Rainn Wilson says he spent many years on THE OFFICE feeling miserable because he wasn’t a movie star

Rainn Wilson he is best known for playing the role of Dwight Schrute in the hit TV series, The office. The Emmy-winning comedy ran for nine seasons on NBC and has a diehard fan base that lives on. It’s a seemingly comfortable deal for an actor trying to make it in Hollywood, but Wilson says he spent many years on the series feeling very dissatisfied with where his career had come.

Wilson recently spoke to Variety, saying:

“When I was on ‘The Office,’ I had several mostly unhappy years because it wasn’t enough. I’m realizing now, like, I’m on a hit show, Emmy nominated every year, make a lot of money, work with Steve Carell AND Jenna Fisher AND John Krasinsky and these amazing writers and amazing directors like Paul Feig. I’m in one of the big TV shows. People love it. I wasn’t having fun. I was thinking, ‘Why am I not a movie star? Because I’m not next Black Jack or the next Will Ferrell? How come I can’t have a film career? Why don’t I have this development deal?’”

He continued:

“When I was in The Office, I was holding on and I was holding on, okay, I was making hundreds of thousands. I wanted millions and I was a TV star, but I wanted to be a movie star. It was never enough. Humans have lived for hundreds of thousands of years and ‘never enough’ has helped us as a species.”

Wilson said The Drew Barrymore Show earlier this year who wishes The office could have aired during the COVID pandemic as he has great ideas for how the sitcom could have mirrored real world events.

“It would have been a lot of fun to film The Office during the pandemic. If we had any pandemic episodes, that would have been great. The writers of Office were great – they would be able to turn it around in beautiful ways.

Wilson’s idea for a pandemic episode of The office features Dwight recruiting Dundler Mifflin staff to return to work after the pandemic.

“I think it would be: [Dwight] gets the call from corporate to get everyone back to the office and everyone resists. So, one by one, Dwight has to kidnap all the cast members of ‘Office’ and bring them to Dunder Mifflin in some sort of dark and somewhat inappropriate way.

That would have been fun! I always hope that one day they will reboot the series so I can see the Dunder Mifflin employees once again. As for Wilson, I hope he’s come to terms with the magnitude of his career, and I hope he’s happy with where he is. I’m sure he still gets paid pretty well to play the character of Dwight Schrute.