Ed Helms on The Office, comedic snafus, and learning from failures | ReThinking with Adam Grant

1. 0:00 – 0:36

   Intro

   1. AGAdam Grant0:00

      So Ed, I'm, I'm so excited that you're here. You're basically the most popular character in my class. We analyze a lot of Office videos.

   2. EHEd Helms0:07

      Oh, wow. Like how not to run a business. [laughs]

   3. AGAdam Grant0:11

      Yes.

   4. SPSpeaker0:11

      [laughs]

   5. AGAdam Grant0:12

      Yes.

   6. EHEd Helms0:12

      Okay.

   7. AGAdam Grant0:12

      And how not to interview for a job.

   8. EHEd Helms0:14

      Uh-huh.

   9. AGAdam Grant0:14

      And how not to pretend to help your coworkers, and there's a long list of Andy Bernard offenses.

   10. EHEd Helms0:20

       Oh, that's so funny. Well, I'm not Andy Bernard. I mean, I play Andy Bernard, but I'm a different person [laughs] than that.

   11. SPSpeaker0:28

       [laughs]

   12. EHEd Helms0:28

       I hope. I hope I can convince you of that today.

   13. AGAdam Grant0:31

       [upbeat music]

2. 0:36 – 2:27

   Learning to love failure

   1. AGAdam Grant0:36

      We know you for your successes, but I can only imagine your life was full of failures for you to be so into snafus.

   2. EHEd Helms0:42

      Never failed.

   3. SPSpeaker0:43

      [laughs]

   4. EHEd Helms0:46

      Um, next question.

   5. AGAdam Grant0:49

      [laughs]

   6. EHEd Helms0:50

      It's like no one realized you can do that. You can just pass on a question. Pass.

   7. SPSpeaker0:56

      [laughs]

   8. EHEd Helms0:57

      And then the reporter's like, "Oh, oh, uh, okay. Ne- next question." So, uh-

   9. AGAdam Grant1:02

      I love this

   10. EHEd Helms1:03

       ... anyways, that's my new trick, and I also recommend it in job interviews.

   11. AGAdam Grant1:05

       I was just wondering. [laughs]

   12. SPSpeaker1:06

       [laughs]

   13. EHEd Helms1:07

       It's, yeah, it's a total power move. Someone's like, "Tell me about yourself." Pass.

   14. SPSpeaker1:12

       [laughs]

   15. EHEd Helms1:13

       And the, the boss is like, "Wow."

   16. SPSpeaker1:16

       [laughs]

   17. EHEd Helms1:16

       "That took a lot of guts." But no, to answer your question, uh, where do I start with my own snafus? Show business is a, is just a festival of failure. It, truly, and then I started in standup comedy, which is just punishment. In order to get anywhere with standup comedy, you really have to learn to love bombing, and love failing, and sort of see it as, like, uh, just building your calluses, you know? Building your toughness as a performer. As freshmen, you come in and you're wide-eyed and terrified. Um, and what you learn from the older kids is that, is that love of bombing because they're, 'cause you're getting off after a terrible set where someone heckled you and got the best of you, and you come ba- off stage and you're mortified, and they're high-fiving you.

   18. AGAdam Grant2:08

       Congratulations, you sucked.

   19. EHEd Helms2:09

       Yeah. [laughs] No, truly, strong bonds are forged in pain, right? In, in shared experiences that are difficult, and there are obviously so many horrible examples of that throughout history, but comedy clubs is a, is a fascinating little microcosm of that too.

3. 2:27 – 5:12

   Ed's worst standup bomb

   1. AGAdam Grant2:27

      Okay, so I wanna talk about building those calluses. Uh, first, tell us about the, the worst standup bomb you ever had.

   2. EHEd Helms2:34

      Uh, [laughs] okay. So the, there was, there are so many, but, uh, but probably one of the biggest ones, there's this big comedy club out on Long Island, uh, in Levittown called Governors, and that was a, like Jerry Seinfeld r- came up through there and some big, w- a lot of big comedians routinely played there. It was a huge room, and then they packed people in, and it was, like, uh, a very different vibe. It's very Long Island. It's very different than New York City. So I got my, one of my first [laughs] my, one of my first opportunities to, to middle there, which means, like, to do the 30-minute set before the, the headliner. I'd never done a 30-minute set, and I didn't really have 30 minutes of, like, reliable material. I get up there. Right out of the gate, I'm struggling. Somebody starts to heckle me, and I just threw back the lamest response, like, "So who's this guy, a brain surgeon?" And there's like a big laugh around him, and this buddy's like, "He is a brain surgeon."

   3. AGAdam Grant3:35

      [laughs]

   4. SPSpeaker3:36

      [laughs]

   5. EHEd Helms3:36

      "He's literally a brain surgeon." And at that point, like, I lost. I just lost. The crowd won.

   6. AGAdam Grant3:44

      Neurosurgeons are the worst hecklers of all the surgeons-

   7. EHEd Helms3:47

      [laughs]

   8. AGAdam Grant3:47

      ... um, I'm told by my cousin who's a neurosurgeon. [laughs] What goes through your mind? What do you feel coming off stage having just flopped that badly?

