NBC gave up nearly its entire Thursday night lineup to say goodbye to "The Office." Prior to the 75-minute series finale at 9 p.m. ET, the network aired an our long special, "The Office Retrospective." The special looked back at nine years of comedy, with interviews throughout from the cast and creators. It was a fun and insightful look inside a comedy that was truly groundbreaking when it premiered in 2005.
Jenna Fischer addressed one of the things that made "The Office" unique. All those verbal "ums" and "ahs," as well as the unique mockumentary camera work was much more planned than it appeared on-screen.
"We have handheld cameras that are moving and we don’t have marks on the ground," she explained. "We plan all of that out beforehand -- everyone just works very very hard to make it look like it’s done on the fly." Even the looks at the camera -- which became a signature move for her co-star and on-screen husband John Krasinski -- were in the scripts.
Fischer did admit that they almost always did a final take where they allowed the actors to ad-lib their own lines, and some of those takes made it into the final cuts. She said that Rainn Wilson and Steve Carell were particularly adept at those ad-libs.
And for those who may have missed it, Carell did reprise his iconic role as Michael Scott in the series finale. Variety found the whole affair both nostalgic and bittersweet.
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