Rainn Wilson cannot escape Dwight Schrute. The other day, the star of The US Office was in a car park wearing a hat, sunglasses, mask and a full beard. Someone drove by and was like, DWIGHT!! recalls the 55-year-old, shaking his head. I dont know how that happens.
He doesnt mind it. Yes, hes been in lots of other things last years badly timed pandemic thriller Utopia, for example but its Schrute to whom he seems inexorably tied. When people come over to say they love the show that made him spottable-with-his-entire-face-covered levels of famous, Wilson finds it very beautiful. What he cant abide are the lame Dwight jokes. If I say I had a cheeseburger for lunch, its like, You didnt have beets?! he says, pulling the kind of disgusted face that Dwight would make if you didnt own a nunchuck. If youre gonna do the joke, make it a smart joke, I implore you.
The Office was full of smart jokes. Absurdity, slapstick and emotional heft, too. It started out, in 2005, as a faithful remake of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchants mockumentary sitcom: the location had moved from Slough to Scranton, Pennsylvania, but the premise hapless, unenlightened manager of a mid-level paper company irritates his variously odd employees was the same. No one thought it would work, says Wilson, speaking over Zoom from his home in LA, because the far superior British Office was perfect and could never be bested. There is a heavy note of sarcasm in his voice. And here it is years later. We really managed to make something special.
Dwight Schrute, assistant (to the) regional manager of the Dunder Mifflin paper company, is perhaps the most beloved character of them all. He was a fascist nerd, as Wilson describes him, with brilliant sales skills and atrocious social ones. He lived on his familys beet farm, was a volunteer sheriff deputy, claimed to have performed his own circumcision and boasted fluency in pre-industrial and mostly religious German. With his centre parting, Aviator glasses and maniacal smirk, he earned Wilson three consecutive Emmy nominations, the perfect accomplice / foil to Steve Carells Michael Scott.
Michael was the shows lynchpin, but hes also the reason Wilson doesnt think the show could be made today. The concept of the buffoonish, clueless white male who is unwittingly racist, sexist and ableist its funny and its been a great mine of comedy for a long time, but I feel theres a large segment of the population that just would not go for that, he says. They would just be like, Enough of this. This isnt funny any more because it hits so close to home in America, only [in reality its] a lot less buffoonish. I think we should be able to laugh at this stuff, but it would be tricky. It would be a tricky tightrope to balance. I think that for Michael Scott to be funny, hes got to do outrageous things. Theres a humour in that but that would be a struggle today.
That doesnt quite explain why the shows popularity has only grown in recent years. In 2020, it was the most watched show on any streaming service. Gen Z-ers love it most famously Billie Eilish, who was four when it first aired and has seen it 15 times. Most of the things that I know are because of The Office, she said, somewhat concerningly, on a podcast last year. Jack Dylan Grazer, Wilsons 17-year-old co-star in his new film Dont Tell A Soul, was such a huge Office fan that he clammed up on first meeting him as Wilson recently recalled in an interview with The Guardian.
Its that film the cat and mouse thriller of a mysterious man trapped in a hole by feral boys that Wilson is here to promote. Grazer plays Joey, a sweetly naive teenage boy; Fionn Whitehead is his borderline sociopathic older brother Matt. When they rob a house thats being fumigated, a security guard called Mr Hamby, played by Wilson, takes chase then swiftly falls down a large hole. Joey wants to help him; Matt thinks hes seen too much. What seems at first to be a straightforward morality tale soon becomes something much slipperier. Thanks to Wilsons ability to seem at once goofy and sinister, it all just about holds together.
Beyond the twists and turns, the element that I thought was so touching was the father-son story that emerges between Hamby and Jacks character, says Wilson. Theres a real emotional truth. Hes missing a son and the boy is missing a father. In the midst of all this chaos, theres this tale as ancient as the bible of fathers and sons. Its Shakespeare, its the bible, its Greek myth. I found that quite moving.
The situation the brothers have found themselves in, with a dead father and a mother too unwell to care for them, felt pertinent too. It has to do with this whole generation of kids raising themselves, says Wilson. In the United States, in certain areas of the country, theres this opioid epidemic. And youve got these children of addicts raising themselves. Its just them and screens, and it conjures up a Lord of the Flies kind of world. It evokes for me the millions of unparented children running around the recesses of mid-America.
