Rainn Wilson Reveals Why Playing Dwight on The Office Didn’t Make Him Happy

27:06Which is another thing the Buddha talks about. You know, the self, the craving self that wants to be the center of everything. That's our battle. That's our battle. In Islam, they call it the greater jihad. The greater jihad is the war you have with yourself. You know, the lesser jihad is some kind of any kind of holy war or something like that. But the big war that we all fight is internally. How has that played a role in your marriage also? Because you talk about, you know, this journey that you've gone on and how you've kind of reinvented yourself throughout your career. But how has that played a role in spirituality, played a role within your relationship?

27:45So the writer M. Scott Peck wrote a book called The Road Less Traveled. That was a big bestseller. Yeah, big bestseller in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s. And people have kind of forgotten about it. I'm glad that you are aware of that book. It's a brilliant book. But he talks about how marriage is two people coming together to support each other's spiritual journeys. So my wife and I, we've had a lot of ups and downs. We've had a lot of struggles. Um, it's been, uh, exhilarating at times. It's been really hard at times. It's, it's been a long 30 years together, but, um, we ultimately support each other's spiritual journeys.

28:28And if you think about it in those terms, it's about like, hey, when do you need me and why and for how long? And how can I help you through this? And how can I help you through this? That we're hand in hand going down a very perilous path. And I tell you, it was really hard. We were broke. We had a kid. I got the office. And they say one of the most stressful things, believe it or not, this is going to sound crazy. People are going to roll their eyes on the other side of this podcast. one of the most stressful things that a person can undergo or especially a family or a marriage can undergo is coming into a lot of money so being broke our whole lives and then all of a sudden with the office making a shit ton of money in a few years was and that we had a kid at the same exact same time our our son Walter was born during the the purse girl hot girl episode of season one Oh, my gosh.

29:27So his his life has gone hand in hand and he's 20 now. So that we filmed that 20 years ago. Can you believe it? But there were a lot of coming into money and fame, you know, coming out of poverty and into money and fame all of a sudden with a kid was, you know, posed a lot of a lot of challenges. But we managed to support each other's spiritual journeys with a lot of therapy along the way. Like managing, like budgeting, like figuring out, OK, we're going to spend this much on this much. How do we allocate now to like the child's education, like things like that? What would you say the biggest learning was?

30:02First big paycheck, what do you spend it on? Well, first big paycheck was paying off student loans. So I still I was here. I was like 14 years, 15 years into my acting career. And I still owed like 10 or 15 grand in student loans. And that that was a big relief. But that wasn't the main source of the stress. It was just getting your bearings. um you know your lifestyle changes completely and like staying grounded like you said like staying grounded staying connected to to friends to reality to god to nature those are the main those were the main challenges and you know don't believe the hype you know i think a lot of it that early fame kind of went to my head kind of like, you know, you go from just struggling and no one ever recognizing you for, for your work.

30:57And just, I'm just trying to tell stories and have a career and, and be an actor. And all of a sudden, wherever you go, people are like, I love you. You're amazing. You're like, is that true? Am I, am I all that, you know? And that's, Again, that's the greater jihad. That's the battle with the self. How did it feel for you when The Office ended? I mean, obviously, it was such a big role and such a big part of your life. Like, what did that process look like? You know, it was time for The Office to end. We did nine glorious seasons. Love the cast. We all got along great. And it was, and as you probably don't remember this, but when it ended 10 years ago, so that's 2015, maybe 14, something like that.

31:44Yeah. And there were there wasn't streaming services at that point. And people it died down. People were not talking about the office in 2013, 14, 15, 16. It had, you know, there were a couple of Comedy Central reruns and stuff and people had enjoyed it, but it was gone. Then all of a sudden, 2018, 19, I was getting recognized more and more and more and more and by like 11 year olds and my grandmothers. And I was like, what the hell is going on? And that's when it had gone to Netflix. And then COVID hit and it was like the most streamed show ever. I forget that many billions of viewing hours it had.

32:23It had this resurgence. but you know post office i got to start some companies i got to do some podcasts um i wrote a couple books i did a bunch of movies most of which people didn't really see um but that's okay i got to stretch my wings as an actor went back and did a bunch of theater um it's been amazing i've loved it of course like you were saying you've also started different media ventures and stuff of that nature, what gave you the courage to try doing different lanes of business? So again, going back to mission, vision, vision, purpose, and meaning. When I got the office, I got together with a bunch of friends.

