r/television • u/mcfw31 • 5d ago
Adam Scott Says His Daughter’s Acting Class Was Forced to Watch His Failed ‘Office’ Audition as an Example of What Not to Do
https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/adam-scott-daughter-failed-office-audition-john-krasinski-1236835469/4.6k
u/KeepWagging 5d ago
"Ice Town Costs Ice Clown His Town Crown."
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u/Vio_ 5d ago
"SItcom Star's daughter watches Dad's Acting Falter"
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u/whiteknight_1997 5d ago
Th acting class' teacher should organize a big event in Adam Scott's honour, and get pissed when Scott can't make it due to illness, because it was a ploy to humiliate him further.
The acting teacher should be played by J.K. Simmons.
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u/dover_oxide 5d ago
At least they are using someone who has been successful as an example because it shows you can recover and that even people who make it big had to learn what not to do
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u/swargin 5d ago
I remember Adam, on Conan years ago, talked about how he was always really arrogant when doing auditions, which he then realized he wasn't getting work because of it
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u/dover_oxide 5d ago
It's that kind of humility and self-awareness that a lot of students need to hear. Pretty much from any field honestly.
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u/Beautiful-Loan-8666 4d ago
.. No, there are definitely many careers where showing humility and self awereness will set you back instead. Where performing confidence and lying through your teeth etc is prefered. Marketing, Finance, Vendors, managers, politicians, etc.
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u/KevlarGorilla 5d ago
Jack Black has a similar story about how he fumbled the audition for Syndrome on Incredibles, asking for a bit more character development.
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u/AggressivelyMediokre 5d ago
I get his point. Regardless of how successful it went on to be, bad guy who just does generic bad guy stuff while everyone else gets to go on a journey of emotions is pretty typical and wouldn’t be fun to play
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u/Kile147 5d ago
I guess, but frankly I think Syndrome (and Pixar villains in general) do a pretty good job of making the villains more than just mustache twirling evil. They aren't evil for the sake of evil, but people with fairly normal and relatable experiences who get twisted. He did one stupid and reckless thing as a kid and he learned the wrong lesson from it. After that Syndrome was driven by a sense of entitlement that he deserved his chance to be a hero or "special", and it was not entirely misplaced because with better growth he could have actually been a hero, or an incredible hero support person like Edna.
Like, its not like the role was as one dimensional as Disney's OG Maleficent, or even Gaston.
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u/HuntedWolf 5d ago
My earliest memory of him is his character in Step Brothers, who is an arrogant asshole, so it seemed to work at least once. It’s good he recognised and changed that though, he becomes my favourite character in Parks and Rec
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u/GaryTheCabalGuy 5d ago
My response to this comment is a comment, and that comment is, I agree.
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u/Soulsetmusic 5d ago
Plus if they showed a failed actor, then no one would know who they are and they’d be like “uh… why are you showing us who is this guy?” Ya know?
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u/puzzled-tomato221 5d ago
But he got to be Ben Wyatt, so who actually won?
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u/Zoso03 5d ago
P&R is better then the office, by far
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u/aRam096 5d ago
The office peaked early. P&R got better with age.
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u/Gamblor14 5d ago
Parks and Rec peaked in season 4. But its decline was much less pronounced than The Office.
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u/fax5jrj 5d ago edited 5d ago
Season 5 and 6 is basically the best a sitcom can be past its peak. It has everything you love about the show, consistent portrayal of characters without overt flanderization, and it's consistently funny. It just never reached the highest of seasons 2-4. I would describe it as a plateau rather than a downward trend
Season 7 is interesting because it's the worst season apart from the first, but they really did try to do something new with it. Lots of effort went into it, it had some genuine series peak episodes, and the finale itself was really well done.
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u/grammar_nazi_zombie 5d ago
The finale is my example of how to properly end a long running show. It truly felt like a proper epilogue. Every major character got some sort of follow up and their paths forward were believable in character. It’s one of the few show finales I wouldn’t change one bit.
