“I wanted Steve Carell’s blessing”: Sabrina Impacciatore on joining The Office follow-up, The Paper
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Readtime: 7 min
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Following up one of the greatest TV shows of all time is a pretty dicey proposition, but its one The US Office‘s co-creator Greg Daniels has decided to take on with the imminent launch of The Paper: an in-universe follow-up to one of the most successful shows of all time.
The Paper, which launches this week, follows the same documentary crew that once graced the halls of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch immortalising another paper business, Enervate, which sells a number of paper-based things including a local newspaper: the ‘Toledo Truth Teller’. Things are shaken up with the arrival of a new editor-in-chief in Domhnall Gleeson’s Ned, who seeks to bring the newspaper back to life.
To say there’s a level of baggage attached to a project like this would be an understatement, but in my time speaking to Sabrina Impacciatore recently, I got the feeling the cast and crew very much understood they were walking on hallowed ground. Fresh off her role in The White Lotus‘ second season, and action-thriller G20, Impacciatore plays Esmerelda Grand: managing editor of a newspaper that, by all accounts, sucks.
Here, we talked Esmerelda, what it’s like acting for two different cameramen, and how Impacciatore managed to get Steve Carell’s blessing.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Man of Many: Can you talk me through where your character, Esmerelda, fits into the show?
She would like to play every role in this office. I’m fascinated by Esmerelda, because she’s bad at everything, but she’s got a great ability to manipulate. She’s very good at selling things, she’s very good at creating a reality that is not there and making you believe in that.
The show starts with her as the managing editor at ‘TTT Online’, and when Ned arrives she feels completely threatened because her position is now in danger. I think, really, Esmerelda just wants to live the ‘American Dream’, and so she she needs to protect her life. That’s why she becomes so nasty.
I wanted her to be a loveable character because she’s so impossibly nasty, sneaky, she’s so bossy, she is so competitive, she’s a horrible human being. She’s really bad. I thought that the only way to make her somehow nice is to find a place of innocence, where all those things come from a need to survive, to protect herself.
She’s a lonely woman, at the end of the day. Her marriage failed, she’s a single mum. I see her as being very lonely, and so I feel for her. But she’s also crazy.
I wanted that, because I thought if we’re going to end up doing a second season or a third season I don’t want to be bored with the character. So, if the character is a bit crazy, she could do anything.
MOM: I love that. Making sure you’ve got something to play with later.
Exactly.
MOM: I’m really interested in the process of filming something that’s pretending to be a documentary. Can you talk me through what that’s like on set?
It’s very believable, because we shoot in a studio inside of Universal Studios, but the set is so incredibly real. The set designer, Susie, she’s brilliant and did an incredible job, so when I was on set I really believed that that was an office. It was our office. It was all real. And then there’s a crew that is supposed to be a documentary crew there filming us, and at first I was a bit worried about that, because my relationship to the camera changes—now there’s a camera that is the camera for the show, and then there’s a camera that is the camera of the ‘crew’.
I was a bit worried about that, and then I thought, you know what, Esmerelda secretly wants to be a star. So she wants to use the documentary crew, to seduce the camera.
She’s dreaming of one day becoming a star—she’s not a journalist, this person, she could be anything but a journalist. In fact, I want to apologise to all the journalists out there . I’m so sorry. Please, I respect journalism so much. Esmeralda doesn’t, though. She doesn’t respect journalism. She couldn’t care less. So, that made it easier, and made the character fun to play.
MOM: The Paper is a follow-up to The Office, in the same universe following the same documentary crew, can you talk a bit about the pressure you must all be feeling following up one of the biggest shows of all time? What was going through your head?
More like what is currently going through my head. Right now, while I’m talking to you. You can’t imagine. It’s like trains of anxiety are going through my head, and my heart. Because the show isn’t out yet, and I am scared. To be honest, I never stopped shaking for the entire shoot.
Every Tuesday we had a table read at 1 pm, with me as the only Italian. I had to read the script that was still fresh, in front of 150 people from Peacock, NBC, executives, and everyone else, and I was so nervous. Under the table my legs were shaking. I wondered if people could feel it in the table. The pressure is so high, but I just had to try to forget what came before.
You know what I did? I did a little ritual: I wanted to be blessed by Steve Carell. First, I wrote an email to Greg (Daniels) when I got the role and said, “if you’re still in touch with Steve, can you let him know that I consider him one of the greatest artists on the planet because he makes me laugh and cry at the same time”. And he said, “of course I’ll let him know, he’ll be very happy. Did you know at the moment he’s playing on Broadway?”
In that moment I knew what I had to do, so I bought a ticket from Rome to New York, I bought the tickets for the show, and went to Broadway, watched the show, and went to the green room after the show—jet lagged after a flight from Italy to New York—and I went and told him: “Steve, I can’t believe I’m in front of you. I’m so terrified.”
And he was the sweetest being. He hugged me, and told me I’m going to be great, and to have so much fun, and just to enjoy the process. He said Greg is a genius and not to be scared. I felt blessed, and that gave me the confidence to do it.
I felt incredibly lucky, and it all doesn’t quite feel real yet, but whatever is going to happen with this show I’m grateful because the miracle has already happened for me. As an Italian actress, to be in this show, is already everything to me. I couldn’t be happier.
The Paper airs exclusively on Peacock in the US, and on Binge in Australia, on 4 September. It stars Domhnall Gleeson, Sabrina Impacciatore, Tim Key, Chelsea Frei, Ramona Young, Melvin Gregg, Alex Edelman, and Gbemisola Ikumelo.
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