33:05A lot of them were members of the Baha 'i faith. So we had a kind of a similar kind of, you know, life philosophy. And I was like, hey, it's really important for me to make an impact. Now I have a big audience like where, where, and how do I put my voice? How do I use my platform? And, you know, I work in nonprofit causes. My wife and I have a woman's girls, educational nonprofit in Haiti. We do a lot of work there. You know, I've been increasingly involved in climate initiatives, which has been great with a climate base camp. It's called check it out folks. But also we felt like with the mental health crisis, the way it was and with people searching for inspiration, we started this company called soul pancake back in the day.

33:55It was a digital media company. We were one of the first kind of big YouTube channels. We had three and a half million subscribers, you know, early on, this was 10, 15 years ago and produced a lot of like inspiring content. and we ended up doing a bunch of shows with Oprah Winfrey. And then we sold the company to participant media. That kind of went away. Now I'm starting Soul Boom, based on the book, the podcast and social media, Soul Boom. But it came from a need and a responsibility. Like I feel that all human beings, no matter where you are, you can be a janitor in Topeka. we all have a role to play to try and make the world a better place.

34:40And there is a spiritual imperative to do that. In our secular materialist Western culture, it's kind of like do what you need to do to make yourself happy and content, you know, whatever that means, like have a nice life, make enough money, pay off your debts, have a family, live on a cul-de-sac, don't hurt anybody else. But I feel like the spiritual imperative from all of the world's great spiritual traditions is to try and make the world richer and to use and harness your abilities to bring joy and meaning and and even jobs and to to to other people to bring people together. So I felt that responsibility as as a celebrity actor.

35:29And that's kind of what fueled starting Soul Pancake, selling Soul Pancake, starting Soul Boom, which is a more specifically spiritual aimed kind of book and podcast. But, you know, I want it to be a service and want it to make the world a better place. I hope that it is to some small degree. I love that. I want to talk about how you think of media having meaning and how you create content that actually changes people's lives or makes the world a better place. Well, that's a great question. And I think it is one of the important questions right now. And maybe it's one that you guys are struggling with, because I'd love to hear your thoughts is that social media in a large to a large extent is bringing just a lot of pain and disconnection to young people.

36:19You know, you're it's it is a it is fueling this mental health crisis. You know, it's it's distraction. It's it's you're seeing other people's curated lives. Everyone, even when I go on social media and I took it off my phone, by the way. But when I look at it on someone else's phone or whatever and and I'm looking on Instagram, I'm like, I'm looking at all the actors and all the stuff they're doing and the fun content they're creating. And I'm like, oh, I should be doing that. I should be making all this content. And why am I not making these really funny, you know, videos with all these quick cut edits and stuff like I should be doing that.

36:57And that makes me feel bad about myself. And but yet the social media is how we connect. It's how we communicate in a lot of ways. And sometimes I have seen pieces on YouTube or Instagram that have really uplifted my spirit and been incredibly meaningful to me. So how do we navigate that dance? I don't have an answer there. You know, how do you try and bring, you know, important and meaningful, deep content to people that can enrich their lives on a platform that is in a lot of ways tearing apart our social fabric? And, you know, young people increasingly are getting their news from TikTok. And there's been a series of articles about this.

37:47It's really dangerous because they're not double checking their facts. And depending on what algorithm loop you're in, you're getting inundated with all this information. You don't know if it's true or not. You could just, you know, you could just have someone on TikTok say Vladimir Zelensky is a woman, you know, and here's my proof and show him in a picture of a dress. And people are like, oh, yeah, Vladimir Zelensky is a woman. Yeah. Didn't that that literally happened with the first lady of France where now she's suing Candace Owens because they were saying she used to be a man like this stuff is social media.

38:21is crazy. It is absolutely nuts. And, you know, but it's, you know, the genie's out of the bottle. It's always going to be here. It's, it's, we have to learn how to manage our relationship with social media and limit our interactions on our apps and our screen time. Every time I get my, my weekly screen time usage on my phone, it's like, oh my God, how am I spending six hours a day on my phone? This is crazy. When I go to my grave, I'm going to be like the amount of time I spent looking at my phone is as my life is passing before my eyes. It's going to break my heart. But we have to try and manage it, control it and bring some kind of richer meaning to the content that we create in the media.

39:12So we need young storytellers to, if you're listening, to be making kick-ass content that is going to connect people and enrich their lives and uplift their hearts.

39:36how has the film and entertainment industry changed since you first started because i would say that i mean i think about even for us we're building a consumer facing product and so social media is 80 90 percent of what we need to basically study to understand like how do we create content that's going to resonate with people who ultimately will download our app. And so, I mean, I think about my screen time and I'm like double digits, it's getting really high and it feels like it's research and it's, it's something I need to do. And so I'm curious for you, what advice would you give to other young people who are just starting out?

