The Office is known for masterfully straddling the line between funny and offensive, but there are certain episodes that definitely cross into uncomfortably inappropriate territory.
On the second episode of Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey's Office Ladies podcast, the two former co-stars dished on one of the most cringeworthy episodes of the show, "Diversity Day."
The second episode of the series, which first aired on March 29, 2005, finds the folks at Dunder Mifflin attending a mandatory diversity training after complaints against Michael Scott were made. Michael isn't pleased with the official training, so he holds his own later in the day, and subjects his employees to a slew of stereotypes.
Remember that painfully awkward scene when the Scranton employees had to tape index cards to their heads that specified certain races, and then guess what was on their card from clues their co-workers gave them? Well, it turns out that awful exercise was inspired by a real-life experience.
"A lot of people want to know where did the idea for this episode come from," Fischer said, before revealing that the episode is based off of a real-life experience of the show's writer’s assistant, Tom.
She went on to explain that when the writers were throwing out ideas for episodes, Tom told a story about how in one of his college classes they had to do "this exercise where they put notecards on their heads that said different ethnicities, and then they had to go around and regard one another as that ethnicity using stereotypes."
Yikes.
"That happened, so let that sink in. That happened to people," Fischer said.
The two went on to share a bunch of other fascinating tidbits about "Diversity Day" and the show itself, so here are 17 other behind-the-scenes facts that fans need to know.
1. This was the first totally original script of the American version of The Office. The pilot was an adaptation of the British show's script.
2. BJ Novak (Ryan Howard) wrote this episode when he was 25 years old. It was his first job writing for a television show and his first script.
3. The show's original writing staff was Greg Daniels (executive producer and showrunner,) Paul Lieberstein (Toby Flenderson), Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapoor), Mike Shur, and BJ Novak, with Larry Wilmore and Lester Lewis consulting.
4. Every year NBC would require the cast and crew of the show to attend a sexual harassment seminar in the warehouse, and by Season 4 or 5 of the show the video package used for the training contained clips from The Office to illustrate how not to behave in the workplace.
5. Kevin Reilly, who was head of NBC at the time, saw "Diversity Day" and loved the dynamic between Toby and Michael. That's why Toby became a series regular.
6. Kelly Kapoor is dressed very properly in the episode, but after Mindy Kaling realized Kelly would be a series regular she decided she had to up her character's fashion game.
7. Like fans, Jenna and Angela have no idea how that table was magically moved in and out of the conference room.
8. Rainn Wilson (Dwight K. Schrute) almost broke a shredder because he was so determined to shred a credit card.
9. In the opening shot of the episode you can see a Homer Simpson doll near Phyllis' desk, which was a nod to Greg Daniels' past job writing on The Simpsons.
10. Only five cast members were series regulars at the start of the show. The rest, including Kinsey, didn't become series regulars until the "Booze Cruise" episode in Season 2.
11. After work ended the cast would stay and watch Red Sox games in John Krasinski's trailer. Jenna and Phyllis, who were Cardinals fans, watched their games in another trailer.
12. The cast and crew were great at FreeCell Solitaire, which Pam is seen playing in the episode. They held FreeCell competitions to entertain themselves in between scenes, because the set didn't get WiFi until July 2006. Kate Flannery (Meredith Palmer) held the title for a long time.
13. For years, the cast would alternate houses to host weekly viewing parties so they could watch the episodes together as they aired.
14. Paul Lieberstein wrote the fan-favorite line, “Abraham Lincoln once said, if you are a racist I will attack you with the North."
15. Mindy could not stop laughing when it came time to film the scene where Kelly slaps Michael.
16. In a deleted scene, Jim pranks Dwight by giving him a new notecard to put on his head. It said "Dwight," and Rainn walked around the office while people said things like, "Oh man, you’re annoying," and "you’re difficult to be around."
17. They filmed the scene when Pam falls asleep on Jim's shoulder about 15 times, and BJ Novak's stage direction was, "Jim reacts to Pam falling asleep on him like a butterfly has landed on his shoulder."
You can stream episodes of The Office on Netflix and follow along with the podcast every week on Earwolf, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.
Topics The Office Celebrities
