Director Paul Feig Shares Non-Spoilery Secrets of Steve Carell's Exit from 'The Office'

In the victory lap that has preceded his exit from 'The Office,' Steve Carell once again proved how vital he has been to the success of the NBC comedy.

Now that 'The Office' is in its seventh season, it's not as consistently funny as it was in its earlier years, but Carell is the reason that season 7's best moments worked so very well. Because Carell made us root for this incompetent Dunder Mifflin manager, Michael Scott's proposal to Holly Flax -- and even his worshipful groping of her -- provided the show with its most memorable moments in ages.

The actor leaves the show for good in Thursday's super-sized episode, and Paul Feig, who directed the episode and many other fine 'Office' outings, recalls the evolution of the character and talks about Carell's exit in the Q&A below.

But before we get to that, I'd like to offer a few words of praise for Carell's work during the past seven seasons. Five years after seeing 'Benihana Christmas,' his "Bros before Hos" speech still makes me crack up, and that was just one perfect scene among many moments of verbal or physical mayhem over the past seven seasons. We know he can do the funny, but there aren't many comedic actors who could also nail an incredibly sweet moment like the proposal to Holly. Carell is an inherently unshowy actor, but his range is awe-inspiring. (Check out this video collection of some of Michael most memorable moments.)

It's easy to take potshots at Michael Scott's craziest moments, and it's true that sometimes his self-absorbed lunacy made the show more broad than it needed to be. But there's always been an innocence about Michael, an earnestness and a basic lack of cynicism that made him -- and his most sigh-inducing moments -- so eminently forgivable.

In some ways, Michael is emblematic of the culture that has arisen in the past decade or so, in which reality "stars" and some celebrities sought to prove the dodgy theory that attention and affection are the same thing. Fame-seeking is a way of life now; it's become such a part of our culture that it's rarely even remarked on any more.

Weirdly enough, the main subject of a fake documentary gave us the truest portrait of the attention-craving culture in which we find ourselves. For us non-celebs, Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare give us all the pleasant illusion that people actually care about our day-to-day activities. We are all Michael Scott, in some way or another -- we all have insecure and needy moments, but we usually try to hide them. Michael put those qualities right there out in the open, and, amazingly, Carell made us love the guy for it. He proved that comedy doesn't have to revolve around quippy people wearing a lot of emotional armor; he made the world safe for Leslie Knope, Chuck Bartowski and Phil Dunphy.

Unlike Chuck, Michael was never a technology-obsessed guy; he specialized in (frequently inappropriate) face-to-face contact, which made him something of a throwback. He thought of himself as an entertainer, a showman, a filmmaker, a bon vivant. He was none of those things, but the more his co-workers allowed him to think that about himself, the happier he was. He wanted his office family to feed his illusions, not just his ego.

Thus the crucial moment of the season -- and possibly the character's evolution -- was Michael's realization that his hilariously derivative film, 'Threat Level Midnight,' was terrible. At first he reacted with typical petulance and defensiveness when Holly refused to lavish the film with unearned praise. But eventually, amazingly, he was able to see 'Threat' for what it was -- an amateur attempt to pay homage to the kind of action films he enjoys. He was able to take the movie for what it was, and he didn't feel the need to cling to the idea that everyone needed to love it.

There's hope for Michael yet, because he's with a woman who totally understands him and gets his sense of humor, but who won't let him remain a tantrum-throwing child forever. Now that Michael has Holly, he can give up the dream of being an entertainer, for the most part. Making her laugh is really all that he needs at this point. The fact that he understands his limitations -- and the new kind of intimate freedom he has with Holly -- shows just how far he's come.

So Michael has found a focus, one that better suits his needs and dreams, but what about the show? What will it do without the guilelessness and the dogged sincerity that allowed him to follow countless bad ideas to their insane or ridiculous conclusions? I do worry that 'The Office' will be a lesser show without Michael and his deranged innocence at its center.

