Name: The Best Of "The Office" Stars | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2025-06-23T15:00:20.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Best Of "The Office" Stars | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Best Of "The Office" Stars | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-23. Transcript available.

The Best Of "The Office" Stars | David Letterman

it must be uh fun to is this your first television series it is it must be fun
to have it being so
successful yeah it's it's been really wild i mean the show has sort of gained
success slowly so
that's been nice but um people people actually ask me like what is the um what's
the biggest
difference between your life a few years ago in your life now and um and i have
a great example
from a few nights ago after work um when i had sort of my pam hair and makeup
on because i look
a little different on the show pam from the show pam from the show my character
um i went to the
grocery store to pick up some tapioca pudding for my husband and i for dessert
we just wanted some i
don't know we had a hankering for the tapioca you don't need to be defensive
about tapio okay good i
just you're okay with the top i'm fine with that yes all right so uh so i went
to the store and i
couldn't find it i wanted the ready-made kind you know because i wanted to eat
it i didn't want to
make it i wanted to eat it and um and i asked the produce guy if he could help
me find this tapioca
pudding and um he sort of did this he was like gonna give me the brush off he
went like this he went
yeah i don't i don't really know where the time oh i don't know where the tapioca
pudding is but i
will help you find it that's all you want though isn't it in life yeah that's
about all you really
need now tell me about your uh not only uh on the office you're directing have
directed us uh one or
two shows i directed this past week's episode well good congratulations was
this your first effort as a
director how was it was it was it good was it everything you wanted it to be
well um i'm an
actor on the show as well so the great thing about when you direct is that you
can direct everybody
else normally and then when it comes to my own scenes i'm like i think we need
to sweeten the lighting and
i can do my makeup any way that i want to it's like a huge scam basically and
how did you get to direct
i mean i think many people want to not everybody gets to i have just been on
the show for long
enough and i've written you know about 20 episodes at this point and a lot of
pleading and begging
i guess but uh i love it the one thing i was scared about when i was directing
though is the thing that
people probably thinks is really easy which is saying action because you have
to really be commanding
and if you say action too weekly the actors think you're a wimp right so i
started being like action
and i'd scream and like do an arm gesture like an umpire yeah like i was psyched
yeah that's cut is
even worse like i you have to really like be theatrical about it yeah so let's
hear a cut
i'd be like cut and i would do this like yeah i like that steve carell was like
cool about it
no i think that's good thank you now now do you do you see yourself uh uh in
equal interest uh
pursuing both or one or the other i think so i mean i'm my hero is woody allen
who does everything
extremely well so i but then you tell people that you want to be woody allen
and they're like
okay so that's just between us okay millions of people watching the show cut
that was awesome that was awesome that was awesome boy congratulations uh on
your office how long has
that show been on the air now 18 years now 18 years it's a regular gun smoke
isn't it it is it is
and i am hoss that was bonanza it doesn't make any difference um but you know
as you know like i'm
telling you that show a tremendous success in england and then came to this
country and now you're you're
taking the the ricky gervais part that there must be some pressure i've made it
suck i have made i have
taken what he did it was such his is such a definitive character right i think
and and fairly iconic and i
didn't watch much at all of the original because i was intimidated by him
because um his characterization
was so good and after having seen it i thought this is a terrible terrible idea
for me to even um
undertake it and it turns out that it was because um no it's just not working
out no it's no if you
watch the show if you compare them side by side i pale in comparison i think i
think the show is fine
just relax it is fun yeah but not good no it's it's fun for me to do and i
enjoy the money i'm making this
is being televised uh did uh did ricky i'm sure you talked with him at some
point along the way did
he give you any pointers any advice he did he said to try to make the rest of
the cast laugh you know
to sort of go off script and and improvise and and just keep everybody happy
and i haven't even done
that yeah um you know they i don't think i've ever made any of the other cast
members laugh once i'm
sorry to hear that but but yet the show's succeeding it's remarkable isn't it
it's kind of against all
odds yes uh have you uh uh found that being on the office now that the people
know you more than
prior to this yeah and i'm sure this happens to you a lot but you go out and
people think they know
you because you're in their home right every week and you're kind of small you're
not like on a big you
know movie um screen but uh the other day actually i was shopping with my
friend joey and i was trying
on a dress and i came out and and he said oh yeah i like that that's really
good and this woman who
just kind of like popped up in our group uh looks at me goes it's not
flattering and my first instinct
was um to be like oh you're right we should move i don't even know you how did
you get your my brain
couldn't come up with a name for her but besides that i was i was all game uh i
hear in your voice a
little bit of a regional uh uh accent i guess where where is that am i right
about it first yes you are
right where where are we talking about um i'm from archer city texas oh where
where is archer city it's