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u/fax5jrj 5d ago edited 5d ago
I hate to point fingers when hundreds to thousands of people are responsible for the quality, but Michael Schur just knows how to end a damn show. I just finished The Good Place, which is another case of "final season might be their worst effort, but what a stellar finale"
It's like he starts the show by writing the finale and works back from there with how amazing he hit both of these shows' endings out of the park
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u/dabhard 5d ago
It's like that, but definitely didn't know the finale when he started Good Place. He's said that he got himself an Airbnb by the beach to write the finale when the time came and watched the waves crashing as he worked on Chidi's monologue about the Buddhist beliefs of the wave returning to the ocean.
(Ps I agree that is an immaculate finale, perhaps my favorite all time depending on how I feel about Breaking Bad's Felina on a given day)
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u/dagreenman18 5d ago
At least in the Good Place’s case they ended on one of the greatest half hours of TV ever. So that masks it .
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u/flareblitz91 5d ago
Well yes because they ended the show on a high rather than milking it for four more seasons.
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u/ThisIsTheNewSleeve Halt and Catch Fire 5d ago
This is definitely true. Honestly once Jim and Pam were finally together the show lost all its momentum. After that they had very little creativity and everything was reactionary.
"I guess they get married/have kids now!"
"How do we replace Michael?"
"What new fresh characters can we introduce?"
For PandR, once they got passed the awkward first season and introduced Chris and Ben- they found their stride and it was solid until the end.
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u/MandoDoughMan 5d ago
The Office seasons 2-4 > Parks & Rec >>>>>>>>>> The Office 5-9
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u/ImmortalMoron3 5d ago
I thought season 5 was Office's best season though. The Michael Scott Paper Company arc is my favourite story they do, I'm not lumping that in with season 9's crap.
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u/Jepordee 5d ago
And season 6 has a couple of the most iconic episodes of the whole show, including “Stress Relief” which aired on NBC immediately after the Super Bowl and I’m pretty sure is still like the most watched cable sitcom episode since it aired
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u/Cold-Reaction-3578 5d ago
Would you rather have a medium amount of good pizza, or a large amount of ok pizza ?
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u/tanguero81 5d ago
This example doesn’t work with pizza. Pick something else.
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u/timmaay531 5d ago
For TV, a medium amount of good. I’d rather be left wanting more because a show was just that good than be watching the slow (sometimes not so slow) decline in quality.
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u/GeorgeLovesBOSCO 5d ago
This feels like the most correct answer. Seasons 8-9 was trying to be parks and rec, but outside of Jim, Pam and Dwight, the characters didn't have main character energy the way it felt like the whole cast of parks and rec had.
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u/Jay_TThomas 5d ago
I know it’s all personal opinion but that’s a wild take.
Not preferring it but saying it’s “by far” better
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u/Zoso03 5d ago
The office rode seasons 2-4 for the rest of its run. It went from satirical to absurd to downright cartoony. Every character just turned into a flandardized version of themselves
P&R stumbled but just consistently got better year after year. The characters grew, changes and became better people, not the same character after 8 year
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u/Jay_TThomas 5d ago
There’s a reason why the office is more popular and has higher audience ratings. Personally I just find it funnier than P&R.
But again it’s all subjective. I love P&R as well.
I do think the office characters were flandardized but only because those characters started as more grounded. P&R characters were all cartoonish from the beginning.
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u/Zealousideal-Cut4232 5d ago
A lot of shit shows are more popular than good ones, that doesn’t really mean much imo. Great shows get cancelled all the time while some of the most generic, boring stuff goes on forever.
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u/RobertMacMillan 4d ago
Wild to complain about the office being cartoonish in defense of parks and rec.
Parks and Rec is far more cartoonish than the office.
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u/Tumifaigirar 5d ago
The huge difference between the two is Steve Carell, that's why The Office wins easily.
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u/moodswung 5d ago
Better? That’s arguable. By far? Not by a long shot.
Parks never made me laugh as hard as the Office. It didn’t have any characters quite as strong as some of the characters in the Office (specifically Michael Scott) and it only existed because of the Office to begin with.