The good news is that Will Ferrell isn't going to take Carell's place. Ferrell is a good actor, but in his first two episodes, his character, Deangelo Vickers, has been all over the map -- cruel one minute, sweet the next, nervous at the 'Dundies' but also capable of cynical manipulation and general weirdness. The character doesn't seem to have any kind of a core at this point -- he appears to be whatever the writers need him to be in a particular scene. As Ryan McGee and I discussed in the most recent Talking TV podcast, 'The Office' has a very particular ecosystem that doesn't do very well when it comes to stuntcasting (which is why it's mildly depressing to hear that Jim Carrey will appear in the season finale).

I'll be glad once the big stars are gone from 'The Office,' given that it's at its best when it lets small moments resonate. But after this season, where does the show go? The show's cast is certainly skilled, but I can't see Jim and Pam forming the emotional core of the show going forward. They were very important in that regard for a long time, but in the past couple of seasons they've been insufferable at times. True, they're not always that way, but unless they have a quest or a goal that viewers can identify with, they're best off as supporting characters.

Should the show hire a new actor to come in and be the boss after Deangelo? Should that person become one of the main focal points of the show? Or should 'The Office' writers keep the show more of an ensemble comedy, and possibly promote a new boss from within?

Those decisions are above my pay grade, so to speak, and that's fine by me. All I can say is, I'm strangely glad that Michael Scott is leaving. He's graduated to adulthood -- to the extent that he'll ever truly grow up -- and it's time for him to move on.

Carell didn't outstay his welcome. A year from now, or even six months from now, I wonder if we'll think the show itself did.

Asked whether he thought the show has a future without Carell, Feig, who was a producer/director on the show for several years and who has directed episodes throughout 'The Office's' run, answered in the affirmative; he thinks the comedy is well situated for the future. His thoughts on Thursday's episode, working with Carell and the evolution of Michael Scott are below.

Maureen Ryan: Was this episode more daunting than other 'Office' episodes you've directed in the past?
Paul Feig: I've been lucky enough to get to do some of their bigger [episodes], [Jim and Pam's] wedding, the engagement, 'Dinner Party' and all of that, but this was more daunting just knowing how emotional the week was going to be. Steve is so beloved, and the biggest thing to contend with for everybody is the fact that they're not going to see and to work with him every day, like they have for the last seven years.

But creatively, [executive producer] Greg [Daniels] wrote a great script, Greg and the writers, and we were all really happy with it. So you just always want to make sure you do it justice. That's always the scariest thing about it. You are given a great script then you want to make sure that you play it correctly and get all the performances right. But [the cast has] been together so long and they're such pros that all you really do is just kind of guide the ship along a little bit.

But it was daunting in the sense that it was Steve's last episode, so you really want it to be great. So it was fun, but it was hard. It was just emotionally hard because we were all very emotional. I mean, they were getting emotional shooting ['Michael's Last Dundies']. And that's when it really started closing in on people -- that Steve's time was coming to a close. So by the time we got to [Carell's] final week, it was so emotionally charged that people were almost trying to sublimate their feelings, just for self-preservation, [but] it would still pop up at different moments, out of different people.

It was kind of an epic event to break up the family like that. You know, "break up" sounds too dramatic, but to have a family member go away like that, it's a big deal.

I know you don't want to give away what happens in the episode, but does it have that sort of "victory lap" feeling to it, is it kind of nostalgic about Michael's tenure at Dunder Mifflin or Steve's tenure on the show? Or is it not really like the nostalgic episodes we've seen lately?
I feel that this is a very satisfying, realistic portrayal of someone leaving, a boss leaving. The biggest challenge was to not let our emotions behind the camera overtake the reality of what would be going on when Michael Scott is leaving Dunder Mifflin. You know what I mean? Michael Scott leaving Dunder Mifflin is a different event than Steve Carell leaving the cast of 'The Office.'

Yes. Exactly. They're two different things.
And so the thing we had to manage is -- it can't be everybody at Dunder Mifflin crying for half an hour because Michael's leaving. Because, look, he's had a very weird relationship with all of them, I mean, there were times they wanted to kill him. [laughs] So suddenly, "Oh, everybody's falling apart" -- that wouldn't be honest. What Greg wrote and what we ended up with was very emotionally honest for this real-life situation.