north of dallas it's a small town like 1600 people that were you born uh no i
was born louisiana
more than louisiana uh-huh oh my goodness where in louisiana lafayette but my
family's like from
the south uh-huh but i didn't grow up there right where did you grow up i grew
up in indonesia wow
you know what we need we need an atlas and a magic marker i know chart the
various places you've lived
what was life like in indonesia well you know i moved there when i was two so i
sort of thought
everybody grew up there but they don't um and uh and like like a lot of my
friends had crazy animals
as pets like monkeys lots of monkeys as pets like becky dempster she had a one-armed
she did
she had a one-armed gibbon and um
those are the best they really are the one if you can get a one-armed if you
can get a one-armed
you're in the hall of fame sure but her family went nuts over this monkey they
built a huge atrium for
it and they had a big window and like a breakfast nook so you could sit and eat
and be like look at the
monkey i'm eating breakfast yeah that's not yeah but i got to go in the atrium
it was a big rite of
passage or something so i go in and i was kidding around becky and i shoved her
playfully
and the monkey went berserk like jumped on me and started biting me and i was
hitting the monkey in
the head and uh the family was going not the monkey and so anyway it was bad
and then every
time i went over to that house and i had breakfast at the breakfast nook the
monkey would swing by and
pee on the window it was like his way of like yeah yeah i had an uncle who did
that
but now uh was there ever any discussion as how the poor monkey had lost his
arm um i think he hit a
power line oh this is just perfect for the holidays now uh you started your
acting career not in boston
but here here in new york city yeah here in new york as a professional waiter
that's where it all starts
oh good sure yeah yeah get out there that's the acting lesson um and uh that
was fun it was a good
time i uh there was actually a bunch of different restaurants but the quickest
one that i was in was
five days and it was a blue smoke which is a really nice restaurant yeah i
think it was still
a danny meyer's restaurant yeah yeah so that's that's pretty big deal so i said
well there's where the
money is i'm gonna make some money there so i go to the bar just thinking all i
need is a black t-shirt
and that'll be it and um turns out that's not the case at all um you were going
to be the bartender
yeah i was going to be the bartender do you know about bartending not at all
yeah no i think i i think
i lied on my resume too which is pretty bad but they have this board of a
hundred drinks and these drinks
uh it's not like beer and wine and soda it's like blue hurricane mist and red
devil face and like
what you know and so exactly and each of the drinks had so many ingredients
that began with like okay
what you need to do is you need to grind a grapefruit peel mix it with blood
orange then and you're like
i'm done i mean really so i had i had no chance so what i did was i started
making greyhounds for
everybody well i don't know what a greyhound is a greyhound is uh grapefruit
juice and vodka
bang what's what could be wrong with that that's it there you go yeah that's
all anybody wants
and so uh you know so so when you order the blue hurricane mist i'd put blue
curacao in
and put that in a twisty glass and send that down the bar and uh after my five-day
training period
i was feeling pretty good and um the manager came over she said how do you feel
i said uh pretty good
she goes yeah you're not gonna make it so oh oh and i said yeah i know and she
said we've had fun
but uh this isn't gonna work out and as she was firing me no joke at the bar uh
this woman this
like older woman holds up one of the drinks and goes this is delicious i want
another one of these
so exactly exactly tell me about the the office and its relationship with the
actual city of
scranton yes it's it's pretty crazy the office is set in scranton and the
people of scranton
have gone mad they've gone bazonkers really they even now have an office
convention every year
in honor of the office it's like literally there are two tv shows with
conventions the office and star trek
you're an excellent company it was crazy they brought me there when i didn't go
to the convention
but they brought me there once and i was treated like i was the pope i was i
was the beatles it was i had a
stretch hummer limo and a six police car escort how big a town is scranton i
have no idea there's
yeah over 800 people well that i think that's great but also gives you a lot of
pressure to live
up to because you know they're living through the the show yes they are they
are but i i love the good
people of scranton and and they love our show and i went i went to the mall and
there were like 3 000
people stretched around the mall and out the door and um they actually gave me
people brought their
babies for me to touch it was crazy the mayor to touch well just touch my baby
you don't like the
pope you know to bless to bless them to bless them dwight is like the pope but
they gave me they i
couldn't sign all autographs so they gave me a god mic and i was speaking to
all the people of the mall
such power dave exactly it was like the one ring in lord of the rings i don't
know if it's a power i
want to wield again no you know i could have told them all to jump on their
swords they would have done
it wow yeah it's crazy all right you're getting to be a little too intense for
me so i i have here
something uh i couldn't help but over uh couldn't help but notice the big book
of jewish humor 25th
anniversary uh and tell us your relationship to this uh volume of that's uh my
father's book this is uh
william novak my dad your father is is a writer and among this has written
other kind of books tell
us what other sort of thing well he's primarily a ghostwriter so he uh when you
see a celebrity
autobiography on the shelves and it says with william novak at the bottom that's
my dad yeah and uh for
example who has he worked with well he's worked with um a lot of political
people that weren't so much
fun for me as a kid u