KEY EPISODE 1

“Diversity Day”

About six months after the pilot was shot, NBC picked up The Office for five additional episodes. For the first one of the new batch, they moved away from the UK series and created something all their own with “Diversity Day.” It revolves around two mandatory diversity meetings in the conference room that go horribly wrong. The idea was hatched when Ben Silverman, Greg Daniels, and his manager Howard Klein traveled to England to meet up with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant before they formally began working on the series.

Greg Daniels: One of the things we talked about was that a big issue in American offices would be race. Huge. Bigger than class . . . That’s why we hit it dead-on.

Michael Schur (Writer, Seasons 1–5): It was completely and utterly different from any of the British Office episodes that had aired, which I think was really important. The tone was still the same, which was that the boss is doing something humiliating, but there wasn’t a direct equivalent at all in the British series. So, I remember thinking, “Boy, that’s a really smart move to show people, we’re not just taking the scripts from the British show and re-creating them.”

Larry Wilmore: B. J. Novak wrote the episode, but The Office was one of those shows where it didn’t matter who thought of the idea, someone else could write the episode. That’s how Greg did it. Everyone would chip in and write. It was very much a communal writing process as well as an individual writing process. This episode definitely was in my wheelhouse of the type of stuff I was pitching at the time. We knew we wanted to push the envelope in terms of the content.

It begins with an outside diversity expert named Mr. Brown (played by Larry Wilmore) coming into the office to conduct a seminar after Michael insulted many in the office by delivering an infamous Chris Rock comedy routine from Bring the Pain, which contains numerous uses of the word nigga.

Larry Wilmore: I didn’t want to take a part on the show that could have gone to an actor that really needed the work, but they asked me to read it at the table read since we didn’t have it cast yet. At the table read, I just killed. I really got a lot of laughs. But I kept saying, “We really should get an actor.” I don’t know how many people they auditioned, maybe one or two, but I feel like they were sneakily trying to get me to do it. I’m glad they did because it turned out to be one of the funnest things that I ever did.

Kate Flannery: It was so hard not to laugh because Steve was so real and so funny and Larry was coming in being so earnest.

Larry Wilmore: Steve Carell had me crying laughing. I had to keep a straight face during that scene. He was just really saying that bit over and over, “And the niggas . . . and the niggas . . .” He just said it over and over and I was crying with laughter. I don’t think you could get away with that these days.

Ken Kwapis: In the original script, Michael Scott’s diversity training seminar was held all over the office, all over the bullpen. I just had a gut feeling that if everyone was stuck in that conference room it would be funnier. I think that had an important impact on the episode, and it also had an impact on the series in general. It is hardly an original thought, but look at the stateroom scene in [the Marx Brothers movie] A Night at the Opera. People crammed into a small space is funnier than people having plenty of elbow room. Everyone is stuck in there for this poorly conceived seminar and just that by itself, I thought, was going to help the comedy. And moreover, the conference room became an important space for storytelling.

Larry Wilmore: That conference room scene has everything in it and it sets everything up for the rest of the series.

Greg Daniels: I had an expression that I used in the writers’ room to describe a scene where the situation was charged, several characters had different opinions, and there was an excuse for them to all sit around and fire off great lines one at a time. I called it a killing field, like it was just nonstop joke joke joke. They were usually scenes like a diversity training seminar in the conference room.

During Michael’s follow-up meeting, he required everyone to wear a notecard on their head that said things like “Asian,” “Jewish,” or “Black.”

Greg Daniels: The game of them putting cards on their foreheads happened to Tom Huang, our writers’ assistant at the time, who’s an independent filmmaker now. That’s something that he had suggested that had happened to him in a job. That was a great thing to be able to use. Something real.

Angela Kinsey: Mine was Jamaica. Jenna was Jewish. I’m sitting next to her and I look at her and Steve Carell was, as Michael Scott, giving his speech about diversity, and I just lost it laughing. I just bust out laughing. He was sitting right in front of us, he had turned his chair backward and was leaning forward to us, and I had the hardest time keeping a straight face. I thought, “This is really cool. This feels like lightning in a bottle. This chemistry. This group of people. I think we have something here.”