It sounds like the temptation would have been to have it go big in some ways, emotionally or just in terms of the comedy. But as you say, it's probably more realistic to keep it within the framework that 'The Office' has established.
Yeah, very much so. You don't want it to jump out as not being emotionally honest because, as outrageous as the show can be, it's always been emotionally honest. It's always been grounded, even in its nuttiness. It's always coming from this very honest place, and so that's exactly where this [episode] is coming from, and you wouldn't want anything different. You wouldn't suddenly want, "And the spaceship comes down and takes Michael away." This feels very... I'm very, very pleased with it.

I've been watching a lot of 'Office' episodes lately, and it struck me again, as crazy and weird and inappropriate as he can be, Michael's not mean. He's very rarely actually cruel to people, and when he is, he almost always feels bad right away. Do you think 'The Office' was taking a risk by putting this kind of guy at the center of the show? Because now there are all these well-meaning, non-cynical dorky guys on TV shows, but he was kind of the first or among the first when 'The Office' came out.
Well, yeah. What happened was, when they did that first season of six episodes, they were trying to be very true to the spirit of the original 'Office' [that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant created]. But the problem is, as much as I loved that kind of comedy, that's a little meaner, a little darker. British audiences really like that, and American audiences don't like it. They get very weird about unredeemable characters. I think the Brits can have fun laughing and [don't mind having the reaction], "Look at that guy, he is so horrible, let's just laugh at him and enjoy his downfall or just him being a jerk."

I think they found, as good as those first six [episodes] are, that [Michael Scott] was [coming off as] a little bit mean. I wasn't around for those, but I came in right at the beginning of the second season, which was the first whole season, and it was right when '40 Year Old Virgin' had been a hit over the summer.

So the first six did not do well in the ratings, it [survived] only because Kevin Reilly, who was the head of the network at that time, liked it so much, he kept it alive. They kind of got a stay of execution, and there was definitely a feeling [that] something had to be done, something had to be fixed a little bit. And I think everybody was looking at '40 Year Old Virgin' and saying, "He's so lovable, how do we bring that into the show?" So they started writing [situations] where he would solve problems when it was least expected, he would actually do something good or something nice or something smart.

The first moment [the evolution of Michael] really crystallized was a totally accidental moment. It was in [season 2's third episode] 'Office Olympics,' after Michael's freaking out about buying his condo and all that, and then they're back in the office playing the office Olympics. Jim does the final ceremony where they give out the gold medal, and he gives one to Michael. Michael's like, "Why?" He says, "Oh, just you know, for being you because you bought a condo" or whatever.

And so they played the national anthem. It's this ridiculous thing where he's standing on these blocks at the end of the Olympics and everybody sort of having a laugh at his expense. And Steve just started to get emotional during it. He started to well up, and it was this moment of, "Oh my God, this guy is so vulnerable." We just kind of encouraged him to keep doing it. And then there was this turning point where you go, "There's a real guy in there. There's a real, vulnerable, kind of lovable guy who means well."

What are some of your favorite Michael scenes, the ones that you think really capture the character?
There are so many. I always gravitate towards the ones that I directed, but there's one that I didn't direct that I've always loved. It's 'The Deposition' [in season 4], where they find out about his and Jan's relationship and he has to go in front of the board and give testimony. I just thought that was so funny because he's this guy caught up in a very officious, anal setting and he's very loose and is saying the wrong things but trying to say the right thing. I thought it was a very relatable moment. [It could happen to] any of us, you know, trying to sound smart in court, extending ourselves beyond our available vocabulary and trying to be smart beyond our level of understanding.

I also really love [the next season 4 episode, which Feig directed] 'The Dinner Party.' In terms of my favorites of the ones I've directed, it's a toss-up between that and [Jim and Pam's wedding episode,] 'Niagara.'

What I love about 'Dinner Party' is, it's just this little psychodrama that doesn't happen on the set of the 'Office.' To watch a relationship dissolve in front of you eyes is so incredibly uncomfortable. We all loved that episode [but] a lot of fans didn't like that episode when it first came on, because it was so cringe-inducing that it made people so uncomfortable. They almost resented it for that. But I think once you've seen it once and you know it's coming, then you can enjoy all the discomfort. Which I love.

