It was after business hours.
“The Office” star Brian Baumgartner has revealed that the cast used to sneak back on set after filming — for one key reason.
“There were some nights where we came back to Dunder Mifflin late at night when the shooting had stopped,” Baumgartner, 52, exclusively told The Post. “The people who were involved in the Fantasy Football league would sit at all of the working computers, and draft in person together there.”
“We would finish filming for the day … And just sort of let us use the set to host our fantasy football draft parties,” he explained. “Those are very fond memories, for sure.”
Baumgartner played the chili-loving Kevin Malone from 2005 to 2013. The NBC comedy also starred Steve Carrell, John Krasinski, Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fisher and Mindy Kaling. They played staffers at the paper company, Dunder Mifflin.
Baumgartner is still in a fantasy football league with many of his former co-stars, including Wilson and Krasinski.
“I do a fair amount [of trash talking.] I’m very active….during the draft,” he said while promoting his partnership with Samuel Adam’s Octoberfest beer, including a limited-edition Fall Legends Commissioner’s Kit for Fantasy Football season. “If you draft wrong, you’re going to hear from me, probably Rainn Wilson as well. He’s a big trash talker.”
Carrell, however, isn’t in their league. “He’s kind of a Patriots guy. And hockey is more Steve’s thing,” he noted. “Steve still played hockey while we were shooting the show in a rec league.”
The cast would even play Fantasy Football on their characters’ computers when the cameras rolled.
“We were probably all much better players when we had time there to just sit and look at our computers,” he said.
“We were doing that, and paying bills. That was another popular activity because we were there so many hours during the week. We would pay bills, and get personal business done.”
The show exploded in popularity during the 2020 pandemic. According to Nielsen data, “The Office” was the most streamed show of 2020, raking in over 57 billion minutes viewed.
He recalled an incident when, “I was chatting with Rainn [Wilson] and I said, ‘it feels like the show is as big as it was when we were at the height.’ And I remember this specifically, he said, ‘no, it feels bigger.’”
Baumgartner, in particular, looks back fondly on scenes where the Dunder Mifflin staffers would have meetings in the conference room.
“It’s hard to really have people understand how small that conference room really was. [Creator] Greg Daniels kept it very small because he wanted it to have that sort of claustrophobic feeling,” he told The Post. “We all felt a little punch drunk…..Steve really thrived in those moments and very clearly to me, he did his best to try to make us laugh.”
