Brian Baumgartner Says The Office's First Christmas Episode 'Launched the Success of the Show'

Success from Office was something of a Christmas miracle – at least according to Brian Baumgartner.

Actor and author The night before Christmas at Dunder Mifflin a colleague joined Office alumni Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey on a special holiday bonus episode of their podcast Office ladies this week to share memories of Christmas episodes of the hit NBC sitcom.

Baumgartner, who played lovable goofball Kevin Malone on the NBC sitcom from 2005 to 2013, said his memories of the show’s holiday episodes have a lot to do with what was happening “outside” the world Office.

“It’s about what was happening outside. And as I’m sure you’ve talked about or will talk about, for example, that first Christmas episode,” Baumgartner told Fischer and Kinsey. “It didn’t start the show. It was not the first episode of the series. But that episode really launched the success of the show.”

The cast of ‘The Office’ from 2006.

Paul Drinkwater/NBC

“That episode became our biggest audience since the premiere,” he continued with the second season episode, “The Christmas Party.” “And from there, you know, then Steve [Carell] win a Golden Globe, three or four weeks later everything starts happening.”

“We turned the corner,” Kinsey interjected.

“You know, at that point we didn’t even have a full order for the season. And they started – after that it became clear that we were going to be around for a while.”

Both Baumgartner and Kinsey have previously spoken about what the 2005 episode, which drew 10 million viewers, meant to the show. “After that episode aired, we were the No. 1 streaming show on iTunes and all of a sudden we were like, ‘Wait a minute. We found our audience,’ Kinsey told Yahoo Entertainment in 2022.

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But, Baumgartner said further Office ladiesthe episode was special in other ways. “Everybody did something,” he said. “They were all highlighted in some way.”

“They were difficult to produce, the Christmas episodes,” he continued, “because: the big party, the group scenes, everyone involved.

Fischer, meanwhile, remembered the holiday episodes as some of the “most joyous” to make. “We’d really be in group fun situations like this for most of the episode.”

“I’m sure it was very difficult for us to fight,” she added. “We were probably, like, trying to make a TV show with a room full of six-year-olds or something, doing all our jobs.”

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Brian Baumgartner and Steve Carell in season 6 of ‘The Office’.

NBC

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The trio recalled a wild scene in 2009’s “Secret Santa,” when Carell’s Michael Scott dressed up as Santa Claus and Baumgartner’s Kevin sat on his lap. Fischer said none of the cast could get through a scene without laughing.

“If you look at that episode, people are making their way in the background,” Fischer said. “We’ve never, ever been able to figure out where the whole time kept people together long enough to actually put a show together. I think they just gave up. They said, ‘Forget it. This is it.’ ”

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Source: HIS Education