John Krasinski on Away We Go, The Office and Brief Interviews

Reading it wouldn’t work, but when she does it with such utter conviction, and then the reaction you guys have, it’s just like…

JK: Yeah. And that’s the thing. I think that like the only reason why Maggie’s stuff is so funny rather than completely off-putting is because people like that exist, and I think that we can, unless you’re one of those people, you can laugh at that because that person exists, not because Dave and Vendela wrote some crazy character that you’d never believe is real. And that’s kind of the truth behind all of these moments.

BLAST: With a movie that deals so heavily with pregnancy, or at least preparing for it, do you think you’re going to bring some of this to the next season of “The Office?”

JK: Ah, good question. Wow, no one’s asked that. I don’t even know how to contemplate what we’ve done in the season finale. I know that it’s very exciting for me. I think that, to me, again, it represents what the writers have done so well. You know, the thing is people say whether or not that moment is a big moment “" too big a moment, or too small a moment, whatever “" but the truth is the writers have to keep it reality-based, again, like I was saying, and I think for them real life isn’t always perfectly clean, and I think that everybody was expecting the wedding first and I love that they did it the other way around because that stuff happens and it allows our show to be more reality than like the perfect couple had the perfect wedding and now has the perfect child. It’s a little flipped.

So yeah, I think that I will bring some of that. I think that, if I bring anything to “The Office,” it will be what Dave and Vendela wrote, which is in preparing for a child I think that it’s so extremely exciting and, from talking to my brothers and friends that have babies, it’s so extremely exciting, but what I think most movies don’t deal with is the sheer terror of it. And I love that. Like I love talking to my friends and having them be like, “Oh, I’m so excited to have a baby.” I’m like, “Are you nervous?” and they’re like, “I’m terrified!” It’s like, that side of it has to be evident. So I hope that they don’t write Jim as this incredibly perfect father who’s taking time off from work and everything’s perfect. I hope there are days where he’s really stressed out and not sure if he’s a good enough guy to have a baby or he’s prepared or those things which I think are dealt with in here. You know, it’s too clean to write it the other way.

It is a comedy at the end of the day, and we love being a part of any comedic moment, Jenna [Fischer] and I, but when they write a moment like that, it’s just fantastic. You know, for me, after five seasons, I feel like people are like at what point are you jumping the shark, and it’s like, I think people thought we jumped the shark in the first six [episodes]. I think even doing the show is jumping the shark for a lot of people because they thought the English version, like I did, was so perfect. So you know the writers have never cared about that and that’s what I love about it, because it’s just so gutsy.

If you’re going to think that the show’s gone too far then you’re going to think that a while ago and you’re going to think it whenever you’re going to think it. And so we’re having fun and we’re still doing a good show and hopefully the people who love the show will continue to watch it. But I think a moment like that is, I don’t think it’s jumping the shark at all. I think it’s so real and it’s one of those things where, just like you ask the people who think that was too big a moment, and you say, “Well, what would you have done?” and it’s like, “Well I don’t know.” And the truth is, in life, things are going to happen that propel you forward rather than like, and now we’re going to do this huge Italy trip for no reason.

Speaking of Jim, when I mentioned this interview to a few people and your name, surprisingly a lot of people said, “Who?”

JK: Oh yeah?

I had to say, Jim from “The Office,” and it immediately clicked.

JK: It’s okay, a lot of people say that.

How do you feel about this individual character that’s gotten you most of your mainstream recognition and what would you say to people who only know you as “that guy from ‘The Office’?”

JK: You know, oddly, it’s a tremendous honor. Steve [Carrell] said, you know, one day, he said, “No matter what any of us do, if we go on to direct some huge thing or win an Oscar for some huge thing, you’ll always be known as the guy from ‘The Office’,” and I said, “That’s fantastic.” And he was like, “I think so, too.” I think what we all know is that, you know, this is the door that opened us to the rest of the world. I think that it’s the beginning of everything for all of us, and we know that. And so, you can never turn your back on it and you can never sort of feel like it’s annoying in any way because the other thing is the fans that know me “" I mean I get called “Jim” way more than I get called “John” – and the thing about that is, you know, it’s an understandable mistake because it just shows that there are true fans of the show.

And for the most part I’ve had only people come and be so excited about the show and so respectful about the show rather than, I don’t know, if you’re on some other show and they don’t really respect it and they just yell your name where they’re annoying, these people really want to tell you how much they love the show. And so that’s so genuine and so fantastic and, to be really honest, the fans are the reason why we really have jobs, because we weren’t being watched the first season. And then people downloaded it on iTunes and they watched it on TiVo and they watched it live. And so for all those reasons it’s as much their show as it is our show.

Also, my last name is hard to pronounce; I get it. It’s easier to say “Jim Halpert” than it is “John Krasinski.” No, it’s a tremendous honor and, like I said, it’s one of those things that I’ll never be looking to move away from “The Office,” to do something else, it’s like, the fact that I get to do a movie like this and then get to go back to my “day job,” which is “The Office,” is completely and totally surreal. So, I will be hanging on the ankles of the producers every year saying, “Please bring me back.”

