‘The Office’ star Ed Helms on playing Andy Bernard and punching the wall

“Ruh-duh duh duh-dooh.”

Relax, everyone. That’s not a chainsaw. It’s just Andy Bernard dropping his signature catchphrase on The Office for the very first time.

On the latest episode of the Office Ladies podcast, former co-stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey chatted with Ed Helms about filming the Season 3 episode, “The Return,” and what it was like playing Andy Bernard.

Helms spoke on everything from his hilarious (and extremely improvised) sound effects to Andy’s “Rockin’ Robin” ringtone. And, of course, he dished on all the pressures of having to punch a hole in the wall in front of the entire bullpen.

“The Return” is the Nard dog’s biggest episode of the series yet, and it holds a special place in Helms’ heart.

“It was still early enough for me — I mean, every table read is a joy. Right? It’s just so much discovery for the cast. The writers have been kind of in the trenches for a couple of weeks or months at that point with every episode. But for us, it’s like this fresh, exciting thing,” Helms told Fischer and Kinsey. “And I do, I do remember feeling, you know, as I got more sort of meat on the bone in some of those later episodes, it just really felt like an affirmation that Andy was a valuable part of this cast overall, and of the show.”

To recap, in “The Return,” both Dwight and Oscar return to the office after some time away, and Jim teams up with Pam to prank Andy. The two hide Andy’s cell phone in the ceiling, but the prank winds up emotionally breaking the recent Stamford transfer to the point where he punches a hole in the wall and has to attend anger management classes.

Andy’s rockin’ ringtone
One of the most underrated stars of the episode is Andy’s “Rockin’ Robin” ringtone, which features a four-part barbershop quartet of Helms singing all the harmonies. For those curious, Helms sang and recorded the irritating masterpiece himself using his home computer.

“I don’t think they wanted it to be very good, but I was like, too into it to make it anything less. And I thought Andy would make it as good as possible. Right?” Helms explained. “I spent a long time on that in Garage Band kind of figuring out how to do multiple tracks… Super fun. And then I played it for Greg and he was like, ‘Great, we’ll use it.'”