Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Emmy Award Winner Brian Baumgartner

I recently interviewed Brian Baumgartner on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today spent nine years working as an accountant for America's best-known paper company, Dunder Mifflin, and won an Emmy along the way. Brian Baumgartner played Kevin on the hit TV show The Office and is the producer and host of two popular office-focused podcasts, An Oral History of the Office and The Office Deep Dive. Brian, thank you for joining us.

Brian: Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Adam. It's a pleasure to be here.

Adam: Pleasures mine. Brian, can you take listeners back to your early days before you were Kevin Malone? What inspired your passion for acting and comedy? And what drove you to pursue such a competitive field?

Brian: You know, I guess I was one of the weird kids in that I knew what I wanted to do fairly early on. I mean, by the time I was midway through high school, I was pretty driven on the current path that I'm on, at least as an actor. I wanted to be an actor and, at the time, I thought, a theater actor. For me, it wasn't about fame or being on television and movies. It was the excitement, truly, that I got creating a character. And so I ended up choosing to go to school for acting at, you know, what I believed at the time to be the best theatre acting training program in the country, at SMU Southern Methodist University that was within a large university. I'm a fairly well-rounded guy, or at least a rounded guy. And I wanted, you know, I wanted a college experience. So right, so like, I wasn't looking at Juilliard, or Carnegie Mellon or some of those specialized schools. But SMU really had a heavy focus. They had a conservatory training program. And so I went there. And from there did what was my passion, which was theater for a number of years, and eventually traveling around the country, doing some in New York and really, as a regional theatre actor, traveling around to some small theaters and some of the rather large ones and eventually then made it out to Los Angeles.

Adam: Growing up, was there any hesitancy to go into something that is highly competitive and has such a high failure rate? Did you ever have that moment that you had to overcome an inhibition? Or were you always 100% gung ho.

Brian: I was always very sure about what I wanted to do. And I don't know, maybe being from Atlanta, Georgia, not sort of growing up in Hollywood, to use the cliche. Maybe I was too dumb to be scared. I will tell you a funny story to me, my parents, right out of college, I moved to Minneapolis and worked with a theatre company for a while. And the first show that I did there, my parents flew out, I think, for the first time to Minneapolis to see me in this show. And it was February or something. It was below zero. My parents show up to this show. And, you know, I think there had even been some conversation about canceling because it was so cold. And it was just one of those even for Minnesota cold nights. And there were 14 other people in the audience. And my parents shared with me not then, like they didn't they didn't say anything then. But I guess they had a very tense and worried drive home to their hotel that night. Like what is he doing? Why is he here? Like because we weren't Midwest people. Like he's here and he's doing theater and he's gonna fail miserably and bomb out. And so I think for them, they always were incredibly supportive, actually. And I give them a ton of credit, even during some difficult times they never showed that to me. But later, when some more success came they shared the conversation that they had had driving back at zero degrees to their hotel-like oh boy, he has made a terrible mistake.

Adam: I love that story and to enjoy any level of success it's so important to not only believe in yourself, but to have a really strong support system around you. And there are inevitably going to be obstacles along the way. And I wanted to know if you could share with listeners some of the obstacles that you had to overcome back in your early days, and what were some of the best lessons you learned before you became a famous and established actor?