I think that episode contains my favorite, "That's what she said!" in the history of 'The Office.'
Yeah, I loved that.

As a director, what is Steve like to work with? I mean, obviously he has his roots in improv comedy in Chicago. Is he someone who does a fair amount of improv on set? What's that process like?
He's a joy, an absolute joy to work with and I don't mean that in a show-biz way. He is a gentleman, he's so great.

What I love about what Steve does is that everything he does has to come from a very honest, grounded place. His instinct is never, "What's the craziest thing I can do?" It's always, "How would Michael really react? How would I really react to this situation?" He'll never go too big and sometimes if he thinks you want him to go big, he won't want to go that big.

My feeling as a director is, the best comedy talent I work with, they have a natural governor inside of them -- a limiter that will stop them from going too far, to where [a moment] becomes unbelievable or not good. So I can push them really far, knowing they're never going to go too far. So, sometimes with Steve, he'll be worried that [a moment] is going to be too big, and he'll just take it right up to that edge of the line where it's hilarious and it doesn't go too far.

And then the improv is so much fun. You know, they write amazing scripts where, if you just shot the scripts word for word, the shows would be great. But then we have ideas and I'll give him an idea and [the cast] all have ideas. So we just play with it. He'll come out with stuff that I just don't expect.

Greg Daniels and [executive producer] Paul Lieberstein are such generous showrunners [and incorporate improv material into the final product]. I've worked on plenty of shows where if something is improvised and wasn't written by the producer, then it won't get in the show. But I've seen Greg jettison story lines to keep in an improv scene that we came up with.

An example of that was in the 'Halloween' episode [in season 5]. That whole thing of Dwight [as a Sith Lord], where it turns into something like a scene from a 'Star Wars' -- that happened because with the angle I started shooting it at, he looked exactly like the Emperor. Greg thought it was so funny that he cut out some other scenes and just to [give more time to] that extended scene. In the world that I work in, it's very unusual that a writer/showrunner would let something like that live and get rid of something he had written in to make room for it.

But that's why the show feels so vital and alive because these things are happening in the moment. We're shooting it in a way that we're covering both sides [i.e. filming multiple actors] at the same time. And I feel like comedy is never funnier than when [it happens] the first time.

Well, the way the show is shot, that fluid, multi-camera approach -- it's sort of infected all of television comedy, in a good way.
Yeah. You know, the hand-held [camera] was so verboten back then. And now, that's the ubiquitous style and I think it's the greatest. I think it's the best style to shoot comedy in, because it's very alive, it feels very fly-on-the-wall, it feels like you're there. It's not formal. It takes the formality out of the words and out of the actions. It makes it all behavioral. It's behavioral comedy as opposed to wordy, jokey comedy where everybody's kind of talking clever and, you know, not sounding like the way human beings talk.

The fact that it is a [shot as a] documentary... everybody's trying to look good in front of the camera, everybody's convinced they only say stuff that they think makes them sound smart, which is then ever funnier because you realize, "Oh my God, he's so dumb he thinks he's sounding smart by saying this."

It's obviously been coming for a long time -- Steve leaving the show -- but what do you think his departure means for 'The Office' moving forward? As we were saying, he's in many ways the heart and the soul of the show.
Well, you have this insanely amazing talented group of people [in the cast]. If any show is in the position to live beyond the top star [leaving], it's this show. Between John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer and Rainn Wilson and Ed Helms and everyone, I think they're in great shape. It just depends on the writers. I think they're in fine position to keep going, as long as they get excited about new ideas.

Anything else you wanted to add?
Yeah, I have a movie, 'Bridesmaids,' coming out May 13.

Oh, please feel free to say something about that.
Please go see it everyone. I think it's a very honest, funny but real and grounded comedy about a very funny, talented group of women. I hope it's the first of many, many projects that feature really talented women, because there are so many of them out there that aren't working right now or not getting good enough roles.

Follow @MoRyan on Twitter.