Joss Whedon

You had a weird break up scene on The Office this season with your boyfriend. It was very unnerving towards the end.

Yeah, with David Denman. David is one of my closer friends from the show; he and his wife and me and my husband, we hang out a lot. To see him turn like that, for me it was even more shocking because I know him as a big teddy bear. He played it so well and I think that cliffhanger of "I’m gonna kill Jim Halpert" is one of the best last lines of our episodes ever.

Its very uncomfortable to watch.

Yeah, its really dark. I think that’s one of the cool things about the show; its not afraid to be ugly or dark or awkward. But I think the thing we try to do is stay away from sentimental and goofy soap opera and I think we’re doing pretty well. Yeah, JJ Abrams directed that episode.

You’ve had a few guest directors come in this season.

We had Joss Whedon and right now we have Harold Ramis directing three of our episodes this year. It’s kind of awesome that I hang out with Harold Ramis all day.

What do these directors bring that make the episodes they direct different from the other ones?

Joss Whedon, for example, is a super geek fan of the show. He knew every single supporting character’s story from the beginning and he was able to direct some of us into performances that were new and better and more layered then before. I’m most happy with my performance in the episode that Joss directed. It is a brilliant episode. The shot of Pam standing in front of her art not talking was a shot that Joss came up with and was really passionate about. I think its one of the most beautiful portraits of Pam Beesly we’ve ever had. I think that directors, when they’re really excited about the show like these guys are, they bring a new fresh element and I think in Joss’ case he had this great way of getting performances from us that we hadn’t had before. We had this one director, Charles McDougall who brought this visual sense of movement that was very cinematic to the show that we hadn’t had before. Harold Ramis is particularly good at filming group scenes.

When are the Ramis episodes airing?

His first one was the Christmas episode and he did two more. One where Michael goes up to the roof and one we just did called Beach Day where Michael takes us all to the beach but makes us participate in Survivor like exercises to see who is the most capable person in the office.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (the creators of the BBC version of The Office) wrote an episode this season, correct?

They wrote the episode "The Convict".