Brian: Well, I mean, so, somewhat famously, at least, if you're a fan of The Office, you've kind of heard the story, like, by the time I moved to Los Angeles, it was a matter of just a few months, before I met, Greg Daniels, Ben Silverman, and the executive producers on The Office So once I moved to Los Angeles, things happened for me very quickly, right. So then the idea is, oh, he never struggled, he never struggled, things were very easy for him. But you know, what? What I remind people of is, just because those struggles weren't happening in Los Angeles, you know, I was, as I just mentioned, you know, performing in some very, very small theaters around the country, and working hard to, you know, develop the kind of aesthetic that I wanted to do. And, you know, I was trying to work in that, even though that brought not a huge level of success early on. But also, I feel like that variety of experiences for me, really, really helped. They really helped later on, you know, small theaters, big theaters, you know, some commercial stuff. So, you know, I was familiar enough with the camera, but didn't do a ton. It certainly was not my focus at that time. And, yeah, I mean, there were, there were years, there were, you know, months of doing paralegal work in between theater jobs, just to make some money to be able to survive during the day, and then, you know, performing and doing theater at night. And, you know, eventually- I have the greatest respect for actors who work in the theater. I mean, the theater is really, really demanding. And it's physically, psychologically, in terms of relationships. You know, people don't think about it so much. But, you know, if you're working and doing eight shows a week in the theater, and your one day off is Monday, which, by the way, nobody has Monday off, except people who work in theater, you know, and you're working all weekends, doing two shows a day. And it's tremendously difficult. And so I loved it, and but realized, at a certain point that, you know, moving to Los Angeles, I had also fallen in love with the City of Los Angeles. Now, I was really living a nomadic life. I mean, you know, traveling city to city, trying to fit in, you know, as many shows, you know, to just survive financially and kind of build out a schedule for a year where I wouldn't have too many breaks, where I had to go work as a paralegal. So, yeah, there were a lot of difficult times for me there and a lot of learning about, you know, being an actor and the art of acting, but also the business of being an actor, and then eventually, the film and television business and acting came together.

 Adam: During your time working at Dunder Mifflin and I wanted to know if you could share how The Office came together and how Kevin came together. As listeners discovered in the early minutes of this podcast, you don't sound a whole lot like Kevin, how did this all happen?

Brian: Well, there was a British version of the show, there was a show that existed before starring Ricky Gervais that was created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, and I was a big fan of that show. And so, again, the business, the business of entertainment was as interesting to me as the art of acting, to steal a phrase. And so I was very interested in the business and kept up with the business. I became aware of the British version of the show. And right when I was moving to Los Angeles and I went okay, this is a show that is looking for unknown people. I’m an unknown in Los Angeles, in Hollywood. And so I got the aesthetic. There was something about the aesthetic of the show that, one I loved and appealed to me and two, I felt like it fit with my skill set, in a way, coming from theater and building characters. And so I pursued it. And, you know, the special thing, by the way, one of the reasons that I started this podcast, the chief reason I started this podcast, right, is that the show, seven, eight years now, since we filmed anything has become the most watched show on television, including new shows, I mean, more people are watching tThe Office than are watching anything else. And it really, for me, was about a discovery and asking the question of why, like, why is that? Why is that true? Why are people watching it now? What is it about this show? And you asked about it coming together. For me, what I did in the podcast was I went back and looked at those early decisions, the history of television. We were coming out of Friends, and the cast of The Office did not look like the cast of Friends, we were coming out of an age of laugh tracks and big multi camera shows the office was none of that. And not only that, the camera moved around kind of weird. Before that was happening, and televisions, so there were a lot of decisions that made the show unique at the time, that made it special, that there were a group of people who were not known or famous. So everybody was sort of coming up in the business together. That made it really special early on. And I think because in some ways uniquely, everybody was just trying to make a great show. Because we weren't following an established blueprint, we were doing something totally different. So when you're doing something totally different, it's just about making it as good as you can. It's not like, oh, we didn't follow that step correctly because we're not following steps. Everything we're doing is breaking barriers left and right. Looking at the camera- you can't look at the camera, what are you talking about? On American television, you don't look at the camera. And so that, I think, was one one of the things that was really exciting. And one of the reasons that now it exists where it does, because it was truly just about trying to make the best show that made us laugh that we could

Adam: You share so much great wisdom in there that I want to highlight for listeners, the importance of trusting your instincts, the importance of not being afraid to do something different, the importance of not being afraid to go against the grain, authenticity being such a central theme in the success of The Office. And I wanted to know a couple of things; number one is if you can share with listeners a little bit more about Kevin and how you became Kevin, because that's a whole other story unto itself. And at what point in this journey, did you realize that you were part of something special?

