Local newspapers may be struggling across America, but ‘The Paper’ creators Greg Daniels and Michael Koman see plenty of life—and comedy—left in the newsroom.
“The documentary crew is there to cover an important topic, which is news deserts and ghost newspapers,” Daniels says of setting the series in Toledo. “The big cities still have their own newspapers with reporters.”
“It’s a difficult situation,” Koman says of balancing real-world issues facing journalism with the show’s comedic tone. “I think that you want struggle and you want things that are causing some sort of uphill battle for characters.”
Greg Daniels and Michael Koman spoke with Awards Focus about bringing ‘The Paper’ to life, from choosing Toledo as the setting and researching the realities of local journalism to building a new ensemble of characters distinct from those in ‘The Office.’ During the conversation, the creators discussed why now felt like the right moment to revisit the mockumentary format, the challenges of balancing real-world concerns facing newspapers with comedy, the evolution of the cast during production, and what they hope audiences take away from the series’ first season.
After documenting life at Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, the crew from ‘The Office’ set out to capture a new story, focusing on the ‘Toledo Truth Teller, a historic newspaper in the Midwest, and the efforts of its publisher to bring the publication back to life.
Created by Greg Daniels and Michael Koman, ‘The Paper’ stars Domhnall Gleeson, Sabrina Impacciatore, Chelsea Frei, Melvin Gregg, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Alex Edelman, Ramona Young, Tim Key, and Oscar Nuñez. Guest stars include Eric Rahill, Tracy Letts, Molly Ephraim, Mo Welch, Allan Havey, Duane Shepard Sr., Nate Jackson, and Nancy Lenehan.
All episodes are currently streaming on Peacock. A second season was ordered ahead of the premiere.
Awards Focus: It’s so nice to meet you today. How are you doing?
Michael Koman: Really well. How are you?
Greg Daniels: Nice to meet you.
AF: I’m doing well. This past year marked the 20th anniversary of ‘The Office’ making its debut as an American TV series. What made it the right time to debut a spinoff series and continue the story?
Greg Daniels: Well, there was a lot of concern that a spin-off would be perceived as being done for not the right motives—when the show was super hot and everything and after 20 years. I was mentioning that to Steve Carell, and he was like, “I really don’t think anybody’s going to give you a hard time. Why don’t you just do it if you like the idea?” I guess that was it. And also, I had been exclusive to Amazon on the ‘Upload’ show since 2016. That wrapped up last year so I could show run something new.
I don’t even know if we would have done it. I had it predicated on everything going right. The first thing that had to go right was to find a great partner. When Michael came on board the project, that was one of the things to tick off. We also had to make sure that the cast was A+, or I would have shut it down also. We got our terrific cast and we were kind of off to the races.
AF: What excited you most about setting the show in Toledo specifically?
Greg Daniels: Well, we went to Toledo to check it out before we committed to Toledo, and it felt good. The characters are not getting applause in their lives for being in the most glamorous setting. They’re not working at an AI company in New York City. They really believe in what they’re doing and the importance of local journalism. Toledo is a place that people know where it is. They know they’ve heard of it. You might feel that, like a newspaper, maybe the better days for Toledo were a little bit in the rearview mirror, but you never know. You can always turn it around and that’s kind of our theme.
Michael Koman: Yeah. I think the main thing about the choice is that working in journalism is something that people like to do. They’re doing it, I think, because it brings them satisfaction. When we went to Toledo, my sense from meeting people there was that they like living there. This is a city that they felt proud of. It felt like there was a little connection between that and what they did for a living.
Greg Daniels: Yeah. Also, the documentary crew is there to cover an important topic, which is news deserts and ghost newspapers. The big cities still have their own newspapers with reporters.
AF: How much time did you spend researching local newspapers and speaking with journalists during development?
Greg Daniels: Well, we’re still doing it. We just met with the ‘Austin Chronicle’ last week. It’s an ongoing process to try to find stories that are fresh and that come from real life and to stay authentic so you’re not making things up because they seem funny without having any clue if it’s real or not.
Michael Koman: Yeah. I think no matter what you make a TV show about, you start to focus on the relationships between the characters and what’s happening in their personal stories. It’s always good to remind yourself to step back into the world that it’s set in and just, this is what it feels like to be in a newsroom, or this is what it feels like to be in a hospital. This is what it feels like to be in that environment.
AF: The series arrives at a time when local journalism faces significant challenges. How did you balance those real-world issues with the show’s comedic tone?
Michael Koman: Well, in a way, that is where the show’s comedic comes from. It’s a difficult situation. I think that you want struggle and you want things that are causing some sort of uphill battle for characters. So obviously, it’s tricky because you don’t want to dwell on it too much in terms of just what the individual stories are about. But what’s nice in this particular case is that everybody understands that. You don’t have to talk too much about what’s happening inside of a newspaper for people to understand that it’s not the easiest time to do it.
Greg Daniels: Yeah, I think it’s more likable if there are underdogs that are doing something worthwhile for them to be laughing is maybe feels more courageous maybe than for incredibly successful people to be laughing. Do you know what I mean?
Michael Koman: I was looking at ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ not that long ago. Obviously, that was a different kind of news, but at that time, it was purely fun and exciting to be in news. It was a completely different situation. I like that you can have a setting that’s familiar in television, but the circumstances are now, I think, pretty much completely different than most of the shows that have been set in those places.
AF: Were there any rules you established early on about what should feel familiar to fans of ‘The Office’ and what needed to be different?
Greg Daniels: Yeah, well, we started with the premise that it’s the same documentary crew. The people who are filming, the people who are asking the questions, and the people who are in the editing room putting the stories together are the same people. So from the standpoint of tone or taste, it should feel connected.