Greg Daniels: We had some wonderful cards we didn’t use, like “Szechuan” was one of my favorite cards that Michael had written down.

Steve Carell: Looking at people with cards on their heads all day, that was almost impossible to get through the day without laughing every time you looked at someone. It was just the most ridiculous visual.

Larry Wilmore: The camera keeps landing on uncomfortable faces, which of course Gervais did in the original as well. But we found our way to do that with our type of story.

Steve Carell: When the dailies for this show were being filtered about NBC, this Chris Rock routine [with multiple uses of the word nigga] was being played on most computers at NBC.

Greg Daniels: I woke up in a cold sweat that this was going to get out before the show with the un-bleeped version. I ran to the editing room and bleeped it on the master.

The episode marked the first appearance of writer Paul Lieberstein as HR rep Toby Flenderson.

Michael Schur: I remember Paul Lieberstein’s extreme reluctance to act in that episode even though he only had one line: “Are we all going to have to sit Indian style?” And Michael Scott, who is on this mission to prove that he’s culturally sensitive, immediately kicks Toby out of the meeting.

B. J. Novak: Paul has such a fun natural demeanor that we kept saying, “Paul should be in the show! Paul should be in the show!” And I believe I’m the one who said he should be named Toby.

Michael Schur: Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC, saw the dailies and said, “Who is that redheaded guy? Get him in the show more.”

Jim spends much of the episode trying to close a big-money deal with a client, which Dwight winds up stealing for himself. But near the end, Pam falls asleep on his shoulder in the conference room, giving them a rare moment of semi-intimacy. “Not a bad day,” Jim tells the unseen camera crew.

Ken Kwapis: That more than makes up for everything else that went wrong in Jim’s day. It took a lot of takes because Greg and the writers had so many thoughts about this small moment. I think we must’ve done it a dozen times. It wasn’t so much Jenna leaning her head as it was how John reacted. We did it over and over and over again. Between takes we’d have these big discussions about what the meaning of that reaction was. It’s the simplest little thing, and yet it was discussed with such eagerness by everyone. I think everyone sort of related to that moment in their own way. I remember B. J., Paul, Greg, and I all standing around discussing this quiet little moment. How surprised should Jim be? How happy or how obviously happy should he seem? It’s a moment that you can actually play in a lot of different ways. And we did. And as you know from many series, sometimes romances proceed at a glacial pace. But what was wonderful about this is it sort of made a big leap forward in the form of a tiny moment.

Larry Wilmore: Moments like that are more powerful than other things I’ve seen where there are big, fiery speeches because it reminds you of real life. I’ll never forget how John was frozen there a little, but then decided it was a delightful treat and he was going to enjoy it. It was such a nice little moment that played at the right speed. John is conveying that, “This isn’t completely what I want, but you know what? I’m happy and that’s okay. It’s okay to be happy right now. At the end of the day, I’m selling paper. This is bonus land right here.”

Oscar Nunez: As we’re shooting this episode I was thinking, “This is really, really funny.” I remember talking to Brian outside the building and I was like, “Brian, I can see us in three or four years getting an Emmy for writing or acting for this show.” I knew there was nothing else like it on American television.

Larry Wilmore: It was one of those breakthrough moments. I feel it is where we really put a stamp on what that American show should be, the way that we wanted to do it.

Paul Feig: “Diversity Day” was the episode where I was like, “This show is genius.” But, at the same time, I kept thinking, “I don’t know if they’re going to keep it on, because it’s really mean.” But that’s why it’s funny.

Ken Kwapis: But for a while there were pundits who said, “Oh, the show took a while to get its bearings and find itself.” And when you hear things like that you just kind of bite your tongue and move on. But inside I was saying, “Are you kidding? Watch ‘Diversity Day.’ Episode number two!”