40:11Like they want to build consumer products or they want to break into entertainment where it feels like social media needs to be part of their life. Like what kind of advice would you give to them? Well, I think that you just have to set limits with your phone, right? So I at night, turn it off, put it on a shelf, get it out of my pocket. So I don't look at it. I try to not look at it first thing in the morning when I wake up. That's a hard thing to do. Like what text did I get? Who texted me last night? But to take some time to wake up, if you can take half an hour, you know, Arthur Brooks, he's a brilliant.

40:47You should have him on your show. Brilliant happiness, philosopher, writer, thinker. He talks about like having, having time with the sunlight on your face before you look at any screens and even something as simple as that times when you've just put your phone away, having limits is really important, but yeah, you know, our phones, our screens are our tools to you know, to create businesses. And you asked how the media landscape has changed. It's gotten a lot worse. You know, it's, it's, it's hard in Hollywood these days, younger people are playing more video games, and looking at more social media and looking at YouTube a lot more than they are like watching shows, necessarily.

41:34The streaming model doesn't necessarily work. I did a show on mental health and travel for Peacock called the geography, Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss. It was about two years ago and our show got canceled not because it wasn't a bad show or that people watched a lot of people watched it it's just peacock lost over a billion dollars that year so here's the streaming model people understand paramount peacock they're hemorrhaging money because there's not enough subscribers they're all subscribed to to netflix and there's you can only subscribe to two or three streaming services right you can't subscribe to seven or eight and it's not working.

42:15Network TV has pretty much gone away. Cable TV has pretty much gone away. People aren't going into movie theaters, especially post-COVID. Your generation, I blame you. Get back into the goddamn movie theaters, pay your money, get your popcorn, and not just for a superhero movie, please. So, you know, it'll bounce back. The entertainment industry always bounces back and will find a way. And people love stories. You know, but part of the problem is the short attention span of like, it's very satisfying. I do it the same, the same way. Like I, I flipped through YouTube shorts or Instagram reels or whatever, and little five second, 10 second, 15 second pops of like, there's an otter in my kitchen.

42:58Oh, and here's the best way to pop a zit. And here's a guy who fell over in his canoe. And here's someone who fell down the stairs. And here's a guy who wears his pet chinchilla in his hat. Like you just go, wow, wow, wow. And it's distraction, but it's not even entertainment. And more important than entertainment is storytelling and art. So whatever we can do to lead people to real storytelling and art, which is greater than entertainment, and entertainment is even greater than distraction, that's kind of the algorithm we need to try and move people toward. And that's something we can all take responsibility for.

43:37Like, when am I going to engage with a work of art? That's a film or a play or a novel like The Overstory. And when am I going to stop just engaging with entertainment, which is Fast and the Furious movie, right? And when am I going to even give that up when I give up just distraction of watching otter videos? But if you were if you were an actor and you were trying to break into the industry today, how do you think that would have looked different now, like with social media? Yeah, I think I think it's really important to be social social media savvy for a young actor and storyteller. And I keep going using this word storyteller because I think that rather than just seeing oneself as an actor, which is like, oh, I get paid to get a script and has these lines on it and to interpret those lines like I'm also in charge of telling stories.

44:30And that can be making travel videos or funny videos living in my van or comedy videos with my friend or whatever it is that being adept in those modes of storytelling is just it's just part of the modern landscape. But I also think there's a lot to be said for training the old school way in theater, doing Shakespeare, heightened text, learning what makes moments as an actor, what makes them land, bringing emotional truth to roles that you're transforming into. Social media is no substitute for the real work of theater training and acting training. And I hope that that stays alive as well. I'm really glad you said that because I think there's such a phenomenon now of and I'm curious what you think about it.

45:22People basically are on social media. They get a huge platform and then they pivot into acting, but they've never studied acting or gone to school for it or anything like that. Like, I'm curious, do you think that's going to become more prolific and how do you think it's going to shape the entertainment industry? Well, boy, I don't know. You know, it was I remember back like in the 90s and early 2000s when people were pivoting from reality TV to being actors. Right. And now they're doing the same thing. I think that there's some of them are really, really adept and incredible actors. I can't think of any right now.

45:59But, you know, I think that there can be both. It's not either or. I think we need actors that, you know, Timothee Chalamet went to acting school, you know, and studied and worked on theater and became like this incredible, he's young, but became this incredible transformational actor. And there might be someone that has a YouTube channel in St. Paul, Minnesota, and they have a different, a different way in and a different way of telling stories. Both can coexist. Hmm. Yeah, that's a good answer, because I'm curious, like, if you think that that's going to continue to stay like the method of getting into the entertainment industry of going to film school, becoming a really good actor, maybe not focusing as much on your social media, but actually becoming a very good actor.

