them finding success on film and television within the next decade.

There’s a baby face Rogen, Patton Oswalt and 30 Rock‘s Judah Friedlander playing Dwight; Breaking Bad’s Bob Odenkirk as Michael; Modern Family‘s Eric Stonestreet as Kevin; John Cho and Adam Scott as Jim and, finally, Kathryn Hahn as Pam. Of the bunch, Oswalt’s Dwight is probably the closest to what we ended up seeing on the show.

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It's Not Too Late To Watch The American Version Of 'The Office'

Of course, while Scott didn’t make it onto The Office, he’d later work with show producer Mike Schur on Parks & Recreation, where he played Leslie Knope’s other half, Ben.

Not all auditions for The Office were as conventional as those below. In an interview with NPR, Jenna Fischer, who played Pam, revealed that she was interviewed in character by a ‘documentary crew’, and had to improvise answers about her life and job as a receptionist.

“The Office casting director said to me, she said, ‘please look normal. Don’t make yourself all pretty, and dare to bore me with your audition.’ Those were her words. Dare to bore me,” she said.

Find auditions below — the latter video also features several of the cast’s auditions, if you’d like to compare and contrast the potential versions of Pam, Jim, Kevin and more characters.

The Office is currently streaming on Stan, if you want to pull a Billie Eilish and watch it for the 15th time (it’s also not too late for a first-time watch, either).