We also felt that if that documentary crew was a quality documentary crew, they would select characters that were not similar to the original characters. If it starts to get a little too close to an ‘Office’ character, we got to figure out a way to write away from that because we don’t want it to be like, this is the new Kevin or whatever. There’s no benefit from that so we’re trying to do new characters and similar tone, I guess. And new subject matter.
AF: I loved Oscar’s reaction in that first episode. How did you decide on having Oscar be the character to move to Toledo and were there any other characters considered?
Greg Daniels: Well, Oscar was long time going to be the connective tissue here. Part of that for me is because he went through the nine years of ‘The Office’ without significantly changing his personality. There was such a character arc for almost all of the characters where Angela went through everything and came out the other side a different person. And so did Dwight. Jim and Pam have a particular ending that I don’t think anybody wants to undo. But Oscar was the same guy at the end that he was at the beginning. It felt like we didn’t end his story particularly.
AF: When you were developing the staff at the ‘Toledo Truth Teller,’ what qualities were you looking for in the characters that would make them compelling subjects for the documentary crew?
Greg Daniels: Well, there’s a thematic subject. When you’re talking about journalism, the notion of truth is an important notion. We have a very optimistic publisher, and he very much believes in the ability for journalists to uncover the truth and how important it is. He’s opposed by certain characters that have other opinions, like the idea that maybe it’s more important to be entertaining or maybe it’s more important not to rock the boat or something like that. A lot of the characters are in opposition to his central aim.
The plot of season one is that he finds out he doesn’t have the budget to hire professional reporters, so he has to take the office staff who are salespeople or truck drivers and make them into reporters. Some of the other personalities are selected for the fun of watching that transformation happen to different kinds of people.
Michael Koman: Yeah. Part of it is you want to picture who would be working at this newspaper before anybody shows up to try to revitalize it. This is just not a place that anybody is working at originally out of any kind of inspiration. Your main character has to have a certain drive.
Outside of that, you start to try to think of characters that are not going to overlap and be different. You don’t really know particularly why you make certain choices. Just a character comes to mind and you put that down, and that seems like it could work. And then over time, it settles and becomes more real and you start imagining these characters interacting with each other. But I don’t think there’s a tremendous amount of thought put into exactly who each person has to be, other than somebody strikes you and you start talking, and it seems like, yeah, that seems good. I believe that person would be there.
Greg Daniels: There’s a bit of flexibility too, because we have a very long casting process and we’re looking for a certain kind of comedian that is right for the tone and can also self-generate improvisation and have presence. When you find them, you are like, okay, that’s going to be Adelola, that person, and now I can incorporate things that are specific to that person.
There was a case where we had a character that was supposed to run the snack bar downstairs, but we didn’t really find anybody amazing that fit the bill there. We ran out of money to cast new people and (laughs) that character.
Michael Koman: A character like Nicole, there’s specifics that are there in the character, and you have a notion of what the character is like. But then when Ramona Young came in and just said what we’ve written, then it suddenly seems like a viable character and it suddenly becomes funny and alive and you get excited about it.
I do think that it’s an idea mixed with an actor that you enjoy seeing.
AF: How did ‘The Office’’s philosophy influence your approach to The Paper’?
Greg Daniels: I think that the humor-humanity, whatever that is, is maybe a personal style. For me, I think I put that into ‘King of the Hill’ or ‘Upload’ or whatever shows I’m working on.
But there is a very specific aesthetic for this show that is a mockumentary, a strict mockumentary aesthetic that Michael and I talked about in the beginning, which is really committing to the notion that there are human beings in the room holding cameras on their shoulders and you can’t use any shot that they wouldn’t be able to get, and that the actors are aware of them, and then sometimes they’re not aware of them. But the distinction between those types of scenes is very important, and you don’t fudge it for a joke. But long term, if you invest in that, the characters just feel more realistic and more like people.
AF: Looking back on the first season, were there any characters who evolved in unexpected ways once you saw the cast bring them to life?
Greg Daniels: Esmeralda was beyond our wildest imaginings, I think, in terms of how much fun that character is played by Sabrina.
Michael Koman: Yeah. I just feel every good actor, in a way, gives you something that you didn’t probably think was possible writing the character. I think we’re really lucky. You get either somebody finds a new way of being funny that you hadn’t really imagined before they performed it, or they have a level of nuance with just being a human being and being sensitive to how that person would act. They make you realize that there could be details in there that you maybe didn’t think of yourself.
I would say every character got better because of the performers.
Greg Daniels: Yeah, I would second that. Like Ramona, when she’s being emotional, amazing. Blows you away. Didn’t have any idea that would be so strong. We were worried about Domhnall being sexy because we held back on him being romantic for a long time. He just has a gear that he can just turn on at will and be incredibly appealing. And yeah, I don’t know. I agree with Michael.
AF: What do you hope viewers take away from watching the first season?
Greg Daniels: Well, I think if they get to the end of the first season, that we’ll have our hooks in them and they will love the characters and be excited to come back for season two. So, I encourage people to watch. We had a screening recently, and we just played episode six. A lot of people hadn’t seen any episodes before episode six, and they were super into it and wanting to go back and watch.
These kind of character comedies get better the more episodes you do as the actors find their characters and you understand the rules of the characters.
Michael Koman: Making a TV show, it’s a very personal thing, just that all the choices that go into it are a matter of what you just find funny and what you think is moving. So, you really just hope for some kind of agreement from an audience that when people are sitting there, they feel something similar to what you felt when you made those choices.
AF: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.
Greg Daniels: Thanks, Danielle.
Michael Koman: Nice to meet you.