This is a blog about the three actors who play Jim, Dwight and Michael on The Office.
Instead of Steve Carell, John Krasinski and Rainn Wilson, we’ll be talking about the characters they play. Even though the actors are an important part of what’s great about The Office, this is a show where the characters are so well-defined that we can talk about them as if they were real people.
We don’t have any inside information or anything, but it’s clear that there’s a lot going on with these guys. So let’s take a look at what they’ve been up to lately, and see if we can figure some of it out.
In order to understand Jim, Dwight, and Michael Scott, you must first understand the actor John Krasinski, the actor Rainn Wilson, and the actor Steve Carrell.
John Krasinski began acting when he was in college. He studied English at Brown University and acted in a number of plays there. He credits one of his professors with helping him to get a job at NYC’s Public Theater. John was an intern there, but soon began acting in various plays. He appears in a number of off-Broadway plays, most notably The Little Dog Laughed and Talk Radio. In 2006, he appeared in License To Wed (opposite Robin Williams) and Shrek 3 as Artie the knight. In 2007, he appeared with Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada as her boyfriend. In 2008, he appeared on Broadway in a revival of David Mamet’s play “Bobby Gould in Hell.”
In 2010, John Krasinski made his feature film directorial debut with Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (based on the David Foster Wallace collection). While shooting this film, John met his wife Emily Bunt (they’re expecting their first child very soon). They were married in 2010.
Rainn Wilson began acting when
The Office is full of great characters, but the three biggest stars are, without a doubt, Jim, Dwight, and Michael. You can tell a lot about these actors from watching their performances on the show, but you can learn even more from an interview with them in a magazine like Rolling Stone.
In the interview, Jim talks about his love for basketball and how that love affects his passion for acting. He also talks about his family and how he got into acting in the first place.
Dwight is known for being a bit of a loner, but he says that’s just an act. He loves people, especially his co-workers. He talks about how much fun it is to work on set with everyone else, and how he enjoys doing things like playing basketball with them and going out to eat lunch together.
Michael seems like such an open book when it comes to his character on The Office, but according to this interview he’s actually pretty guarded about his personal life. He does reveal some interesting facts though: he hates beets; he doesn’t really care what people think of him as long as they don’t judge him based solely on what they see on TV; and his favorite color is green.”
These two actors, who have been in the industry for years, really shine in their roles on The Office. When Jim plays pranks on Dwight or Michael says “That’s what she said,” it is easy to see how well crafted their characters are.
Played by John Krasinski, Jim Halpert is a sales representative at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. He has been with the company for several years and has developed a close relationship with his desk mate, Dwight Schrute. Jim is known for playing jokes and pranks on Dwight, but he seems to be a normal guy otherwise.
Portrayed by Rainn Wilson, Dwight Schrute is the assistant regional manager at Dunder Mifflin Scranton. He also works as a salesman and is usually the butt of Jim’s jokes. Dwight cares deeply about his job as shown by his willingness to take on new responsibilities like giving safety seminars and running the website.
Michael Scott is the regional manager at Dunder Mifflin Scranton and is played by Steve Carell. He has worked there for 12 years and enjoys making videos, talking about himself in the third person, and saying “That’s what she said.” Michael often makes inappropriate remarks or does things that cause his employees to
So you like The Office. You’re not alone. It’s popular because it’s good. But do you know who the characters are based on?
Take Dwight. He’s clearly a combination of Rainn Wilson and Don Knotts.
Rainn Wilson is the actor who plays Dwight, so that makes sense. And Don Knotts played Barney Fife, Andy Griffith’s sidekick in The Andy Griffith Show. Like Dwight, Barney was uptight and always trying to be in charge even though he wasn’t.
And Michael Scott? Steve Carell was born to play Michael Scott because he used to play Drew Carey on The Drew Carey Show. Drew and Michael are both clueless white guys who think they’re cool and end up causing trouble all the time.
And Jim? Jim is based on John Krasinski, who plays him. So that makes sense too (but also not).
I’m kidding, mostly. People have detected echoes of other characters in these three, but they’ve largely become their own thing at this point–which they should have, if the show is any good at all.
The Office is one of the best sitcoms ever on television. The show has a great style that is both realistic and comedic. It explores the depths of human emotion and relationships like no other show out there.
The Office has a cast of great characters, but there are three characters who stand out above the rest. These three characters are Michael Scott, Jim Halpert, and Dwight Schrute. Michael Scott is the Regional Manager at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company’s Scranton branch. He is a fun-loving guy who loves to make jokes and have fun with his co-workers, even though he doesn’t always understand them or get their jokes right. He’s also the boss of Jim and Dwight, who both work at Dunder Mifflin as salesmen for paper products. Jim is funny and outgoing, and enjoys making people smile by playing pranks on them or telling jokes about them behind their backs. Dwight is very serious and uptight, but he has a good heart under all that seriousness because he cares about his job and his co-workers so much that he wants to do well for them all; he just goes about it in a very weird way sometimes (like when he picked a fight with Kevin).
The Office has been on for
I’m a character actor — that’s a term I use, but it’s not one that’s widely used in the industry. If you watch TV or movies, you’ve seen character actors. These are performers whose faces are extremely familiar to you, but whose names may not be. They’re the people who play the best friend and neighbor and coworker, who appear over and over again in different roles, often playing “types” that are defined by their ethnicity or their age or their body type. They are rarely, if ever, the stars of the shows they appear on.
For me personally, I enjoy watching the work of character actors more than anything else on screen. I like watching a performer slowly develop a persona over multiple roles — where you can see them begin to hone their craft and become more comfortable with their tools. And as someone who aspires to be a working actor myself someday, I also like studying these performers and seeing what choices they make to keep themselves working in an industry that is largely controlled by casting directors who have very specific ideas about what kinds of people should play what kinds of parts.
I’ve chosen three actors for this series: two men and one woman, two white people and one African-American person. All three have had careers
CuteAct is a contributor at CuteAct. We are committed to providing well-researched, accurate, and valuable content to our readers.
