The Office US remains one of the country's biggest and most successful sitcoms, but from the pilot reactions, star Steve Carrell thought it would go down about as well as rat droppings on a birthday cake. In fact, he said that it went down so badly in test screenings that people "actively hated" the first episode of The Office.
Speaking on Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast, Carrell recalled making the first episode and hearing the responses to it. "Our pilot was the lowest testing pilot in the history of NBC. People really hated it. They actively hated it. And I don't quite know how it got legs after that," he said. Carrell also mentioned that on the set of Anchorman, Paul Rudd told him not to take the job of The Office's Michael Scott.
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Carrell persisted despite the negative reactions, though, and the US version of The Office blossomed into a beloved show that ran for nine seasons. Carrell dipped out after the seventh, but he gave it his all in proving those test audiences wrong, and making sure we had a show that would make us cringe, laugh, and sometimes cry with our favourite paper sellers.