Brian Baumgartner on enduring appeal of 'The Office,' his new 'Oral History' podcast and cancel culture
Actor Brian Baumgartner joins Bret Baier on 'Special Report.'
Actor Brian Baumgartner, best known for playing Kevin Malone on “The Office," told "Special Report" Thursday that it is "mind-boggling" for him to see how many people have found solace in the hit TV series during the coronavirus pandemic.
"On the first day of what many consider the quarantine, March 15, which was [a] Sunday, 250 million minutes were streamed on Netflix that day alone," Baumgartner told host Bret Baier. "It is mind-boggling, just how people are still consuming it."
That fanaticism, according to Baumgartner, is why he launched his podcast, "An Oral History of 'The Office'," the first episode of which was released Tuesday.
The Atlanta native told Baier he wanted to "look back and try to answer the question [of] why the show endured all this time."
"Why has the audience grown, specifically, and why are 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds, why are they gobbling up this show that is really about middle-aged office workers?" he asked. "Why am I in a Billie Eilish song? Why am I still golfing at the [celebrity] American Century Tournament?"
Ricky Gervais, who created and starred in the British version of the sitcom, recently told the Times of London that he believed "The Office" would be less successful if it aired today, because of what Gervais called "outrage mobs who take things out of context."
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Baumgartner told he believes the show had "very clear" perspectives on "race, on sexuality, on women's rights issues, [and on] health care."
"Now within that, there were people who said things that were not appropriate," he admitted, "but to me, the sum total was, when you have one person saying something that maybe they shouldn't be saying, but the entire rest of the office is responding to that person in a way that lets you know that that's not okay ... then I think the sum total of the message is not bad."
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