Steve Carell Won’t Return for THE OFFICE Spinoff

This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise given he didn’t even stick around for the entirety of the original series run, but Steve Carell will not return for The Office reboot, according to Variety. Carell famously stepped away from the top-rated NBC comedy in 2010, a few episodes before the end of the show’s seventh episode. Though he’d return for the series finale a few years later, the Michael Scott era was well and truly over. And that won’t change in the upcoming spinoff, The Paper. However, the actor did provide some advice to the show’s new lead, Domhnall Gleeson.

“I know Domhnall Gleeson – who I did The Patient with – is going to be one of the leads. I know that for sure,” Carell told Jimmy Fallon during a recent interview on The Tonight Show. “He’s an excellent actor. And he actually called me and asked, you know, ‘Should I do this? Is this something… Did you enjoy it?’ I said, ‘Of course.’”

The Paper from Greg Daniels and Michael Koman will follow an office of workers at a failing local newspaper in the same fictional version of Scranton, PA, as The Office. The same faux documentary crew will shoot the show within the show. So far, only Gleeson and Italian actress Sabrina Impacciatore have been cast in the series, which will begin production in July 2024. The series will debut on Peacock at some point.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.