Whatever Happened To Toby From The Office?
You know him as Toby Flenderson, the beleaguered HR rep at the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin and the perpetual bane of Michael Scott’s existence. Over nine seasons on The Office, we watched poor Toby tolerate the insults and humiliation inflicted on him by Michael and learned that Toby’s private life involved a painful divorce, a bad childhood, and of course that unrequited crush on Pam Beesly.
You may feel sorry for Toby, but don’t go confusing him with his real-life counterpart Paul Lieberstein. It turns out that Lieberstein is quite a power player in Hollywood, lending his various talents to television and film — and on both sides of the camera. In fact, you may be surprised to learn just how much influence Lieberstein really had at your favorite paper company’s Scranton headquarters.
Read on to discover everything you didn’t know about Toby Flenderson from The Office — and whatever happened to the man who played him.
An accidental actor
One of the main reasons you don’t recall seeing Paul Lieberstein on the screen that often? Lieberstein never really intended to be an actor. With a resume that included producing and writing television series like The Bernie Mac Show and The Drew Carey Show, Lieberstein joined The Office as a writer after having worked with show creator Greg Daniels, on King of the Hill. Daniels was the one who decided that the series’ writers should try writing bit parts for themselves, and what was meant to be a one-episode appearance as HR rep Toby Flenderson became the introduction of a regular character. Lieberstein continued to serve double duty on the series until its finale, and was named showrunner and executive producer in 2011. “As a writer I’ve never felt so creatively fulfilled, I really feel like I’m writing exactly what I’ve wanted to write in terms of exploring everyday life,” Lieberstein told Deadline. “And it made me an actor, which I never suspected I’d do.”
The spinoff that never happened
Part of Paul Lieberstein’s deal with NBC when he was named showrunner at The Office included developing new projects for the network. And what better to follow up the mega-success of The Office than a spinoff of the show, featuring one of The Office’s most memorable characters?
That intended spinoff, The Farm, was a star vehicle for Rainn Wilson’s character, Dwight Schrute. The premise seemed intriguing enough for any diehard fan of The Office: At a Schrute family funeral, complete with cars driven into graves and our introduction to a motley crew of Schrute family members, Dwight learns he’s inherited the beloved family beet farm, and must galvanize his fellow Schrutes to keep it running. The series itself never came to be, but if it sounds familiar, it’s because the 60-minute pilot was broken down into an episode of The Office in its final season. Lieberstein and Wilson intended to produce the series together, after joking for years about Dwight’s life on the farm.
No word on precisely why NBC passed on the series, but Wilson told Larry King in 2013 that though he was sad to see it go, he was okay with hanging up the Dwight Schrute character for good.