So now you’ve directed your own movie. I’m just interested in what you’ve learned from other people on this movie.

JK: What did I take from them? Everything. What I learned from working with people like Sam and George and everybody is like, oh, so that’s how you direct.

See, for me, directing was this weird thing where I never really wanted to be a writer or a director because acting’s always the first and foremost thing for me, but I was very lucky because ignorance truly is bliss, and I remember like thinking, “Well no one’s going to direct this movie, no one’s going to write this movie, this is such a weird book with such an incredible writer and no one else is going to do it: I’ll do it,” and that was my attitude through every day of shooting until we go to the end and I was like, well this is amazing.

But you realize you ran through a mine field and when you look back and someone points out all the mines that could have gone off, that’s when you get really, really scared and that’s when you become a director.

So I don’t even know if I’m a director yet, because really a director is a person who can go back to the beginning and say, “I’d do it all again knowing that all these things can explode.” I was just really lucky to close my eyes and make it to the other side. Would I do it again? Yeah, maybe, if the right project came along, but it’s not like that burning desire to be a triple threat. I’m still working on being a single threat.

When you work with people like [cinematographer] Ellen [Kuras] and Sam especially, you realize that that clichƒ© thing you say is true, which is, you can only do this because you love it. If at any point this industry becomes like a both, you’ve got to get out, because it’s a lot of nonsense for nothing. But if you truly love it, then you can bring something unique to it, and they’re both like true, true, true artists of the highest level.

When I watch this movie, you know really, at the end of the day, to be totally honest, it’s one of those things that if I saw this movie, it would be one of my favorite movies I’ve seen in a long time. And I tell all my friends to go see it, but when your name’s on the poster it’s a little harder, because they’re like, “You’re in the movie, jackass.” But the reason is because this is such a special movie. When I was brought on, I thought it was special, but now seeing it in its final form, it’s like the fact that I’m in it is totally surreal because Ellen did it, and Sam did it, and Dave and Vendela did it, and it’s like, it’s all pretty wild. So to be a part of something this special is pretty great.

BLAST: To go back to “Brief Interviews [with Hideous Men],” people who only know you as Jim from “The Office” might see this project as being completely out of left field. What would you say to them to say, “Well this is why I as a person chose to create this movie?”

JK: Oh, well without being overly sentimental, “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” is the reason why I started acting for real. I mean, acting in college was really just to have fun and because there were so many cool kids involved and I met some of my best friends doing it, but it was all just for fun “" like sketch comedy and doing little parts in plays. My first part at Brown was dressing up as a transvestite, and that was… that was…

If we Google you, can we find those pictures?

JK: I’m sure if you wanted, there’s something out there.

So what I would say is, “Brief Interviews” for me, when my friend decided to direct the stage reading of the book, it was one of those things that I really wanted to be a part of it and then, in rehearsing it, you know, we all rehearsed separately, and then we all saw it come together only the night that we did, and it was so incredibly impactful that it changed everything for me, because I realized acting isn’t just having fun and dressing up for your friends and making people laugh.

It’s more like, you know, you have a responsibility and there’s extreme power in the medium and all that big stuff that I was too stupid to understand. But that book in particular, in my opinion, is a perspective of the world that is not only refreshing but it’s completely vital. I think that what David Foster Wallace does better than anybody else is observe the world. In observing the world, what he does so well is he just asks you to delve into the other side. And you can always come back and adhere to whatever belief you had before, but he just asks that you see it in another way.

A great example in the book is there’s this one interview that is incredibly inciting, in a way. It’s a guy that says that if a woman’s ever been abused or had any horrible situation happen to her, though you’d never wish it on someone, is it possible that there’s some odd strength that that person has that no one else has, so there’s almost a benefit to that? Now right off the bat, that’s incredibly, you know, in no uncertain terms, offensive, but the way he writes it and you commiserate with this character in some odd, weird way, you see the world from that perspective, and it allows you to think at the end of the interview, you realize that he was actually physically abused and he was raped and you realize that, that perspective is only developed to give himself strength and I think that when you look at it from a friend’s perspective who’s been physically abused you’re realize that like, yeah, but now that you’re on the other side you’ve achieved something that I could never imagine, so there is strength. Something like that is something that you just sit with and you’ve never thought about it before. He does it so well that when you come back you can still say it’s an offensive comment, but I understand what you were talking about.

And I think that that’s the power of any change, in my opinion. You know, the whole political thing was a great example. It was like, are you on this side or on this side, and it’s like, well whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s just take it all in. We’re in a different world now. It’s not like, are you an Obama guy or a McCain guy. It’s like, where do we want the world to go and who’s going to take us there? Probably nobody perfectly. So, you just have go take different pieces from everybody.