Rainn Wilson, the actor who played Dwight Schrute on The Office, thinks his iconic character would be up to more than just selling Dunder Mifflin paper if the show was still on the air today.
“He prepared himself for the zombie apocalypse that never came, but he probably would have done a big buildout of some underground bunker with food storage and weapons,” Wilson said in an interview with Gizmodo. “That would have occupied a lot of his time.”
“He’s probably figuring out ways to make the farm more profitable, probably a Schrute Farms roadside stand with the money beets on top,” Wilson joked. “I think that he is a capitalist, so he would have bought a lot more buildings in and around Scranton.”
But Wilson also thinks Dwight would would have developed new interests in the nine-plus years since The Office went off the air: He wouldn’t just be running an office, he’d be running for an office.
“Perhaps he is even on some crazy right wing ticket,” Wilson said. “Not a racist right-wing ticket, I don’t think that’s Dwight. But maybe a Flat Earth right wing ticket, running for some kind of city council seat in Scranton.”
Wilson visited Gizmodo’s New York City office this week as part of a promotional tour for the new comedy film Jerry & Marge Go Large, which stars Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening as a retiree couple who discover a mathematical loophole in the Massachusetts lottery, and win millions of dollars that they use to revive their small Michigan town.
“It’s a movie I’m really excited for people to see,” he said. “I feel like it’s exactly the kind of movie that America needs right now, in that it is really warm with a big, big heart… but it’s funny too, it’s not treacly and sentimental.” The film debuts Friday, June 17, exclusively on Paramount+.
Wilson also imagined what The Office would look like in the age of streaming media and working from home. “It would be very funny to see Dunder Mifflin as a remote, hybrid workplace,” he said. “An entire episode of The Office that was on Zoom? That would be pretty cool.”
And what would Dwight’s old boss be doing if The Office was on TV today?
“I think if Michael was still at Dunder Mifflin he would definitely be wanting people to come back into the office no matter what. He’d be showing up at people’s houses, he would just want people around desperately,” Wilson said. “He would get really depressed in his condo, on Zooms and not being able to connect to people.”
Which Dwight would you want to see more, Dwight the farmer or Dwight the politician? And what do you think the other workers of The Office would be up to in 2022?
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