The Office came this close to missing out on a fan-favorite character of the show

The Office is one of those shows you can watch clips of at any time of the day and still end up in stitches. It gave us some of the most iconic characters in TV comedy.

We got Michael’s offbeat leadership and hilariously awkward alter egos. Jim’s legendary pranks probably gave us a cheeky idea or two. Pam’s patience made us question our own and, of course, Dwight Schrute’s… everything! From his beet farm anecdotes to his undying loyalty to Dunder Mifflin, the man gave all the other characters in TV comedy a tough competition.

Dwight is the kind of character who somehow manages to be both completely bizarre and unforgettable. You may either love him or roll your eyes at him. But The Office just wouldn’t be the same without him.

But we almost didn’t get him.

Rainn Wilson, the man behind Dwight’s brilliant madness, was already tied up in another show when The Office was coming together. And we'd have seen some other actor in Dwight's role if Wilson's show hadn’t been cancelled.

Read on to find out just how lucky we really got.

The Office: Rainn Wilson almost missed out on the show, and so did we

Rainn Wilson spilled the beans in an interview on the Theo Von Clips YouTube channel. He shared about just how close he came to not being on the iconic show. Turns out there was another show in the picture before Scranton even became a part of his life.

"I was supposed to be on this Janine Garofalo TV show. And we did it, and on the way to the table read for it, I ran into this TV executive, and he's like, 'Oh, I’m so excited, we're going to do the American version of The Office.' And I had seen the English version. I loved it. And outside, I was like, 'Oh, that's great.' Inside I was like, 'I want to be on that.' Like, okay, you gotta go to the table read for this Janine—and Janine's lovely, it's not about her."

"But the pilot wasn’t very good. We read the pilot. Bob Odenkirk was in it...and Mark Maron. And the read-through went so bad, they pulled the plug on the spot. By the time I got home, they were like, they’re not shooting. And inside I was like, 'I get to audition for The Office!' Sure enough, a month later, auditioned for The Office and got Dwight a few months after that."

The rest, as they say, is Schrute history.

Rainn didn’t hold back about how much the show meant to him, either.

“I never thought I’d have a better show than The Office. Really, really—nine seasons, 200 episodes. Everyone got along, made a big impact, was funny as hell. It’s great—great character, great money, like fun, fun people everywhere."

We believe him. It looked like a blast on screen. So it was probably three times the fun off-screen.

So call it luck or fate but we’re so glad that other show crashed and burned. Because we might’ve never met the one and only Dwight K. Schrute without that twist of events.

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