Here’s Every Time “The Office” Cast Broke Character While Filming “The Dinner Party” Episode

No one could pull it together.

If there's one thing Office fans know to be true it's that "The Dinner Party" might just be the funniest and most cringeworthy episode of the entire series.

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It's so funny that Rolling Stone recently interviewed the cast and crew in honor of the episode's 10th anniversary. And the best part of the oral history might just be the cast revealing every time they completely broke character during the filming of the episode.

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Because it's heartwarming to know that the cast thought the episode was just as hilarious as fans did, here are all the times The Office cast broke (or almost broke) character.

1. When the cast first read the script during the table read:

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"There's nothing more satisfying than having Steve Carell barely able to get through his lines," said cowriter Lee Eisenberg in the Rolling Stone interview. "It's like a live show. You're seeing someone experience it right in front of you for the first time, which is great."

2. When Michael revealed that Jan makes him sleep at the foot of her bed:

"There's a scene where they're giving us a tour of the house, and Steve explains that he sleeps on the little chaise longue at the end of the bed, and we could not get through that scene," said Jenna Fischer. "Every time he went to explain that that's where he slept, the way he delivered that was so funny, and then he would, like, curl up...we couldn't get through it."

3. When Jan made little devil horns after fighting with Michael about the ice cream truck and the glass door:

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"There’s that scene when we're all sitting in the living room and I'm telling this story about Michael running through the glass because he heard the ice cream truck," said Melora Hardin. "He said something like, 'Well, you know, she put the glass there,' and I said, 'Yeah, I'm the devil,' and I put my fingers on my head like little horns. I just thought of it in that moment. Steve's reaction, he almost cracks up. If you watch him, he's laughing and saying, 'Yeah, yeah, you are the devil!' He was sort of simultaneously almost losing it, because it was funny. When we cut, we all burst in laughter."

4. When Jan caught Pam eating:

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"I couldn't stop laughing when we shot the scene where Jan catches me eating," said Fischer. "It was insane."

5. Yeah, they had to shoot it a few times:

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6. When Dwight and his date/babysitter showed up at the dinner party:

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"When I first arrive, I'm standing in the doorway holding a cooler," said Beth Grant, who played Melvina, the babysitter. "Steve went on this wild riff that just killed me. I was trying so hard not to break. Especially as a guest star, you don't wanna waste everyone’s time and money."

7. When Jan started dancing with Jim:

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"In the sequence where I sort of dance inappropriately, I purposefully did not do that in rehearsal, just so that John Krasinski could be particularly uncomfortable [when I tried to dance with him]," said Hardin. "I waited until we were filming to do that so that he would be completely surprised and have to deal with it on camera, which is why it's such a great, ridiculously uncomfortable moment."

"I totally remember that moment," said John Krasinski. "As soon as she started dancing, it was that thing, you could feel the energy in the room, and we were already at maximum, and it just felt ridiculous. It was amazing."

8. When they were all around the table eating dinner:

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"The dinner scene was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do," said Grant. "I was physically dying inside from holding back laughter. I had to hold a beet on my fork and suck on it. I put everything into that."

9. And, finally, when Michael showed off his plasma screen TV:

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"I think that's probably the hardest I've laughed during the entire run of the show, and it's very evident," said Krasinski. "One of the funniest things I've witnessed in my life was Steve showing us that flatscreen TV and saying, 'When...when people are over you can just do this' [pulling the screen out from the wall]. The TV only moved, like, a half an inch ... There was something in the room there that was like an untamed animal, and we were just getting demolished by laughter."

10. No, really, that scene had the cast dying:

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"I had never laughed so hard as I did than during that scene," said Ed Helms.

11. No, like, they almost couldn't get the scene done:

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"We laughed so hard, like, tears were streaming down our faces," said Fischer.

To find out more behind-the-scenes facts about "The Dinner Party," you can read the rest of Rolling Stone's article here.

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