As world-conquering cringe comedy The Office prepares to open an Australian outpost, actor Edith Poor joins Steve Newall to chat about the new show, its Kiwi contingent – and what’s changed about comedy since we first marvelled at the original two decades ago.
The new version of The Office features the first female boss in over 20 years and 13 iterations of the show. And, as we know from past exposure to its contagious comedy, where there’s a boss, there’s an over-officious assistant. In this instance, devotedly supporting packaging company Flinley Craddick’s Managing Director Hannah Howard, is intense receptionist, front desk executive and productivity manager Lizzie Moyle. Lizzie’s brought to life by actor Edith Poor (The Rings of Power), who we chatted with ahead of the show’s premiere on Prime Video.
Poor drew on the hidden parts of herself in channelling the character, she tells me. “She’s very pedantic, a real rules follower, and I suppose that lies dormant in me. And I wish I could be as confident to be as aggressive and pedantic as she is, because that’s secretly what I would like to do.” Whereas the actor describes herself as someone who gets really anxious but has to hide it—because she’s trying to be cool at the same time. “So Lizzie was all of those things magnified,” says Poor.
In that respect, Lizzie is cut from a similar cloth as the bosses’ lieutenants in the UK and US versions, enamoured with their self-appointed power—which in turn relies on workplace hierarchies to justify. “One thing that was really different from me and her is this massive respect she has for authority,” Poor says, “which I think I’m the polar opposite to”. It was very fun to play someone that so diligently, respects and follows authority, I’m told—while Pool herself confides she’s always found authority difficult: “School was tricky, being told what to do, and in regular jobs being told what to do. But Lizzie thrives in that environment.”
And, like Gareth and Dwight before her, Lizzie shows an extreme loyalty to—and love of—her boss Hannah (Felicity Ward). “From my perspective, Hannah is more like the Michael Scott character in that she’s deeply cringe but kind of lovable at the same time,” Poor says: “And so I think for Lizzie, she just sees her lovable attributes.” For Poor, it’s an interesting friendship dynamic that has a little whiff of high school to it. “You can’t really see the way that someone treats you, possibly, in those weird friendship dynamics when you’re figuring stuff out.”
While the banality and boredom of office life provide a familiar foundation to The Office’s various incarnations, so does the everyday nature of most of the other characters. They’re our surrogates as each workday brings more outlandishness from the manager and their loyal assistant, and Lizzie is another example of a big character running headlong into this dull normalcy.
As to how this dynamic worked during production, Poor tells me she’d try and slip into character and just let Lizzie take over: “I had physical tics that I would do to get into her,” she says. “I’d put my suit jacket on, and I’d lower my face, and I’d lower my voice. Yeah, it was, for me, a physical thing.” Once Poor had positioned herself as the character and started seeing things through Lizzie’s eyes when the scene started, she found it quite easy to improv and then step back out of it. “But yeah, I’m sure the rest of the cast were like, ‘oh, Edith, What’s she up to? Here she goes again. She’s stepping into Lizzie, beware’. As she puts it, they’d antagonise Lizzie, really egging her on to see what kind of responses would come out.
While there’s plenty that’s familiar in this new version of The Office, there’s also a realisation we’ve moved on a bit from some of the comedy styles seen when the show first launched around the turn of the millennium. Acknowledging she’s stealing this somewhat from her co-star Felicity Ward (“she had such a great answer for this”), Poor notes that in the past, “the butt of the joke was often other people that weren’t in the room, and now they’re in the room and they’re included.” Instead of punching down, they’re punching across.
Punching across the Tasman, perhaps, with the number of New Zealanders involved in the new series. Written by Julie De Fina, Jackie Van Beek and Jesse Griffen, two of these three are Kiwis who, as Poor puts it, have certainly brought their sensibilities to it—while on screen, Poor is joined by fellow New Zealanders Josh Thomson and Jonny Brugh.
“It’s certainly a real Australian show with lots of Australian gags,” she says, “but it does have a sort of undercurrent that some Kiwis bring, which is a bit of wallflower-ness, a bit of not wanting to stand out too much, you know.” Unlike Aussies, who tend to be much more outspoken and on the front foot. “I feel like the the cast and the characters are sort of half a mix of that people that want to stand out and show off and all that sort of thing, and then a mix of the wallflowers—they just want to get through the day.”
That could be a long day for cast members who had to endure the worst fate imaginable on set—a dud office chair. There were a lot of office chair wars, Poor says, which could prove brutal if you were doing a 10-hour shooting day, then got stuck with the wrong, uncomfortable chair and couldn’t change it for continuity reasons. (Of course, for some there was the option of using this time productively—Josh Thomson claimed at the Auckland screening that he’d done months’ worth of taxes and edited a short film from behind his desk on set).
Before we wrap, I ask Poor if she’s about to inspire a generation of very diligent, self-appointed 2ICs. “If I can see more baggy gray suits out there, with slick back ponytails, then I’ve done my job— because that’s my favourite look.” Let the Lizzie cosplay commence.