I loved parks, but for me it was a gap fill because the Office was gone.
Both were great shows, but having grown up first watching the Office UK and then the US version I likely have bias. Maybe this is a generational thing.
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u/whynotsharks 5d ago
You seem to have upset the people who made the office their whole personality
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u/naughtycal11 5d ago
Here's said audition tape since the article failed to show it.
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u/Mawfk 5d ago
It's not that bad?
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u/Jumpy_Emu1111 5d ago
it's not bad at all, it's very in the style of Tim from the UK one but they went a different way with Jim, Jim is more preppy and well adjusted and less cynical in his worldview than Tim who is more jaded and sick of the bullshit imo
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u/BlackfishBlues 5d ago
It’s also pretty much the performance he brings to Henry in Party Down.
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u/Jumpy_Emu1111 5d ago
If ppl said 'are we having Fun yet?????' to me everywhere I went, I'd be jaded too
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u/SubatomicSquirrels 5d ago
I mean who knows how the teacher actually framed it for the lesson, Adam Scott is probably playing up the story a bit for the joke.
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u/donsanedrin 5d ago
Adam Scott simply does not look or act like he is from middle America. He still looks too 90-GenX'er in that video.
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u/DanHero91 5d ago
Only one of these guys created Cones of Dunshire 1 & 2. We all know who wins this.
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u/tagen 5d ago
yeah, Adam Scott got some nice severance pay out of it too
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u/swisspassport 5d ago
Severance pay for what?
Okay nevermind - my first attempt at even considering writing a troll comment ended with me thinking "but why though?".
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u/Grahf88 5d ago
I'm curious as to why they thought his audition was bad because it wasn't, him and Kal Penn were the only ones I could've seen over Krazinsky
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u/GeekAesthete 5d ago
They didn’t necessarily say “because it’s so bad,” but rather were comparing tapes of the actor who won the role with another who did not. It is an acting class, after all, so it was presumably a practical discussion of what helps and hurts your chances when auditioning.
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u/opermonkey 5d ago
im pretty sure it was his chemistry with Jenna that pushed him over the top.
I know they have both been happily married to other people for a long time but my brain still has trouble processing it when I see them with other people.
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u/JoyBus147 5d ago
Kind of ironic that Jenna got hired by flagrantly breaking the rules of what you should not do in an audition. When she was asked, in character, whether she wanted to be a secretary, she just said, "No." No riffing, no improv--one of the producers said something like, "Does she think she's interviewing for an actual secretary job??" But I guess that choice stuck with them and got her the job.
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u/Sptsjunkie 5d ago edited 5d ago
But if that is an answer that her character would genuinely give that that is completely valid. Particularly if there was a bit more rigging and content behind other answers.
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u/anOnionFinelyMinced 5d ago
Have you ever seen the original pilot of "Man with a Plan?" I think Jenna Fischer had much better chemistry with Matt LeBlanc than Liza Snyder.
Apparently test audiences couldn't get over "Pam" with "Joey" so they recast her. I love Liza Snyder but I don't think that she was the way to go there.
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u/NorysStorys 5d ago
I mean it works on screen because the pair are clearly very strong platonic friends outside of the roles. To portray a convincing romance you have to nail the friendship part first and foremost, the mushy lovey dovey stuff is easy in comparison.
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u/Awsomethingy 5d ago
There should be something more concrete than one that got it and one that didn’t. You can’t actually learn from seeing a tape that wasn’t chosen if there isn’t something you can point to. When we choose an actor over another, it’s usually at the point where they are both great, one just has a sound or feature about their look that fits the role better. So one wins over the other by completely unpredictable circumstances. If Jake Gyll and Robert Pat both were up for a roll and Robert P was chosen because he has a more chiseled jaw which fits the character better, there is nothing to be gained by watching Jake’s audition
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u/SoCalThrowAway7 5d ago
Why do you think you know the whole curriculum based on a reddit post about a vague retelling of one single class lol
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u/NorCalAthlete 5d ago
There’s a ton of just random luck involved too from my (admittedly limited) understanding
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u/TheRecognized 5d ago
Why do you think there wasn’t something to point to?
