“The Office” star names greatest moment with Steve Carell: ‘I owe him a lot’

Key Points

• Creed Bratton shared a special tribute to his Office costar Steve Carell during a conversation with EW about his new role in the Jim Cummings series The Screener.

• Bratton said the greatest moment he had while shooting The Office came during the season 2 Halloween episode opposite Carell.

• “I hold him the highest regard, and I owe him a lot,” he said of his costar.

Steve Carell‘s starring role on The Office made a huge impact on culture. But the comedian also made a huge impact on his costars behind the scenes.

Creed Bratton — the idiosyncratic actor behind the NBC sitcom’s oddball quality assurance director, also named (and loosely based on the real) Creed Bratton — recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly to preview his villainous role in The Screener, the mysterious new series from Thunder Road filmmaker Jim Cummings.

During the conversation, Bratton reflected back on his time in Scranton, naming Carrell as his favorite costar to comedically spar with (John Krasinski and Rainn Wilson coming in close behind), and the actor with whom he shared “the greatest moment” he ever had on set.

Bratton points to a “six-and-a-half page scene with Steve Carell” as the moment he knew, “I made my bones.”

The scene in question occurs during the season 2 episode “Halloween.” The holiday-themed episode originally aired in 2005, when Bratton was still classed as a recurring character, not a starring player, like some of his fellow supporting stars like Angela Kinsey and Kate Flannery. But Bratton believes the dialogue written for him by Greg Daniels, who masterminded the American spinoff of the hit U.K. workplace comedy, secured his enduring place on the show.

“Halloween” finds the Dunder Mifflin office staff in good cheer, as they check out each other’s costumes and pass around candy. All except boss Michael (Carell), who put off letting one of his workers go for so long that now it has to happen during the festivities. He eventually lands on Creed — a not unwise choice, given the character’s habit of proudly never actually doing any work. But Bratton’s character pulls off an absolute coup before Michael can even get the words out.

“I have to fire someone today,” he tells Creed in his office, eyes downcast. “Okay, fire someone else. Fire Devon (Devon Abner). He’s terrible. I am so much better at my job than Devon,” Creed shoots back.

Michael is stunned by the usually reclusive Creed’s sudden forcefulness. But he’s only just getting started. Michael explains that since he already picked Creed, even if he keeps him, he’ll always “look at me as a guy who almost fired you.” Creed shouts back in a staccato: “No, no, no, no, no, no! I will forget so fast! You will be my savior! You’re the guy who gave me my life back. Thank you! I knew you’d see my way, Michael. God bless you.”

Bratton says the scene as written and filmed went on much longer. Though it was cut down for air, his performance made a huge impact behind the scenes. He calls it the moment he finally knew his colleagues “took me seriously. There wasn’t any doubt. There wasn’t any doubt that maybe this [charater] was a one-hit. I could deliver things, you know?”

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After the following season Bratton was promoted to a starring part in the cast, where he remained through the series finale in 2013. But he still looks back on “Halloween” as the moment when things changed.

“That’s what it’s all about. Because you want your peers to respect you, and you want to do good work. But you want your peers to respect you more than anybody else,” he says.

Carell’s camaraderie in particular meant a lot to Bratton, who calls the comedian “an improvisational genius” whom “you can play hardball with.”

Reflecting on the impact of the scene, Bratton shares, “I hold him the highest regard, and I owe him a lot.”

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly