Hey, Folks around The Office!
I posted about this funnyman, B.J. Novak a handful of years ago when this Blog was still just a few years old. He not only acted on the show, but was one of the extremely talented writers as well as an executive producer for the very successful TV show, The Office, which ran from 2005 to 2013. Since I posted about this guy so long ago, I thought we could revisit B.J. to get to know him a little bit better.
In the previous post, I discussed how he attended Camp Ramah and then covered a series of moments in his life throughout his acting career. Today, however, I want to go real deep so we can attempt to really get to understand who Mr. Novak is at his most core level, not as a writer/actor/wunderkind, but as a human being:
First to the Show
The first to be cast, B.J. beat everyone to the punch. Greg Daniels, show producer, hired B.J. before any other cast member. But he wasn’t hired just for acting, he was hired to write for the show as well. He would come to be joined by other writer-performers on the show: Mindy Kaling who played Kelly, Paul Lieberstein who played Toby, and Michael Schur who played Dwight’s cousin Mose.
Like Ryan, Like B.J.Just as the character he portrayed on The Office was romantically involved with the character played by Mindy Kaling, B.J. too was romantically involved with Mindy Kaling herself. The two met when they were both hired on as writer-performers for the show and through developing the show, their relationship blossomed.
During his eight years writing for The Office, B.J. started having a bunch of story ideas that didn’t fit into the environment of the show, really. He jotted the ideas down anyway and when The Office came to an end, he looked through a bunch of notebooks and decided to put these ideas down as short stories in a collection that he’s recently released! It’s called ‘One More Thing’ and includes a story about summer camp!
Just 40 years old with a hit comedy series and a collection of short fiction under his belt, B.J. Novak is quite the accomplished individual. What else will we see from this former summer camper in the years to come? Check out his old summer camp by visiting Camp Ramah sometime and, as always, thanks for reading.
- John