Domhnall Gleeson called Steve Carell to ask if he should join “The Office” spinoff

Or at least, that’s what he said.

Steve Carell won’t be in The Office spinoff — but one of his former costars will.

In an interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, the Morning Show star briefly discussed the forthcoming new Office series. “I don't know if you know this: it's gonna be all the original cast. I'm in it,” Carell sarcastically joked before clarifying, “No, no, no, no, no.”

Carell did say that he consulted with one of the lead actors of the upcoming project. “I know Domhnall Gleeson, who I did The Patient with, is going to be one of the leads,” he said. “He's an excellent actor. And he actually called me and asked, you know, ‘Should I do this? Is this something — did you enjoy it?’”

Carell didn’t share more details about their conversation, but it’s safe to say that he reflected positively on the NBC sitcom, as Gleeson was announced as one of the first cast members to join the new show — it seems incredibly unlikely that Gleeson would have proceeded with the project if Carell had anything substantially negative to share.

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The upcoming new Office series will follow a new project from the fictional documentary crew that chronicled nine years of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in the original show. Gleeson and The White Lotus alum Sabrina Impacciatore are the two actors confirmed to play employees at the new central workplace: a failing newspaper in the Midwest. The show will be headed by Greg Daniels, who created the first U.S. Office series, as well as Nathan For You’s Michael Koman.

Carell had previously confirmed that he won’t appear in the series. “I will be watching but I will not be showing up. It’s just a new thing and there’s really no reason for my character [Michael Scott] to show up in something like that," Carell told The Hollywood Reporter. "But I’m excited about it, it sounds like a great conceit. I love the idea — I guess it’s set in a family newspaper company.”

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However, since the new series is set in the same universe as the original NBC sitcom, which ran from 2005 to 2013, it’s possible that other Dunder Mifflin alums might find their way to the show eventually. The majority of the original cast certainly seems to embrace their ties to the show — in April, Rainn Wilson, Craig Robinson, Jenna Fischer, Kate Flannery, Brian Baumgartner, and Creed Bratton all joined forces for an Office-inspired AT&T commercial, and the most of the major players have appeared on Office Ladies, the podcast hosted by Fischer and Angela Kinsey, to reminisce on the series.

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