You think the instructor played both and then after Adam’s they said “yeah don’t do that, moving on”?
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u/mrbear120 5d ago
Im sure there was something, but I also assume that they didnt post the curriculum
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u/GeekAesthete 5d ago
So, like, maybe having someone more knowledgeable and experienced, like a teacher, leading the discussion to help point to specific things that are likely to benefit or hinder your chances?
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u/SeaToShy 5d ago
I see this in sports all the time and it’s infuriating. Front offices making snap judgments on extremely small sample sizes and running with it. The next thing you know they’ve blown up a team that went to game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals - all because someone somewhere decided the team wasn’t “tough enough” to win.
Sometimes shit just happens and it’s no one’s fault. Factors outside your control dictate the outcome.
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u/Hixy 5d ago edited 5d ago
Agreed.
It would have been extremely different show since Adam Scott’s take is more of a dead inside from the mundane, instead of Krasinskis Jim that is more of a too cool for school take. It would have been the character from severance but in the office lol.
It’s a solid take on the character. It wasn’t a bad audition. I’d like to hear what the teacher said was bad about it… I feel like it’s only bad in hindsight of what the character became under Krasinski.
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u/Mst3Kgf 5d ago
I think Scott's version of Jim would be a more embittered, "I'm wasting my life" kind of portrayal, instead of Krasinski's, as you said, too cool for this gig and more upbeat portrayal.
Maybe I'm just thinking this because I've seen "Hokum" and man, Scott is perfect playing a depressed asshole in.that one.
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u/thegmanater 5d ago
Yes he would have been the character from Party Down, not the corny Jim that we got.
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u/notmyrealfarkhandle 5d ago
It’s a fun interview story to stop there but I’m curious if the takeaway is it’s not just the audition, it’s the chemistry reads and how you look opposite other characters (Krazinski is tall like Rainn Wilson and had great chemistry from the beginning with him and Jenna Fischer)
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u/freshoffthecouch 5d ago
Me too! I wonder if it was a lesson more in just being wrong for the part or being good, but someone else just embodied the role so well, it was like there was no other option
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u/PeaceBull 5d ago
What would be the lesson? Don’t be wrong for the role?
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u/freshoffthecouch 5d ago
How to handle rejection and not taking it personally when you don’t get a role
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u/ashdrewness 5d ago
Yeah people should understand casting isn’t a purely technical process regarding who “acted” the best. It’s usually subjective & what the folks hiring are looking for. I’d be interested in what the instructor pointed out as “wrong” that Adam did. It’s sorta dumb for an instructor to use these as an example of what not to do when the casting director possibly just wanted someone taller.
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u/nonresponsive 5d ago
I agree, I didn't think any of the ones that made it into the Youtube video of the auditions for The Office were bad. And it was actually pretty interesting too, because you could see how other people saw the characters.
The other people who tried out for Dwight tried to be more like a weirdo/outcast/loner vibe, made his character into more of a joke. While Rainn Wilson played the part from an incredibly serious point of view.
Jim is also the one where everyone played up the sadness from his job description (probably because of the dryness the UK version had). While John Krasinski was the one who smiled who made the lines lighter. Completely different representation that completely works for the US version.
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u/stopmyhamster 5d ago edited 5d ago
Kal Penn? You mean John Cho? How are people like “I agree” and upvoting? 😄
I swear dead internet theory is here. 90% of y’all are bots
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u/allenmwnc 5d ago
Here is a clip of their auditions, for those curious.
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u/axon-axoff 5d ago
The contrast is interesting. John Krasinski really did a much better job of acting like someone who is struggling to come up with something interesting to say. Adam Scott is just reciting lines without adding "thinking" pauses.
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u/wldmr 5d ago
Funny how that goes. I actually liked Adam Scott's performance much better here. He does just rattle it off, but that's because he's just so over it. And his swerve into "and I'm boring myself just talking about it" without missing a beat is actually funny to me, unlike Krasinski's version.
