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Quote: Oscar Nunez, The Office Interview
By Ian Spelling
"It's like being on a really good basketball team and sitting on the bench." Yeah, sure, Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer are the stars of The Office, but the beauty of the show is the way it lets so many of its supporting players shine. Case in point: Oscar Nunez, who makes his every scene as recently outed Dunder Mifflin accountant Oscar Martinez count. Nunez will be back on The Office when the show returns for its fifth season on Sept. 25, and he's currently on view in the second go-round of Office webisodes, entitled Kevin's Loan. In the four-part series, which can be found at NBC.COM and will conclude on July 31, Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) tries to secure a loan under false pretenses, much to the dismay of several of his Dunder Mifflin co-workers. UGO recently caught up with Nunez, who gave us the skinny on the webisodes and the new season of The Office.
UGO: You guys were really ahead of the curve with the first batch of Office webisodes two years ago. How amazed were you at how popular they proved to be?
OSCAR:: Very. I'm not very computer savvy, but I know people who do that thing all the time and they're hitting the Internet. I know people hit The Office and NBC.COM, and they love the webisodes. The Emmys had them as a nomination for the first time ever last year, as part of the Daytime Emmys. The webisodes were a category and, lo and behold, we won. It never ceases to amaze me. I think The Office was the number one or number two most-downloaded show our first season, and that had a lot to do with us getting picked up for our second season.
UGO: Is it any harder to create two minutes of funny for a webisode than it is to come up with 22 minutes of material for an episode, or is the challenge basically the same?
OSCAR:: It's really the same thing. It's not more difficult to squeeze the funny out of a webisode. It's actually easier to do the webisodes because it's just so quick. It's a skeleton crew. We don't have two cameras; we have one. We have one sound guy. Boom, we light it and shoot. It's very quick.
UGO: For anyone who's reading this and hasn't yet seen the first three Kevin's Loan webisodes, catch them up...
OSCAR:: The basic story is that Kevin owes money to his bookie and he's trying to figure out a way to pay him back. He figures he'll get a bank loan and use that money to pay him back. He goes to the bank and he gets or doesn't get the loan, then Darryl (Craig Robertson) helps him and they go back to the bank. It's him trying to get the money and at the end it resolves itself. I'm in two of them. I try to tell him, "Look, it's against the law to take out a bank loan and keep the money. You can't do that." And in the other one I walk by Kevin and he's got an ice cream cart. I'm like, "Dude, they gave you the loan?" and he says, "No, I did it myself." They're pretty funny. I've been watching them, and I'm enjoying them.
UGO: Season five of The Office is coming up fast. What will you be up to?
OSCAR:: I don't know yet. We left a lot of loose ends in the finale, at the end of last season. We start shooting on Monday and we have not had a table read yet. We have not seen the scripts yet. We'll have a table read as soon as Steve gets back into town. Actually, I have seen a little bit of the opening episode's script and it looks pretty funny. As far as Oscar, I don't know what's going to happen. It's very quick with The Office. We get a script, we shoot the episode; we'll shoot from Monday to Friday, and that Thursday we'll get the next script for the following Monday. We only get the script when we're finishing one script up. We don't get like three scripts ahead. So we don't know what's going on.
UGO: There are so many great characters and so many solid actors on the show. Can they ever give everyone enough to do, to keep everyone happy?
OSCAR:: I don't know if that's necessary. There's something to be said about spreading it too thin. I mean, Steve, Rainn, John and Jenna, that's the main cast, and we're the strong support cast. It's like being on a really good basketball team and sitting on the bench. They need you, you get up and you play a little bit. If they win the championship, you still get a ring.
UGO: If our facts are right, you've got the films Beethoven: The Real Story and The Proposal both completed. Are we right in guessing that Beethoven is about the dog and not the composer?
OSCAR:: Beethoven is a family movie. It's about the big Saint Bernard. We shot that in Orlando and it was a lot of fun. That goes straight to DVD, I believe. The Proposal is a movie that will be out in 2009. It's with Sandra Bullock, and it's a romantic comedy. That should be quite funny. It was a lot of fun to do. We shot that one in Boston. I'm the comic relief in both films. I'm this villain in The Proposal. It takes place in this small Alaskan town, and I play several characters in the town. I run the general store and do a couple of other things around town.
| __________________ Ryan ♥
avie by pessimistreader |
Cute!
But yeah still fun.
Congrats to Oscar! That's awesome.