Brian: Okay, well, part one about Kevin. I think first a general comment. I am going to answer that question. I think one of the things that made the acting ensemble unique on the show was that the actors came from a variety of backgrounds. Meaning, like Steve Carell, Kate Flannery, Oscar Nunez. I'm not gonna name everybody but just as an example, they are brilliant improvisers. Craig Robinson, BJ Novak. They're amazing stand up comedians. Myself, and Rainn Wilson, we came from straight theater, right? So you have a variety of backgrounds. And I think, given that perspective, or if you learn the actor's history, you start to see things and so see, for me, creating a character, as people mentioned, you mentioned before, is very different from who I am. For me, it was about really creating this character of Kevin which really goes back to what I was doing in theater and what I was taught in school, you know, Ryan and I talked about how there is a physical body position for me that is different for Brian than it is for Kevin. So like, your physicality is different. You know, for me, that part of that becomes the voice and you know, in television we worked on it for 10 years, nine seasons. And whatever, you know, your character is going to change. And, and especially with, you know, one of the, you know, initially one of the the secondary characters, as the writer starts to know you, and they start to see within this gigantic, like sort of unprecedented, deadly, gigantic ensemble, they start to sort of feel where these characters are going to land. And, you know, as they started writing more and more, Kevin, actually, the character of Kevin changed a little bit. So like my nerdy acting school brain was like, how do I do that? It's still the same, how do I change this? So here's my, here's my nerdy justification, my nerdy justification for Kevin, changing, maybe a little more childlike, maybe his voice a little more defined? Well, the premise ofThe Office is there's a documentary crew that is shooting Dunder Mifflin. And so my nerdy actor-y justification is that Kevin Malone was very nervous of the cameras when they showed up. But as he became more comfortable with the cameras in the camera crew that was there, more of his true personality began to emerge over time, and part of that was a while all of that really was based on the writers, and where the writers began to take the characters and how they begin to- even though very different from me, give the character some different traits that, you know, that I had, or they learned from me or what fit my sensibility. So, in terms of Kevin Malone, for me, it really was about the character creation. That's the thing that excites me. Your second question is about when I knew that we had something special. For me, it was the second episode we ever shot, which was called Diversity Day. And, you know, there have been a lot of conversations. I mean, this was really different from anything else that was on American television. We weren't sure we were going to shoot any more than just a pilot. We were like, for sure going to be canceled, you know, several times in the first two years, not real. Like, we went on a little hiatus break and Angela Kinsey took her nameplate off of her trailer because she was like, we're never coming back. This is a souvenir. But the second episode, I knew that what the show was doing, the boldness with which it was writing about social issues and current events, Diversity Day, being  about race was different than anything else that was being written about on television. And the way that the comedy was happening off of the line that it wasn't about a job, but it was about behavior was really different than anything else in television. And it made me laugh. And, you know, some of the stuff that Michael Scott says on the diversity issue, I'm like, you can't you cannot say this on television, and we are, and it is freaking awesome. So I knew if people gave it a chance, this show could be special. I didn't imagine that it would be what it is today. But I didn't imagine it would be where it is today when we stopped filming. But yeah, early on, I knew  the show was special.

Adam: One of the things that makes The Office special is when you look at the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, that would be the last thing anyone would think of when they're looking for the definition of a winning team or a winning organizational culture. But when you look at the cast of The Office, that's what made it work. That is clearly the winning team, the winning culture. You had this winning chemistry that allowed the show to flourish and flourish for so long. And I wanted to know if you could share with listeners, from your experience, what advice do you have on how to build a winning team and how to build a winning organizational culture?

