Melora Hardin revealed the secret weapon the cast used which made The Office a comedy hit.
In recent podcast episode of Still Here Hollywood by Steve Kmetko, the actress got candid about filming hilarious scenes for the sitcom.
“They would do a thing where, we would always do it the way it was written, and then they would hand us sort of a candy bag,” she said.
“They would call it a candy bag, and we could literally pull-out lines. It would just be little lines that were options that we could throw in if we wanted to.”
The 17 Again star said that the “candy bags” approach of half-prepared of slightly prepared improvisations “was always a thing we did with scenes. Once we got it as written, we would we would play.”
Hardin, who played Jan Levison as the Vice President of Sales at Dunder Mufflin, also talked improvising scenes with Steve Carell. Their characters, Levison and Carell’s Micheal, had an unlikely romantic relationship from season two to four.
“Most of my scenes were with Steve Carell,” she said in the podcast. “And working together, you know, Steve was great. I would throw a ball straight one time, a curve ball next time, and he would send it right back.”
The 57-year-old artist further explained that they both had a background in improvisation and “so if you are an actor who has had improv and you work with other actors who who’ve done a lot of improvs, it really is a lot of fun.”
In 2009, series creator Greg Daniels also explained that the “Candy bag” as a source where writers use to leave extra dialogues in it for any actor to grab it perform.
The comedy sitcom series, The Office, ran on NBC from 2005 to 2013.
