The Untold Truth Of The Office Webisodes

If you're a huge fan of "The Office," you probably know about the accompanying Emmy-winning webseries "The Accountants," which came out in the summer of 2006, in that agonizing chasm between seasons. As fans rewatched Season 2 and waited impatiently for Season 3, they were greeted with 10 new, miniature episodes of "The Office" released on NBC.com.

If you're an even bigger fan of the hit sitcom, you probably know that the success of "The Accountants" spawned over a half-dozen other webseries, and while, unfortunately, none of them are quite as long, each one gives us a glimpse into a character or facet of Dunder Mifflin life that we just can't get from the full episodes. We get to see characters who don't get as much screen time in the principal series fleshed out, portrayed with greater creative and improvisational leeway than afforded on network television. If you haven't seen Creed go after his coworkers one by one in the "Blackmail" episodes or witnessed the rise and fall of Malone's Cones in "Kevin's Loan," you're seriously missing out.

And even if you're caught up on all of the bonus web content from "The Office," don't worry, there's still more to scratch the itch the series left us with when it concluded in 2012 — like the behind-the-scenes secrets that made the online hidden gems possible.

"The Accountants" also wouldn't have been possible without the volunteer effort of everyone involved. Yep, unlike the broader series, the first set of webisodes weren't a paid opportunity: They were just something fun to do between scenes, and if that doesn't tell you how much the members of the series really loved being a part of it, who knows what will! How good does a job have to be to make someone want to do it for free in their downtime?

For "The Accountants," there was no budget, and the webisodes were written and shot between scenes during Season 2, whenever any of the actors were free. They mainly shot "vignettes" whenever individual characters had time, according to Paul Lieberstein, and then filled in the story whenever they had the opportunity to get more people together at once.

Yet, despite the unconventional nature and composition of the webisodes, "The Accountants" won a Daytime Emmy.

The accountants weren't the only ones whose background work on their characters paid off in the webisodes. For the "Subtle Sexuality" series, Mindy Kaling's backstory for her character, Kelly Kapoor, included the dramatically inclined customer service rep getting absolutely sick of watching "American Idol" after years of trying and failing to get on the show and taking matters into her own hands. If America wouldn't idolize her, well, she would idolize herself. It was time to record her own debut song.

That song was called "Male Prima Donna," and, of course, it's about Dwight. Just kidding — the song is very patently a revenge ballad-slash-love song about Ryan the temp (B.J. Novak), who also has a rap interlude in the song.

Everyone involved thought that the song actually turned out really well, and not just in the delusional manner in which Ryan and Kelly in particular believe in their own "it" factor. Ed Helms remarked that you could easily dance to this song (even someone like him, who's not really into clubbing, could get down to it). B.J. Novak went so far as to say that he wouldn't be surprised if you heard it in the clubs. And Ellie Kemper even listened to it while jogging!

For her Halloweens as a kid, for the first five to seven years of her childhood, Ellie Kemper alternated costumes with her brother each year. One would be Superman/girl and the other a cat each year, and then they would switch the following year. It's a creative way of making use of the available resources, a spirit the "Office" webisodes themselves depend on to function.

When she was a kid, Kate Flannery would dress up as the Flying Nun for Halloween. She's noted that this is something that shows how old she is: The reference is to an American sitcom titled after the character that originally aired on ABC from 1967 to 1970. With her billowy costume on, Flannery actually thought that with a strong wind, she could really fly — and from the top of a hill, she (valiantly, but unsuccessfully) attempted to. It seems that she had a predisposition toward physical comedy and stunt work from a very young age!

Meredith, Flannery's character on "The Office," performed all sorts of stunts and gags herself on the show, many of which unfortunately got cut out of the final episodes, according to the "Office Ladies" podcast. And in the behind-the-scenes interview for "The 3rd Floor," she admits that Halloween is the thing that launched her acting career. Thank goodness for that!

The "Office" webisodes offered fascinating directorial experiences for a lot of the actors and writers, paving the way for them to take on such roles in the main series. B.J. Novak actually made his "Office" directorial debut during the webseries "Blackmail," not the show itself. He then went on to direct his first main series episode in the very next season, Season 6, helming the inimitable and notoriously cringey "Scott's Tots."

Kate Flannery says Novak is a "natural," not just at directing but at everything in life. This would mean that in real life, B.J. is everything Ryan Howard wishes he could be (or imagines that he is). Or as Kevin Malone would say: He's so money, but he doesn't even know it... But he does.

Novak was a wonderful choice to direct the Creed-focused "Blackmail" episode, because he has a unique sense of the actor Creed Bratton's range: namely that it's infinite. He commented that an episode in which Dwight blackmailed his coworkers would go one way and another way if it were Jim, but with Creed, "it's about a hundred different ways."

Mindy Kaling made her directorial debut in the webseries "Subtle Sexuality," and like B.J. Novak, she also directed her first regular-season episode in Season 6 of "The Office." Eventually, her creative signature came to be recognizable. As a writer, Kaling typically pens somewhat more dramatic, romantic, and heartwarming episodes and, most notoriously, episodes in which Dwight acts as (or attempts to act as) a real ladies' man.

Some of these episodes, like "Niagara," in which Dwight acts like a real player at Pam's wedding, have come to rest among the most cherished in "Office" canon, and when Kaling directed "Office" episodes, they similarly pulled at our heartstrings. (Think of "Michael's Last Dundies," for goodness' sake.) So we should be eternally grateful to the webisodes for giving Mindy her directing start.

Kaling, while directing the "Subtle Sexuality" episodes, got complete reign over B.J. Novak's hair, wardrobe, and makeup, which we must imagine is a dream come true both for her and her character, Kelly, a nightmare for Ryan, and maybe a little of both for B.J. (She called his look "Adam Levine meets Boys II Men.")

Her cast members have described her during the webisodes as the "prettiest" and "highest-voiced" director and one who knows exactly what she wants and has a unique vision that tends toward sparkly, exciting things — making a pop music video the perfect outlet for her, and her character, to, as Ed Helms puts it, "erupt."

Yes, the accountants did do some improvising in their eponymous Emmy-winning online episodes! While "The Office" is famous for both allowing a lot of improvisation and scripting a lot of moments that seem improvised, there was actually a lot more freedom to truly play off the cuff in the webisodes.

The characters got to explore what would normally be left on the cutting room floor in the main series. To give you an idea of just how much we're missing, the editors' cut for each regular series episode would clock in at about 36 minutes, of which about 16 minutes would have to be cut out, which meant that we lost a lot of meat from the more minor characters.

But the webisodes are more than just glorified deleted scenes. Very quickly, they took on a life of their own. The three accountants, Michael Schur noted in 2006, are all "hilarious ... individually accomplished improvisational comedians," so it was really enjoyable to give them the opportunity to "goof around on camera." They'd do the script as written for three or four takes to make sure they had it and then begin to keep going at the end of the take, with the encouragement of the directors, to see if something funny came up. A lot of these things make it into episodes, especially when there is more freedom.