Brian: Well, I would do a couple of things. One, I truly believe, is his magic sauce. And someone in our case, Greg Daniels, who saw something in the individuals that he knew would work together. And in my conversation on the podcast with Greg, we discussed and other people discussed him, Greg didn't make a casting decision based on oh, how good would Brian be as Kevin, but it was also, okay. Well, if X is Brian, what about Y and how does X work with Y? How does Brian, you know, how does Kevin work with Angela or does Kevin work with Oscar? How does Kevin work with Michael? To give people a clear example, you know, Jim and Pam, that relationship is really crucial. But Jim and Dwight are also very important. And also, Dwight describes Pam as his best friend, by the time we're done with nine years. So it's like all of the relationships together. That is one thing and that's a credit to him. So one, secret sauce. I mean, I don't know. Two, I think it's him. Three, what I said before, diversity, and I'm not talking even about diversity in the classical sense. But what I discussed before, like a variety of experiences, whatever that means, I think is really, for us, was really important. Different experiences, different backgrounds, different training. If everybody's thinking the same way. Well, how interesting is that? That's my view, by the way. And then the other thing, which I don't know how much this relates, in a way to traditional business, though, in our current age, and our current digital, a virtual age, maybe it's more important, you know, on a traditional TV show, I don't know why I always pick on them and use them as an example. Because in some ways, I was super jealous of that. But if you think about another show that a lot of people know, Modern Family, you think of that as a tight knit ensemble show and in some ways there's always a scene generally in an episode, the structure that the family is together in some way. But also, there's a lot of times that they were coupled off where we're examining one couple or a different couple. So they're not there all the time together. They're there when they're shooting their scenes with their spouse or partner or whatever. And then they have a group. See, The Office, how it was constructed was we were all in what we called the bullpen all the time. So we were always together. And you know, a lot of people don't know this. So you know, you think, oh, you're shooting a television show, it's 30 minutes on TV, actually, it's 22 minutes because of commercials, that's 60 to 70 hours in one week to get those 22 minutes. And if you're shooting just in an office, and the camera is moving around, and so it could see anybody at any time, everybody has to be there all day. And if you don't think that togetherness, just being together, builds a, you know, a synergy between us. I mean, it had to, in my mind. So I think that is a specific unique ingredient. I don't know how that applies to other businesses but us being together means something. But everybody thinks now let's buy a big house and live at home because we're not going back to work anymore. I don't know how that works. And you've maintained real human connections that you can't get over the computer.

Adam: I think literally everything you described applies to every business. So it's not unique to working on a television show. The key elements to building a successful team, to building a successful culture are universal and you shared so many of them. I also wanted to ask you about a topic that you may not get asked about every day. And that's leadership, which is a key theme of this show. And leadership is interestingly enough, a key theme that's explored on The Office, generally around what not to do as a leader, whether it's Michaels leadership or Dwight's leadership or lack thereof. But one of the things that I've learned through a lot of the interviews that I've done is one of the most underrated but extremely important qualities of a leader is a sense of humor, particularly an ability to laugh at oneself. And early on in this podcast actually had a four star Admiral and we spent a good chunk of that conversation, talking about just that, and how he's used the ability to laugh at himself as a way to make himself relatable to the troops that he's led over the course of his 35 year career. And I wanted to know, what thoughts you had for listeners on number one, the topic of leadership, and number two, the topic of comedy and humor and how to best deploy it?

Brian: I mean, I think that Michael viewed what you just said as being tremendously important. That humor- and he attempted to use humor. I think the difference maybe with Michael is, is that most of his attempts at humor are failed attempts, either because he goes at something in the wrong direction. But I think what one of the interesting things, again, that I discussed with some people in the podcast is really the change that the show attempted to do with Michael moving into the second season of the show after the first season, which really veered from the model that was set up by David Brent and Ricky Gervais is his character in the British version, and that was that they, the writers, felt like Michael needed to be redeemable in some way. So his behavior could be bad, but we needed to find ways that he could be redeemed. And I think one of the scenes that is referenced is that he's actually, you learn, that he might not be the best leader on the surface, but he's actually good at his job. That's one of the things they establish in the show early in that second season, I think, but one of the things that he does that makes his transformation kind of complete by the end is that a lot of his behavior comes out of a need that he has to be loved by his employees. And that need drives him because he doesn't have a balance outside of it. Really his coworkers are his family. And he doesn't understand why everyone else doesn't reciprocate that. I mean, there's a huge theme throughout the show that focuses on that point. And I think what you see and when he leaves, when Jim Halpert looks at him and says, best boss I ever had, I think, what is that? What does that mean? Well, I think it means that he led with his heart. And he wasn't always right and didn't always say the right things. But ultimately, he found a way, whether as you mentioned through humor or something else, he found a way to build that team and get them together and know that his heart truly was in the right place, even if his behavior always wasn't always.

Adam: I love that. And one of the core elements of effective leadership is a genuine love for people. And despite all of his flaws, Michael loved his people, and to your earlier point, viewed them as family. And I want to ask you about a few of the people who were part of that team, and your favorite experience working with them and something you may have learned from them along the way, starting with Steve Carell.

