Steve Carell Made This Scene on ‘The Office’ Impossible To Get Through, According to John Krasinski

By Season 6 of The Office, the cast had learned two things: never trust Steve Carell to stick to the script, and never assume you’re going to get through a scene in one take. In the decade since NBC’s beloved workplace comedy aired its series finale, main crew members have shared enough behind-the-scenes stories and bloopers to fill Dunder Mifflin’s warehouse. Fire drills gone wrong, CPR training, and cursed dinner parties – the threat of breaking during a scene was so constant that it became a workplace hazard. But even by Office standards, one scene proved unusually difficult to finish, at least according to John Krasinski and Ed Helms.

John Krasinski Had To Walk Away While Filming the “Secret Santa” Episode

Image via NBC

It happened during Season 6’s holiday episode, “Secret Santa,” and involved Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner), Michael Scott (Carell), and a line delivery so unexpected that it broke everyone. The scene is funny enough on its own, but what made it impossible to film — literally, take after take — was Carell’s improvised response.

John Krasinski, the reigning king of barely-contained smirks, admitted he had to physically leave the room to get through the moment. “It’s the hardest I’ve ever laughed on set,” he said during an interview. Recently, Ed Helms also admitted that it was “one of the hardest times I’ve ever laughed in my life,” referring to his co-star’s off-script performance on a recent Vulture podcast. It took multiple takes to shoot the moment because no one on set could keep it together. So what was it about this scene that pushed the cast over the edge?

Steve Carell Completely Improvised Michael Scott’s Reaction in “Secret Santa”

Image via NBC

Season 6’s “Secret Santa” episode opens with Michael Scott in rare form — which is to say, feeling deeply threatened by something objectively unimportant. This time, it’s Phyllis (Phyllis Smith) playing Santa at the office Christmas party, a role Michael believes should be exclusively his because, as he tells Jim, “A woman as Santa? Where does it end?” After an extended and increasingly petty turf war over the chair and costume, Michael eventually begins inviting employees to sit on his lap to get a taste of “the real thing.”

That’s when Kevin steps up. What was supposed to be a quick sight gag – large man, small chair, uncomfortable idiot manager – turns into a full comedic meltdown as the dull-witted accountant struggles to think of a gift he’d like for Christmas. Kevin admits, with childlike sincerity, “Nobody’s ever let me sit on their lap before,” a line that’s funny all on its own, but it’s Carell’s improvised response that completely derails the rest of the scene. “He lost all the air in his body when Brian sat on him,” Krasinski explained in a Wired interview. “I’ve never laughed harder in my life. And if you’re a fan of the show, you know they used to just swing pan to Jim for a reaction. I looked over to the cameraman and said, ‘Don’t even try it. I’ll be here on the floor laughing my ass off.'”

Helms echoed that statement, recalling how Carell took the physical comedy bit just a tad further. “When Kevin gets up, Steve starts moving around the space because his leg is asleep, and he’s hammering his leg against the desk and then the chair,” Helms said. “I think you can see in the shot that I disappear. I duck behind a wall. And that was probably take 12, and I still couldn’t keep it together.” By that point in the series, the cast was so dialed in – and so used to Carell going off the rails – that moments like this didn’t just delay the scene. They blew it up.

Steve Carell Made Bloopers Inevitable on ‘The Office’

Carell had a well-documented habit of ruining takes, though not purposefully. In an episode of Baumgartner’s An Oral History of The Office, the actor explained, “I’ll crack up as much as anyone, but I try not to because I always feel like, if I laugh… if I crack up, it’s unusable.” But, when you’re consistently the funniest person in the room, and you rarely deliver a line the same way twice, it makes it impossible for your co-stars to stay as straight-faced. It became a running joke among the cast that the real challenge when filming wasn’t remembering lines or blocking – it was surviving a scene with Carell without completely losing it. There are now-infamous moments that never stood a chance: the “Prison Mike” monologue, the surprise kiss with Oscar, and the tiny flat-screen TV getting destroyed during “Dinner Party” are just a few instances that went off the rails. Each time, what should have been a simple take turned into a series of unusable footage and broken actors.

The Office didn’t just tolerate these moments, but it embraced them, encouraging improvisation and building space for gifted comedians like Carell to toy with scripts. Because of that, many of the show’s bloopers have taken on a second life and are beloved by fans who treat them as essential viewing. “Secret Santa” is a perfect example of the kind of moment that almost didn’t make the cut, simply because the cast could not stop laughing long enough to finish it. But fifteen years later, fans are still watching that scene – and the blooper reel that came out of it – with the same secondhand giddiness.

For Helms and Krasinski, it was one of the hardest laughs of their careers. For Carell, it was just another day of destroying his co-workers’ professionalism. For the show as a whole, it was a reminder of what made The Office work when it was at its best: actors who knew their characters inside out, a set that invited chaos, and a lead whose ability to deadpan while everyone else fell apart was both a comedic gift and a curse.