The cast of “The Office” got a near-death surprise while filming an episode directed by a notorious TV criminal.
Actors Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, who co-starred in the hit NBC comedy series and published a book about the show, wrote about how a stuntman “swerved” and made the casting inside a bus, Mashable reported.
The episode, “Work Bus,” featured guest director Bryan Cranston, known for playing Walter White on the “Breaking Bad” series. In the book, The Office BFFs: Tales of The Office of Two Best Friends Who Were ThereKinsey joked about the irony of Cranston’s ties to the episode.
“We see the irony that Bryan Cranston, aka Walter White Sr. or ‘Heisenberg’ as he was known in crystal meth circles, was an accomplice in the murder of nearly the entire cast of ‘The Office,'” a writes Kinsey. “I assure you it’s pure coincidence.”
The episode involved Dwight Schrute (played by Rainn Wilson) creating a temporary workspace for staff members while the Dunder Mifflin building underwent repairs. Jim Halpert (played by John Krasinski) had suggested the repairs so he could get a few days off. But Schrute decided to create a mobile office on a bus instead.
Halpert then offered to use the bus to get to the “best rural pie stand in Pennsylvania” and, after “pie chants”, Shrute took the bus up the road.
You can get an encore of the show’s “Work Bus” episode below:
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A scene featuring Schrute’s misbehavior caused the show to hire a stuntman to replace Wilson, Fischer explained. To make the scene more realistic, the actors stayed on the bus as it drove off. That’s when the show’s assistant director told the stuntman to swerve, Kinsey wrote.
“I mean he spun that wheel like Cole Trickle in ‘Days of Thunder,'” she detailed. “What no one had thought of when they told this stuntman to swerve as hard as he could without overturning the bus was that none of our office furniture, props or decorations were securely attached. “
The filming of the episode was also not without other escapes. Fischer wrote about how the show’s staff hooked up the “hot tin can” to a portable air conditioner.
“We were thrilled…” she wrote.
But it turned out that the portable air conditioning unit was adjacent to the exhaust pipe of the bus.
“We were all slowly being poisoned. Or not so slowly, in fact,” Fischer wrote.
office best friends is described as an intimate portrayal of the hit comedy series and includes never-before-seen photos from “The Office.” The cast also provided details about the show on their popular “Office Ladies” podcast.