Brian: It's hard to talk about Steve not in hyperbole, but I believe that he is the greatest improviser, maybe ever. His ability to take a character like Michael Scott, and to seamlessly go from scripted word to improvisation, but always in character, on topic, is astounding. It's just astounding, because, you know, a lot of times- and I think we're when people criticize improv, it's because it can be kind of a collection of random jokes, and somebody may be really, really funny and think of the funniest, cleverest response in the moment, but if that response isn't tied into that character’s characterization or that character's behavior, if it's not true to it, ultimately, it's a hollow joke. There's tons of examples of that on television. I'm not going to get into them, but his ability to do that in character, while at times in the same moment showing heart, play those horror, inappropriateness at the same time, it's mind-boggling to me.

Adam: What’s your favorite experience working with and something you learned from Rainn Wilson, aka Dwight Schrute?

Brian: Rainn and I view acting, I think, very similarly. Our backgrounds are similar in a way. And I loved my conversations with him, because much like Kevin, the physicality of Dwight was something that was very important to him. I also think, I guess we're talking in hyperbole. I don't know, for me, like the character of Dwight Schrute, it's got to be in the top five of best television characters of all time, in my opinion.

Adam: No argument at all. I'm with you. What’re your other four?

Brian: Oh, man. I was actually afraid you were gonna ask that. I don't know. I mean, there's so many if you start thinking about it.

Adam: At least two of them have to be from Seinfeld.

Brian: Well, I was gonna say Seinfeld. I was gonna say Cheers.

Adam: Like, you've got to have Kramer and Costanza in there. I'd probably go to Al Bundy in the top five.

Brain: Yeah, let's do our blend. Yeah, but I mean like that. I think in some ways, my dad would say Archie Bunker. Kramer is Seinfeld but that's the actor. Kelsey Grammer playing Frasier. I mean, in terms of living on one show, and then completely, you know, changing awards history with his own show. I don't know if those are a few. Archie Bunker is definitely up there.

Adam: John Krasinski. John Krasinski, what did you learn from John Krasinski, or your favorite experience working with him?

Brian: My favorite work experience working with him has nothing to do with anything- it has to do with simply our friendship, which is that people take time off, people take breaks, people relax their minds in a variety of different ways. And virtually every single day, we were on set together at lunch and we played Madden football in one of our trailers. It's awesome. When I think of John still, I mean, I see him today. Still, we haven't played that in a long time. I don't know. It's not like I went home and played. It was just sort of a thing. We went to our trailer, we had lunch, we would talk a little bit about work that was going on. But really, it was about boys just trying to distract our brains by doing another activity.

Adam: One of the previous guests on this podcast was Trip Hawkins, who's the creator of John Madden Football. So, trip, if you're listening, you'd probably appreciate that anecdote. There you go. That's true. I'm gonna ask you about someone you worked with who was not on The Office but a legend in every sense of the word, and a co-worker of yours on the movie License to Wed and that was the great Robin Williams.

Brian: I loved him. I loved him. I'll tell you what he taught me. He taught me- I don't know. It's hard. It's hard to put into words, but his ability and his positivity. His energy. You know, someone once said, this is not a genius idea, right? But it is in our business or when you're well known or whatever. I think it's important. It doesn't take any more energy to be positive and nice than it does to be negative and an asshole. And he showed up every single day. And I worked with him on a variety of, I think three different projects. He showed up to work and he wanted to make the crew laugh and he wanted a positive environment. He wanted to make jokes and work hard. It wasn't that he wasn't sloughing off. But showing up to set with a certain energy which is like we're gonna work hard and we're gonna have fun today and there's no reason not to. And I try to do that now on every single project that I do. Like I try to be incredibly positive and fun. And I'm not as funny as he is but I try to make jokes and keep the environment light because let's face it, it's not brain surgery. And people are working with long hours and working really hard, and it doesn't take any more energy to be positive and nice than it does to be the other. So that's what I learned from him more than anything else. And of course, he's a comedic genius. But that's it, I love it. I don't know. I don't know that I learned anything about that from watching.

Adam: From my seat right here, I would say through osmosis. Hard to say you didn't. Brian, thank you so much for all the great advice. Thank you for being a part of 30 Minute Mentors.

Brian: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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