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"The Office Version 2.0 kicked off last week as the Dunder Mifflin team began life without Michael Scott at the helm. Steve Carell may be gone, but last week&amp;#039;s season eight premiere proved there&amp;#039;s plenty of life in the Scranton dog yet. Ed Helms has been handed the boss&amp;#039;s job as bumbling Ivy Leaguer Andy Bernard, and with James Spader now a show regular as bonkers CEO Robert California, there are plenty of surprises in store. Digital Spy joined a selection of journalists in a conference with Helms and showrunner Paul Lieberstein (Toby) to find out more. We saw a lot of guest cameos in the season seven finale. Was there ever anyone genuinely in the running to join as the boss? Paul: &amp;quot;We talked about it a lot. I guess the main question at the start was, &amp;#039;Should we continue after Steve Carell leaves?&amp;#039; It all became clear when we said, &amp;#039;Our cast is amazing&amp;#039;. We realised that we didn&amp;#039;t need anybody else. We still wanted to watch our cast, we still wanted to write for our cast. Although it was batted around from time to time, we never really considered changing the focus of the show to anyone else other than our people.&amp;quot; What has James Spader brought to the set of the show? Ed: &amp;quot;James has played a lot of creepy and odd characters throughout his long and wonderful career. James Spader as a man could not be any more different from those guys. He&amp;#039;s a cheerful guy and he has a fantastic energy on the set. He&amp;#039;s a fun new energy for us to respond to. Robert California is different to that. Robert California is aggressively confident as a person and he takes a lot of pleasure in using his powers. That is a crazy energy because it&amp;#039;s new to Dunder Mifflin and it&amp;#039;s something that Andy Bernard is not equipped to deal with.&amp;quot; Andy and Dwight have a chequered past. Where is their relationship going to go? Ed: &amp;quot;Well, let&amp;#039;s just say that their chequered past crosses over to a chequered present. Dwight is someone who responds very well to a firm hand of leadership. Andy is searching for that a little bit, but I&amp;#039;m very excited that in that first episode we saw the first inklings of a backbone in Andy. That, I&amp;#039;m really excited about. It makes Andy&amp;#039;s leadership more plausible in a way. There&amp;#039;s a long way for Andy to travel and Dwight provides a constant friction for that.&amp;quot; What are the differences in Andy&amp;#039;s office compared to Michael&amp;#039;s office? Ed: &amp;quot;The biggest difference right out of the gate is that Michael was a well established manager at Dunder Mifflin. Andy is just finding his feet and it&amp;#039;s a totally new thing for him. Andy&amp;#039;s leadership is an open question and that&amp;#039;s something I&amp;#039;m excited to flesh out. It was great in that opening episode to see a little backbone and see a poignant turn about what might be ahead.&amp;quot;  Will we ever hear more about the Scranton Strangler? Paul: &amp;quot;Perhaps, perhaps. We overshoot quite a bit and we overscript even more than that. There&amp;#039;s quite a bit that we have that didn&amp;#039;t quite make it to air. We have a whole story that is playing out, where Toby may strike up a relationship with the guy arrested and accused of being the Scranton Strangler and visit him in jail. And then maybe, there is another strangling that happens...&amp;quot; Ed: &amp;quot;Michael Scott is... the Scranton Strangler.&amp;quot; As Andy&amp;#039;s character develops will he become more like Michael? Paul: &amp;quot;I think he will be very different to Michael. Michael was promoted to a level of incompetency. He was a very good salesperson promoted to manager without management skills. I feel that Andy is like a very talented quarterback with a great team, but nobody has told him how to throw a ball yet. It&amp;#039;s the first time he&amp;#039;s picking up a football...there&amp;#039;s an arm there, but he&amp;#039;s got to figure it out.&amp;quot; Ed: &amp;quot;And probably for the first game or two he&amp;#039;s distracted by the cheerleaders.&amp;quot; Paul: &amp;quot;He doesn&amp;#039;t know the rules of the game. He&amp;#039;s thrown on the field without any sense of the rule.&amp;quot; Ed: &amp;quot;Any lessons passed on by Michael Scott to Andy were bad. Not useful.&amp;quot; Will Andy takeover Michael&amp;#039;s hatred of Toby? Ed: &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s a great question and I was wondering the same thing. I think in some respects Gabe is Andy&amp;#039;s Toby. Gabe is certainly Andy&amp;#039;s nemesis in love. But I don&amp;#039;t think Andy has any particular beef with Toby.&amp;quot; Paul: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not sure he does. It&amp;#039;s very hard to say why Michael hated Toby. I think it was Michael&amp;#039;s belief that the world was totally emotional and not rational. We need to find something new for Toby.&amp;quot; Is there a possibility of a Michael Scott wedding episode? And would Andy damage his testicles again at the wedding? Paul: Yes to the reproductive organ... but I really don&amp;#039;t know if Steve will find his way back to the show. I certainly hope he does.&amp;quot; Ed: &amp;quot;Really, so there will be more genital harm? Good to know, good to know.&amp;quot; Aside from The Office, what are your favourite TV shows at the moment? Ed: &amp;quot;Mythbusters!&amp;quot; Paul: &amp;quot;I like Parks.&amp;quot; Ed: &amp;quot;Parks and Rec is great. One of my favourite shows on TV right now is Children&amp;#039;s Hospital. But I wasn&amp;#039;t joking about Mythbusters either. I think that show is compelling and hilarious.&amp;quot; Paul: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m still an Iron Chef addict and Downton Abbey I got hooked on.&amp;quot; Ed: &amp;quot;How&amp;#039;s this for Andy? I&amp;#039;ve been known to watch The Sing Off. I&amp;#039;m not going to say it&amp;#039;s great television, but I have been known to watch it from time to time.&amp;quot; Do you ever wonder why this documentary crew are filming Dunder Mifflin? Paul: &amp;quot;This documentary would have been the most extensive and expensive documentary in history.&amp;quot; Ed: &amp;quot;There is something beautiful in the mundane if you take enough microscope to it and focus in on something that seems innocuous to begin with. The smallness of The Office is what makes it so beautiful and compelling.&amp;quot; Will James Spader&amp;#039;s Robert California remain an enigmatic mystery for the rest of the season? Paul: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s interesting. Characters often start enigmatic and hard to read, but we usually get to know them after a while. We&amp;#039;ll get to see different aspects of him come through. He&amp;#039;s a guy very interested in interactions with people, power dynamics and watching people squirm. He likes testing people and watching them. Kathy Bates was interested in results, but he&amp;#039;s a voyeur of the process.&amp;quot; Ed: &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re currently on episode nine and we know Robert California pretty well now, but there&amp;#039;s still plenty of revelations. He&amp;#039;s not a one-note character by any stretch.&amp;quot; The Office continues at 9/8c on NBC "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/the-office/interviews/a342796/the-offices-ed-helms-paul-lieberstein-on-life-after-michael-scott/>