46:48Um, you know, the British are way ahead of us in this because in the tradition in, in London and England is you go to drama school. They have these great drama schools. You work really hard at creating characters, learning how to use text, learning how to bring emotions to life and physically use your body and storytelling. They really honor the theater there and there's it's theater and physical training, dance training. And, um, it's culturally, you know, lauded in a way that it's not in the United States. And, um, I think we could learn some lessons from them. But I also think that, you know, why are some of the best actors ever like former rap stars?

47:41Yeah. Rappers are great. Always great actors. I don't know what it is like because they're storytellers, I guess. They use language. They understand character. Characters are often behind a lot of their songs. And so there's just there's a lot of ways in, but there is no substitute to a great story. That's a work of art with actors that are vulnerable and bringing their hearts and their mind and their souls to the to the roles. We're always going to look to that at the end of the day. I must say one of the most helpful things beyond art, because this was, I was not creating art. Let's be very clear.

48:17I did drama in high school and I was a tree. Did make my dad come for the five hour performance. He said he wouldn't come after that. That was, you know, I was, I was a great tree. It was a five hour performance in which you played a tree. I did play a tree. It is a hundred percent true. Yes. This was the adaptation of the over story. It was a crucible, actually a classic. I was a classic tree evergreen. We live forever. It was, I was there. I swayed with the wind. It was very emotional. It was a work of art, but okay. I will say one of the most helpful things that I've ever done for my own self-confidence.

48:44I am by no means an actress. I would have loved to be a Nepo baby actress. It would have been an incredible career. But was taking an improv class changed everything for me in terms of how I function as an entrepreneur, having confidence when I walk in a room and I don't know what I'm talking about and I need to ask questions that I think are stupid. I would say for anyone listening, improv classes are the number one thing. Having to go into a room, especially of strangers and embarrass yourself. I took one in middle school. I did it again in high school. I did it again in college. Was transformative for me.

49:17And you're known as like one of the kings of comedy. Did you ever do improv throughout your career? I took a few improv classes here and there, but I really came more from theater tradition. But there's plenty of improvisation, spontaneity, clowning that comes in the theater tradition. But I agree with you a thousand percent. I think everyone should take an improv class, even if you're not an actor and even if it's terrifying for you, because there's this concept at the middle of improv and you hear it a lot. And it's this yes. And so it's just accepting what's right in front of you and saying it's not saying no.

49:56But, you know, it's not like someone goes like, here's the banana you ordered. And you go, I didn't order a banana. I ordered a pineapple. And you kind of negate the scene. Like it's, oh, thank you so much. And where's my thousand pineapples I ordered? Oh, like you, you say yes. And in it, and it spawns more stories and more comedy. And it's a way of living in the world because I do think that yes. And can work as an entrepreneur. You can, you're thrown a curveball and be like, okay, here we are with that curveball. And what's next? And how do we proceed? I want to touch on something because I know we're limited on time now.

50:35But to go back to something a lot of people don't know about your career is the stuff that you do in Haiti. And I want to talk about your trip there after the earthquake and how that kind of shaped your perspective. And now the work that you and your wife do there. We went to Haiti in 2009, a few months before the earthquake. We fell in love with it. The culture, the people, the food, the music, the language. It's an incredible place. Yeah, it is rife with poverty and it is in perilous shape. And then one of the most devastating natural disasters that's ever hit, humanity hit the earthquake in 2010.

51:09Two, 300 ,000 people died in a matter of an hour. And the hotel that we had stayed at collapsed in rubble, slid down the mountainside. Everyone inside of it was killed. we knew we had to do something we showed up to do some volunteer work with sean penn's profit non-profit um it's called core response now and we taught workshops to young women in the arts so i taught theater games and clowning and improv and my wife taught creative writing and we had some other friends that taught photography and and other arts and and music and then we started working with young women's education in Haiti with a bunch of Haitian folks.

51:53We started this organization called Lide Haiti. It's been going strong for over 10 years now. We work with over a thousand girls in about nine different locations, providing scholarships, mentorships, tutoring. We have health care and it and we even bring chess and the arts and and we bring in Haitian artists. And it's been it's been incredible. And one of the big tragedies is that Haiti has just completely fallen apart at the seams. gangs now control about two thirds of the capital city, Port-au-Prince and huge chunks of the rest of the country. People have had to flee Haiti for their lives. And many of them, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands came to the United States on, uh, on work visas, um, on legal work visas.

