The Real Reason for The Annex on The Office, Explained

NBC’s The Office (now streaming on Peacock), a mockumentary sitcom based on the BBC series of the same name, is arguably the most popular sitcom of all time, and it birthed an entire genre of mockumentary workplace comedies. One thing that made it unique was how the series used some of its writers as actors — but that also created a few headaches in execution. Luckily, they found a clever workaround along the way.

The U.S. adaptation starring Steve Carell, John Kraskinski, Jenna Fischer, Rainn Wilson, and a sprawling cast of on-screen coworkers is undoubtedly the most well-known, but the series has been adapted in more than a dozen countries including Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Sweden, and more. An Australian adaptation recently premiered on October 18, starring Felicity Ward as Hannah Howard, the franchise’s first female lead. An upcoming series set in the same universe, starring Domhnall Gleeson and set in a a dying historic Midwestern newspaper, is soon headed to Peacock.

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Fans have spent countless hours over the last two decades rewatching episodes, sifting through them with a fine-toothed comb, but there are always new details to find all these years later. Even about the layout of Dunder Mifflin itself. While most of the show’s characters spent the majority of their time in the office’s common sales floor, a select few were shuffled off to the annex, a darkened corner of the building rarely visited and often forgotten (and most notably, separated by a break room so it wasn't visible by cameras in the main office space). Brian Baumgartner, the actor who played fictional accountant Kevin Malone for nine seasons, recently revealed the true reason for the annex on an episode of the Lightweights podcast with Joe Vulpis.

The Office's Brian Baumgartner Reveals the True Reason for the Annex

“This is a fun little Easter egg thing about the writers,” Baumgartner said. “There was the main office right, the main bullpen, Jim and Pam, the accountants, Stanley and Phyllis, Michael’s office, all that. Then there was the other side, we called it the annex.”

The annex was tucked into a back corner of the office, a dimly lit shared space for human resources and customer service, secluded from the sales floor. From an office logistics perspective, it makes sense that these quieter roles might be physically separated from the more boisterous sales floor, but there was an added production reason for keeping those characters separate from the rest of the cast.

“If your desk was in the annex, you were a writer, and they did this because the camera was always moving around. We were there all the time, so Greg [Daniels] needed the writers in the writers’ room sometimes. So, the people who were back there didn’t have to be on set all the time,” Baumgartner said.

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Casual fans of The Office might not be aware that several of the regulars in front of the camera were also writing the jokes behind the camera. Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak, and Paul Lieberstein all pulled double duties in the writers’ room while also portraying Kelly Kapoor, Ryan Howard, and Toby Flenderson, respectively. Each of them penned between 15 and 24 episodes during their tenure on the show.

“They could go up and write and come back and shoot some group conference room scenes or a scene back there [in the annex], but they weren’t there all the time. They were all back there so they could be writers,” Baumgartner said.

At Dunder Mifflin Scranton, the people who were shuffled to the side and forgotten were the employees actually keeping the whole operation afloat. It’s not all that different from an actual office.

Stream The Office, including the extended cut SuperFan episodes, only on Peacock.