On April 28, 2011, Michael Scott quietly left Scranton, Steve Carell mentioned a tearful farewell to “The Workplace,” and the world was by no means the identical once more. Positive, each the actor and his character dropped in for the collection finale a few years later, however that was a nod to what had been somewhat than what was to return. In some ways, Carell’s character was the glue that held the mockumentary sitcom collectively. From his antagonistic, blundering early years to his extra advanced (however nonetheless blundering) later profession, Michael introduced his staff collectively in shared love, collective loathing, and each emotion in between. After which he was gone.
So, why did Carell go away? At this level, the thriller of Michael’s departure from the Scranton storyline is not a lot an unanswered query as an over-answered one. Totally different variations and rumors have swirled about at varied instances all through the decade-plus since his closing Season 7 look within the epic, two-part episode “Goodbye, Michael.” We have gathered collectively essentially the most compelling testimony from a number of actors and crew members, together with, after all, Carell himself. Here is our complete tackle why the actor left “The Workplace.”
Carell was a mixture of feelings on the time
The various accounts of Carell’s closing moments on “The Workplace” have a tendency to inform totally different sides of the story. As an illustration, increase operator Brian Wittle and hairstylist Kim Ferry have come ahead up to now to make related claims indicating that Carell did not truly wish to go away. In response to Wittle, the lead actor unintentionally hinted that he was contemplating leaving in an interview, and it did not elicit a lot of a response from the powers that be at NBC. The crew member defined:
“They did not name and say, ‘What? You wanna go away?’ He mentioned he did not get any type of response from them. When he realized he did not get any type of response from them, he thought, ‘Oh, perhaps they do not actually care if I go away. Perhaps I ought to go do different issues.'”
Ferry mentioned, level clean:
“[Carell] did not wish to go away the present. He had advised the community that he was going to signal for one more couple of years. He was prepared to and his agent was prepared to. However for some purpose, they did not contact him. I do not know if it was a recreation of hen or what.”
It is also price mentioning that there was a changeover in govt management throughout this identical time. As NBC Common President and CEO Jeff Zucker was changed by Bob Greenblatt, there might have been a component of “falling between the cracks” that made Carell’s continued involvement with “The Workplace” even much less sure. Whether or not it was by miscommunication, oversight, or another backroom exercise but to be revealed, the deadline for Carell’s contract renewal got here and went, leaving him with out a future on the present.
Carell has provided additional insights into his causes for leaving The Workplace
Whereas crew members and company changeovers are useful particulars, there’s nothing fairly just like the supply. Carell provided a first-person account of why he left in an episode of the “Workplace Girls” podcast on March 8, 2023 (simply over an hour into the episode titled “Interview with Steve Carell”).
Carell described the problem of leaving at that time in “The Workplace.” Filming the ultimate moments of Michael Scott’s tenure as Regional Supervisor of the Scranton department of Dunder Mifflin was troublesome, emotionally talking. However it was additionally a second to have fun — and an opportunity for his larger-than-life character to step apart and let others within the present’s ensemble forged shine. As Carell put it:
“For me there was a pleasure to it, you recognize, while you’re crying with pleasure. Trigger it wasn’t even unhappiness. Trigger I used to be prepared. I used to be able to go. So I wasn’t unhappy about leaving […] It was time for different characters to step to the forefront and different storylines to be pursued. I feel it was the proper … the timing was proper, I feel for everyone.”
He added that his goodbye on the present additionally gave him an opportunity to have a victory lap of types, each as Michael together with his staff and as Carell together with his coworkers:
“Concurrently, there’s only a sense of pleasure for me that we had skilled all of this and we had been getting … I used to be getting an opportunity to take a lap with everyone. And the best way these final two episodes had been structured, it felt very wealthy to me to concurrently be saying goodbye as Michael and us as buddies on this second of labor collectively. However, yeah, it was lots, it was a really emotional factor.”
The feelings boiled over to the followers, who spent the following two seasons of “The Workplace” processing his departure. The present steadily dropped in rankings, for essentially the most half, because the Michael-sized gap grew to become an increasing number of obvious. However by then, there was nothing left to do about it. Carell was gone, Mindy Kaling left shortly afterward, and so did B.J. Novak (each to a lot much less fanfare, although). The present had moved on with out a number of members of its core forged because it raced towards its closing episodes two quick seasons later.
“The Workplace” is presently streaming on Peacock.
