“The Office” cast had a nearly-deadly surprise while filming an episode directed by a famous TV criminal.
Actors Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, who co-starred on the hit NBC comedy series and have released a book about the show, wrote about how a stunt driver “swerved hard” and made the cast go “flying” inside of a bus, Mashable reported.
The episode, “Work Bus,” featured guest director Bryan Cranston, who is known for playing Walter White in the series “Breaking Bad.” In the book, The Office BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There, Kinsey joked about the irony of Cranston’s ties to the episode.
“We see the irony that Bryan Cranston, a.k.a. Walter White Sr. or ‘Heisenberg’ as he was known in crystal methamphetamine circles, was an accessory to almost murdering the entire cast of ‘The Office,’” Kinsey wrote. “I assure you this is pure coincidence.”
The episode involved Dwight Schrute (played by Rainn Wilson) crafting a temporary work space for staff members to use while the Dunder Mifflin building underwent repairs. Jim Halpert (played by John Krasinski) had suggested the repairs so he could get a few days off. But Schrute decided to create a mobile office on a bus instead.
Halpert then proposed using the bus to travel to the “best rural pie stand in Pennsylvania” and, after “pie” chants, Shrute took the bus on the road.
You can get a refresher of the show’s “Work Bus” episode below:
A scene featuring Schrute’s bad driving caused the show to hire a stunt driver to fill in for Wilson, Fischer explained. To make the scene look more realistic, the cast stayed on the bus as it hit the open road. That’s when the show’s assistant director told the stunt driver to swerve, Kinsey wrote.
“I mean he cranked that wheel like Cole Trickle in ‘Days of Thunder,’” she detailed. “What no one had considered when they told this stunt driver to swerve as hard as he could without flipping the bus over was that none of our office furniture, props or set decorations were securely tied down.”
The episode’s filming wasn’t without other fumbles, too. Fischer wrote about how the show’s staff hooked up the “hot tin can” with a portable air conditioner.
“We were thrilled…” she wrote.
But it turned out the portable A/C unit was adjacent to the bus’ exhaust pipe.
“We were all being slowly poisoned. Or not so slowly, actually,” Fischer wrote.
The Office BFFs is described as an intimate portrait of the hit comedy series and includes never-before-seen photos from “The Office.” The actors have also dished out details about the show on their popular podcast “Office Ladies.”