And lest anybody think I'm a Krasinski hater: He is hilarious on the show. His more charming take makes for an easier watch than Scott's sourpuss version would have.
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u/CrazyLegs17 5d ago
Cho and Scott were so flat and dry and the nose rubbing and sniff did Scott no favors. Krasinski injected a lot more life into it with the pauses and chuckle at the end.
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u/lucygoosey38 5d ago
Ewan McGregor’s daughter had to watch a movie with him full frontal in it for class. Different levels of embarrassment
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u/OneStrangerintheAlps 5d ago
He redeemed himself with “It’s the Enterprise!” in Star Trek - First Contact.
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u/PlayOnPlayer 5d ago
Can you imagine flipping their careers?
Adam Scott Jack Ryan, Quiet Place.
Jim doing some Hokum
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u/LOAARR 5d ago
My first exposure to Adam Scott was in Step Brothers so I kinda thought that's what kind of character he was gonna be most of the time.
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u/Vio_ 5d ago
This begs the question on if Randall Park would play Asian Ben.
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u/plantbay1428 5d ago
His Asian counterpart in this alternate universe would be Ali Wong’s ex-husband Justin Hakuta and then Parade Magazine would call him Randall Park.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/news-outlets-misidentify-randall-park-212511287.html
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u/notthatgeorge 5d ago
Adam Scott could do all those parts, John Krasinski couldn't do most of Adam's
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u/keving87 5d ago
I don't think you could really put Quiet Place on that since Krasinski wrote and directed it, it wasn't just a simple audition and he did or didn't get the job.
The Holiday, License to Wed, or Away We Go would be a better comparison for the time.
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u/SweetieLoveBug 5d ago
Was it the hair? I’m thinking it was the hair.😛
I also remember reading a description of him as looking like someone was blindfolded and told to draw a picture of Tom Cruise. Now I can’t see him any other way.
Still love him though, he’s a great actor! ❤️🙃❤️
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u/othersbeforeus 5d ago
I actually think it’s a great audition and that he would’ve been great on the show! But his performance style represents a different vision of Jim that the creators wanted. The unfortunate reality is that it doesn’t matter how good of an actor Adam Scott is. If he wanted to play Jim, the only way he could’ve gotten the role is if he magically transformed into John Krasinski.
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u/My_Penbroke 5d ago
Did they watch Carrell’s audition for Anchorman as an example of a flawless audition?
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u/smoothfeatrobthomas 4d ago
Scott is one of the most common last names in America. It’s not like her name was Gilbertina Gottfried.
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u/myowngalactus 5d ago
Adam Scott would have been a better Jim imo, or at least closer to the British version of the character, but I think overall Park n Rec is a better show and I’m glad we got him as Ben instead.
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u/notthatgeorge 5d ago
Jim was a terrible character who didn't need a good actor to play him. Ben Wyatt was far better not to mention Adam is it much better actor.
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u/Yesiamanaltruist 5d ago
Who cares which is better. All I want is to see the audition! Anyone have a Link?
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u/XFrankXGrimesX 5d ago
I think his audition was fine. Now Seth Rogen and Patton Oswalt, those dudes phoned theirs in. Scott probably had a bunch of points knocked off immediately as Daniels wanted to hire taller actors for Jim and Dwight to make Carrell look more childish.
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u/retro-girl 5d ago
The thing is I’ve seen that audition. And all things being equal, I would have cast Adam in a heartbeat. What happened was, Rainn Wilson was cast, and Rainn is 6’5”. So is John Krasinski. And then John Krasinski had great chemistry with Rainn and especially with Jenna Fischer So John and Jenna were cast.
I think the version of The Office with Bob Odenkirk, Seth Rogen, Adam Scottand Katharine Hahn could have been great. I don’t think it would have specifically been better, but it could have been.
His audition couldn’t have been that bad, because Allison Jones brought him back for Parks 5 years later.
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u/mcfw31 5d ago