52:51And now those visas have been revoked. They're being kicked out of the country by the tens of thousands by this current administration. And they are simply here legally, not illegally. They didn't cross the border at the Rio Grande. They're here legally working. And now they're all being kicked out, but they can't go back because they will go back. They will be killed. They will be kidnapped. There's not a Haiti really for them to return to because as soon as anyone finds out that they've been working in the United States for years, their lives are at risk and their families are at risk for kidnapping.

53:25It's a really, really terrible situation. So my heart breaks for the people of Haiti. You know, you won't find a harder working, kind of more imaginative, vital group of people on the planet. I love it there. I the reason I want to ask you this is I spent some time in Haiti as I was literally like a child when my my family went down there because Paul Farmer has this organization Partners in Health And we went to go visit his hospital down there, which ended up actually like informing everything the Gates Foundation does on like how they think about health care, how they think about service delivery, because he is this guy who basically studied at Harvard and then goes and starts.

54:06He's literally living in his car, but then he goes and starts these this nonprofit partners in health in Haiti and now all over Africa. He's now passed away. But honestly, like the time I spent there informed so much of my learnings about I ended up studying public health in college about that. And also just the work ethic and the culture there is insane. So I think it's a real I mean, frankly, I think it's a sin of the U.S. to of how we were so involved with the fall of the country, too, and how we've been so unsupportive now. That's the other part of the story is like the United States has, you know, been really involved in the decimation of the country in so many different ways.

54:43We have a responsibility to, you know, our little brother, Haiti and no other ethnic group has done as well coming to the United States than the Haitians. The number of doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs that Haiti brings to the United States, it's astonishing. I'm so glad you got to go and experience it. And yeah, speaking of books, Paul Farmer's book, Mountain Beyond Mountains, is one of the great books I would recommend for anyone to read. And his wife, Didi Farmer, now continues their work. That's so great. You got to experience that. No, she's amazing, too. Didi's great. Right. I mean, I think somewhere that would be really natural to also start to end is what you're up to now.

55:22I know that you recently filmed your movie Code Three. It's going to be hitting the theaters soon. Walk us through what that project meant to you. Yeah, thank you. I love this movie so much. Code three. It's it's kind of both things, right? It's storytelling and entertainment. It's a comedy with me and Lil Rel Howery. He was in Get Out. He's a hysterical stand up comic and great actor. And we're kind of two ambulance drivers, EMS workers on a night from hell. And it's it's funny. It's searing. And it's a it's a beautiful kind of indictment of the American health care system. But it's not like, oh, it's an important movie that, you know, is a think piece.

56:02It's mostly just entertaining and super funny, but it also addresses a lot of like current imbalances in, you know, and racism and stuff with public health care, etc. etc. And it comes out September 12th in theaters. I don't know how much longer after that it'll be in on streaming, but hopefully people will actually go to movie theaters and buy tickets and buy lots of popcorn and go see Code 3. I'm really proud of it. I helped find the script and develop the script. I'm an executive producer on it. And the movie means a lot to me. Sounds like we'll be going co-founder date night and we'll get some of the burnouts going as well.

56:43come on yeah yeah there's a good amc in union square we're gonna have our popcorn we'll be okay sweet um amazing well i think how are you gonna find your low carb high protein popcorn though we're not we're gonna have the high protein high carb one okay you're just gonna go full on i like to what i like to do is i like to put the m &ms under my butt so they warm enough and then if they melt you know put them on the pop that's an amazing life hack right there and it's actually sustainable you hear that burnouts yes sit on your end of m &m oh wow i'm not supporting you on this spiritual journey honey she goes oh no thank you i'm gonna have wait what are the um i used to always go to amc i'm blanking on the name the giant blue slushy slushy yes i want a slushy wow you're really i this is sad this is a dying see you know the blue tongue afterwards yes and i want I bet they have diet Coke slushies now.

57:36That sounds amazing. We definitely, we're going to be going. I love it. We'll be doing it. And how for the burnouts, we want to follow along with all of your other work. Where can we find your podcast? My podcast is available on all podcast streaming platforms, including YouTube. We've got a sub stack. Soul Boom is deep, funny, meaningful conversations about mental health, spirituality, living a rich, good life as a human being, and a lot of laughs along the way. So check out the Soul Boom podcast. Well, I love the versatility. You can do it all. You're funny and you can have deeply meaningful conversations.

58:11Wildly good looking. Yes, all of it. We learned so much during this conversation. Rainn Wilson, thank you so much for coming on The Burnouts. Thanks, Burnouts. Thanks for having me. What a fun conversation. I love what you guys are doing.