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In many ways, with his calm, cerebral manner, Wilson could not be further from Dwight Schrute but they share an eccentricity. Behind him is a bassoon and a shelf full of strange wonders bizarre paintings; knick-knacks; what looks like an animal horn. His chin is resting in his hand, so I can see the nine-pointed star a symbol of unity in the Bahai faith to which he belongs thats tattooed on his wrist.
Wilson felt an affinity for the part of Dwight from the moment he read the character description. I was like, Oh this part is mine, he says. Theres no one who can play this as well as me. Skip the audition process, just hand me the contract. But it was not so easy. I had to fight for it a little bit.
As Dwight in The Office’
Hed had a few supporting parts here and there a pompous magazine editor in Almost Famous, a funeral home intern in Six Feet Under but nothing as big as this. Why was he so confident? I related to Dwight, says Wilson. You cant quite put your finger on what he is. Hes a nerd-bully. Hes a suck-up but hes very independent. There are all these interesting dichotomies that are so rare when youre creating a comedic sidekick, but I knew all that from my alienated suburban Seattle background in the Seventies. I had friends that both played Dungeons and Dragons and drove muscle cars. I knew that world.
It probably wont surprise you to learn that the people who named their son Rainn were unconventional. Wilsons mother was an actor and yoga teacher (in fact, she still teaches it at 80); his father, who died last year, was a painter and writer who released a science-fiction novel called Tentacles of Dawn. From the ages of three to five, Wilson lived with his dad and stepmum in Nicaragua, before moving back to Seattle, where he was shoved and punched by his classmates to chants of Rainn, Rainn, go away.
I was an offbeat young lad, says Wilson. My parents were pretty bizarre and we were poor and living in the pacific northwest. And as if it wasnt weird enough that I had strange parents and low self-esteem, as if I wasnt a member of the pottery club and didnt play the bassoon, my parents were members of this obscure, strange-sounding religion the Bahai faith. That adds a whole other level of alienation from me and the world of Seventies and Eighties Seattle.
Still, hes grateful for it all now. Theres something about that unsettling alienation that allowed me to access these kinds of characters. If Id had a normal childhood, I dont think I would have gotten to be an actor I dont think that I would have got to bring to life strange, offbeat characters like Dwight Schrute and Mr Hamby.
With Ashleigh LaThrop in Utopia’
The Bahai faith, meanwhile, is not actually all that obscure; some five million people follow it. It was developed in Iran and the Middle East in the 19th century, its core belief being that all people and religions are essentially united. Wilson still follows it. The importance of the arts in the Bahai faith is really special, he says. It teaches that the arts are a form of worship that theyre a divine impression. Now you may say, Give me a break Rainn, youre playing these weirdo characters. Thats a divine expression? Isnt that a little haughty? But it doesnt matter who you are or what kind of art youre doing. You could be making poetry in your basement or writing a poem on the weekends, but that expression of our soul, of our hearts, of longing for transcendence, to help tell stories, this is a divine act according to the Bahai faith. And I think anyone whos ever tried to be an artist can relate to that.
Wilsons divine expression has taken many forms. As an actor, hes starred in the indie darling Juno (2007), as the store clerk who told the teen protagonist that her eggo is preggo; in the superhero spoof Super (2010); and in the underrated drama Blackbird (2019), as the husband of Kate Winslet. Hes also written a memoir, The Bassoon King; launched a fictional podcast; and last year made a YouTube docuseries called An Idiots Guide to Climate Change. In that, he brought his dry humour to an urgent subject matter, speaking to several scientists and activists, including Greta Thunberg.
Did making that series make him optimistic about the planets future? Optimism is a strange word, says Wilson. If a house is on fire, you dont discuss, Hey, are you optimistic that this fire will be put out and the family inside will be OK? Or are you pessimistic that theyre gonna burn to death? Its like, No, we need to call the fire department, turn on the hose, get the pets out, make sure the family is safe, alert the neighbours. So it was more about that. We have so much to do here in a very short amount of time. And can it be done? If we really act in the next five years and I mean really act we can avert the worst of the scenario. Its still going to be quite bad.
Wilson is optimistic about humanity, though. He credits that to his Bahai faith. I think humanity is in its turbulent adolescence and will go through a lot of painful changes over the upcoming decades, but I think that ultimately, one way or another, we will come out the other side with a much greater maturity, love, wisdom and unity at the end of the day, he says. Were not there now. We have a long way to go. But how bad this transition is is up to us. Its up to us individually and collectively to build bridges of understanding and create bonds of unity and healing He smiles. Or to go to war and destroy the planet. Its pretty simple.
Dont Tell A Soul is out on digital download on Monday 12 July