The Hollywood Reporter brought together showrunners Carter Bays (How I Met Your Mother), Bill Prady (The Big Bang Theory), Liz Meriwether (New Girl), Paul Lieberstein (The Office), Steve Levitan (Modern Family), and Emily Spivey (Up All Night) to have a roundtable discussion. (Though, the gang actually shared three roundtables. Also, for some reason they were arranged by who did or did not wear glasses.) They address all the many stresses of the job, like deciding on pen color:
Liz Meriwether: I was unprepared for the leadership; people are looking to you for everything, and you’re pretending to be an expert on, say, props. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I haven’t had a baby.
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The Office hints and spoilers are just racking up. The latest is this interview with Paul Lieberstein, who says that the "rotating center" of focus during this season may not last, what with the departure of Robert California and Nellie Bertram. "I have a romantic feeling for the simplicity of the single-manager structure. Next year might see a return to it," he says. He also promises that guest stars Chris Bauer (Frank Sobotka on The Wire) and Georgia Engel (Georgette from The Mary Tyler Moore Show) will appear later this season. Cool news, but doesn't it kind of feel like this show is frequently stuffed with unnecessary new [...]
Steve Carell's third-to-last Office episode airs tonight, and Vulture talked to Toby/Exec Producer Paul Lieberstein about how they approached his exit and the secrecy around who's going to replace him on the show. We initially, a year ago, had a plan of very quietly exiting Michael Scott. And then after he announced, it became very clear that nobody was going to allow us to quietly exit Michael Scott and Steve Carell. It was a big story people wanted to talk about. At that point, we decided to play out on air what happens in an office when someone leaves, the growing pains and adjustments that come with management [...]
