Before he made a fool of himself as Michael Scott on The Office, Steve Carell embarrassed himself on The Daily Show.
“I did not like it—especially at first," Carell, 63, said on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast of his early work on the Jon Stewart-led show. “I was new and following the template, and I never felt good about mocking someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
From 1999 to 2005, Carell was a field correspondent for The Daily Show, along with his longtime improv castmate Stephen Colbert. The 11-time Emmy nominee produced hundreds of pre-taped videos in which he made fun of politicians, mocked healthcare experts, and improvised with eccentric hobbyists.
Carell said the experience was draining and left him with a sour taste in his mouth. Until his early Second City understudy offered him a word of wisdom.
“Stephen gave me great advice, which was to come up with a character, and that will make it more palatable,” Carell said of Colbert, 61, who would earn six Emmys for his Colbert Report character he first developed on The Daily Show.
Much like Colbert’s character, which he described as a “well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot,” the Anchorman star said that the character he created was “someone who didn’t quite understand, but was super serious about everything he was asking.”
“I was the idiot,” Carell said, who noted that “the onus was on me” to be mocked.
The actor recalled one video in which he attended a Star Trek convention where a group of fans spoke only Klingon.
“Obviously, the idea is, ‘Let’s make fun of people who meet and learn how to speak Klingon,’” Carell recalled, but quickly found that they were some of “the nicest, gentlest” people he’d ever met.
“I really like these people a lot. They were very kind,” the Rooster star said. “I thought, ‘Who are they harming? No one.’ I mean, it’s just harmless fun. It’s just people enjoy each other’s company and have a shared hobby.”
“I thought, ‘No, it has to be about what an idiot I am,’” Carell concluded.
So, the multi-hypnehate actor learned to turn the joke on himself, evolving the mockery into his most iconic role on The Office as the paper company’s affable yet mortifying leader.
“You’re so good at playing someone who’s frustrated by their own lack of understanding—comedically,” Poehler, 54, said on her Golden Globe-winning podcast. “Just like, ‘God! If I could just get this right,” she joked.
“Why is the world so wrong?” Carell lamented in-character.
Carell said once he realized his character was the butt of every joke, it relieved the “strain” of filming.
“I don’t like playing pranks in terms of being unkind or trying to make someone look stupid unless they deserve it,” Carell said. “Some of them were eccentric, but who cares? That’s just the spice of life.”
After almost 300 episodes of The Daily Show, Carell left in 2005 to pursue The Office and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, roles that would launch him to stardom.
Now, Carell is starring in a new show, Rooster, which airs on HBO Max.
