Jan from The Office reveals the cast was doing improv all the time

Jan from The Office reveals the cast was doing improv all the time

She talks about the “bag of candy”, from which the cast could “draw new lines”.

In The Office, Melora Hardin played the powerful and unpredictable Jan Levinson, vice president of Dunder Mufflin. And ten years after the end of the series, the actress made a revelation in a recent episode of the podcast Still Here Hollywoodby Steve Kmetko (below).

“We adopted a certain way of doing the scenes: first we played what was written in the script, then they gave us a kind of bag of candy… They called it a bag of candy, in which we could pick up new lines! These were just little phrases that were options that we could add to the script, if we wanted, by improvising.”

As Jan was Michael Scott’s great love story in the early seasons of The Office, Melora Hardin shared most of his scenes with Steve Carell. “And working together, with Steve, was great. I would give him a scathing retort, sometimes a more twisted retort, and each time he was able to respond immediately.”

Hardin explains that she and Carell “have both done a lot of improv in their past. So if you’re an actor who’s done some improv and you’re working with other actors who’ve done a lot of improv, there’s definitely a lot of fun to be had.”

From the pilot of The Officeimprovisation was encouraged by the producers:

Ken Kwapis directed the pilot and I remember one scene in the pilot where my phone started ringing while we were rehearsing. I think I said, “Oh, my God. I’m going to make sure my phone doesn’t ring again.” And he said, “No, no, no, leave it on.” That would be really funny, and if someone calls, answer in character. » I understood that it was going to be my thing to play like that. They had enough confidence in us to let us do it.”

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