Why The Office's Watermelon Scene Ended Up Costing $6,500 To Film
Considering that it's a sitcom about trying to liven up the dullness of cubicle life, it's only natural that "The Office" had a lot of physical stunts over the course of nine seasons on NBC. And it would seem the cast was always game to try them, even when certain scenes could be challenging. One sequence in Season 3, involving hot dogs, was outright nauseating to film. In another episode in the same season, titled "Business School," Meredith Palmer (Kate Flannery) had to put her head in a bag with a working mechanical bat (via Mashable).
Luckily, some of the show's crazier moments didn't always require physical challenges for the cast. In Season 3, Episode 20, titled "Safety Training," for example, Michael (Steve Carell) decides to prove to Darryl (Craig Robinson) that office life is just as dangerous as being in a warehouse. This eventually involves the delusional manager planning to jump off the building's roof and onto a trampoline — but first, he throws a watermelon to test the trampoline's strength. Here's why shooting the watermelon scene didn't go exactly as planned.
The watermelon damaged the roof of a car
First, Rainn Wilson — who plays Dwight Schrute — had a little trouble with aim. Throwing the watermelon off the roof and onto the trampoline required about a dozen takes, and it needed almost every melon the crew had bought to film "Safety Training." Series co-creator Greg Daniels even figured they'd have to use CGI to get it right (via Mashable).
In the final take, which was used for the episode, Wilson finally gets a watermelon to bounce off the trampoline, but the huge fruit immediately hits a Chrysler 300 which was located a few meters away, in the parking lot. It was funny, but according to Mashable, it was also a complete accident. Unfortunately, the heavy melon visibly dented the roof and broke another part of the overhead. The production team ultimately had to pay the owner $6500 to fix the car (via Mashable).
Hilariously, the episode eventually reveals that the Chrysler is Stanley's vehicle. Though the watermelon getting thrown off the roof turned out to be time-consuming and expensive for the series to get right, it was worth it for such an absurd joke.