Steve Carell Talks Michael Scott’s Office Surprise: “We Had to Lie a Lot!”

We were told time and time again before the series finale of The Office that Steve Carell would not appear as Michael Scott one last time. Executive producer Greg Daniels said it, Carell said it, NBC Chairman Bob Greenblatt said it and pretty much every castmember said that he wasn’t returning.

Liars! Michael Scott did come back to be the best man at Dwight’s (Rainn Wilson) wedding in the final episode, and the tears of joy that flowed out of our eyeballs were embarrassingly numerous. Even though we appreciated all the lying to ensure that viewers were surprised by the big return, Carell still feels really bad about it.

“That was difficult because people really wanted to know,” he told us while promoting Despicable Me 2. “It wasn’t a big, big deal, but we just thought it would be fun if it were to be surprise. We lied a lot, too! I felt so badly for Greg Daniels, because he’s the sweetest guy in the world and he had to lie.”

It’s normal for showrunners to dance around a question or bend the truth to keep plotlines a secret, but Daniels took it one step further and just denied, denied, denied. Just take a look at some of our previous Office articles and you’ll see what we mean.

“He would just lie! Bold face lies,” Carell laughed. “Even to trusted old friends. He’d just say, ‘no, I don’t know anything about it. It’s not going to happen.’ So that part of it didn’t make any of us feel good. But the fact that for the most part, people were surprised was good.”

No hard feelings, Steve. We loved the Michael Scott surprise in the finale, so the lies were all worth it.