   9. EHEd Helms3:55

      You kind of try to train yourself to, to love bombing and to sort of value that experience, but there are, there are times where it's undeniably brutal and undeniably painful, and especially in a situation like that where I'm the outsider, I'm the visitor, and, uh, and I have not established any credibility in this space. It's devastating. I think it just, it's the physical feeling of it that's so hard. Like, it just, it, it's pain. It feels like physical pain.

   10. AGAdam Grant4:25

       When are those low expectations helpful though?

   11. EHEd Helms4:27

       The, both of those instances I didn't feel prepared. But when you feel like you've done the legwork and the homework and the preparation and you've put in the hours, uh, and no one knows who you are, and you know you've got killer jokes in, in the chamber, like, ready to fire, that's... Yeah, that's when it's an advantage to not be known. Yeah, it wasn't confidence. It was just a bel- a belief that it, that I was doing the thing that I want, that I was, like, put here to do, weirdly. And, and, and so I, that sort of, like, allowed me to, uh, punch through some really difficult times. And again, I, I really could rely on the community. I always tell people,

4. 5:12 – 8:33

   Breaking into showbiz

   1. EHEd Helms5:12

      they're like, "How do you get into comedy?" Like, "How do you, how do you break into these spaces?" Or any kind of showbiz thing, which I think to a lot of people who want to be in show business feels insurmountable or terrifying. I always just say, like, start by finding your cohort. Surround yourself with people who agree that what you want is awesome because otherwise, especially if your aspirations are a little bit out there or unusual or thing you want to do is, is not widely considered to be, like, a great career move, you're gonna get so much resistance, and it's just friction. It's not even necessarily people telling you you're making a bad choice. It's just people sort of like, it's those little things like, "Oh, oh. Hmm. You wanna, oh, that's what... Oh. That's what you wanna do?" But when you're surrounded by... When I was with my comedian friends, it was like- It was no question we were all sort of doing the right thing. And I... That is so galvanizing and such an important way to, to find support.

   2. AGAdam Grant6:17

      So you... It sounds like you're talking about people [laughs] sort of mildly judging your career path.

   3. EHEd Helms6:23

      Yeah. Or just trying to... Telling you you're an idiot. Especially, I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. Nobody knew a comedian. Nobody knew an actor. 'Cause I knew that I would just get laughed at, or eye rolls, or kind of like, "Good luck, buddy." And that stuff is awful.

   4. AGAdam Grant6:40

      When did you know that this was what you wanted to do?

   5. EHEd Helms6:42

      Early. Eight, eight or nine years old.

   6. AGAdam Grant6:46

      Wow.

   7. EHEd Helms6:46

      Yeah.

   8. AGAdam Grant6:47

      What, what was it that-

   9. EHEd Helms6:49

      It was-

   10. AGAdam Grant6:50

       ... that hooked you?

   11. EHEd Helms6:50

       It was Saturday Night Live, which is, I think, a lot of comedians' answer, but I didn't understand it, but I l- I just loved the energy of it. There was something about that live show with, like, the audience. And Eddie Murphy was on at the time when I was a kid, and I loved him. He was, like, everything I wanted to be. He was so spontaneous. He was so present, and I could tell... I looked... You know what it was? I looked at him and I was like, "He's having fun. He's having so much fun," and I, I, like, I want that fun.

   12. AGAdam Grant7:22

       I once made the mistake of doing a cameo on a TV show, um-

   13. EHEd Helms7:25

       Ha

   14. AGAdam Grant7:25

       ... called Billions, and it was the most boring day of my life.

   15. EHEd Helms7:29

       Oh, yeah.

   16. AGAdam Grant7:30

       Like, seven and a half hours of retaking a two-and-a-half minute scene.

   17. EHEd Helms7:34

       Yeah.

   18. AGAdam Grant7:34

       And you're on take 23, and you're like, "I don't even think even the director can see a difference at this point. Like, we could've shot the whole season-

   19. EHEd Helms7:41

       Sure

   20. AGAdam Grant7:41

       ... in the time you're wasting."

   21. EHEd Helms7:43

       [laughs]

   22. AGAdam Grant7:43

       You don't have any of the audience energy. You don't have any sense of, like, I'm growing. I'm connecting with other people. I'm producing entertainment. Like, they're gonna see it months later.

   23. EHEd Helms7:53

       Yeah.

   24. AGAdam Grant7:53

       How in the world does somebody who, like, got such a rush out of doing standup comedy want... Like, how could you ever want to be in a TV show or movie? What is wrong with you, Ed Helms?

   25. EHEd Helms8:02

       Well, I'm, I'm usually asking directors for more takes, 'cause I just love to explore and think about, like, is this as funny as it can be? Is there another bit of, like, top spin I can put on this, or a little bit of, like, a side angle? And I'm constantly changing my takes take to take. I, I see, like, endless novelty in it.

   26. AGAdam Grant8:23

       Wow.

   27. EHEd Helms8:23

       And that is, like, a... That is such a thrill. I try to bring that, like, pursuit of comedic perfection, which is completely unattainable, but that is, that's the fun.

5. 8:33 – 9:53

   Lessons from The Office

   1. AGAdam Grant8:33

      Okay. So let's, let's talk a little bit about The Office.

   2. EHEd Helms8:35

      Sure.

   3. AGAdam Grant8:35

      Um, what were your biggest lessons from being on the greatest, the greatest show of its time?

   4. EHEd Helms8:41

      This is a little bit of a cheesy answer, but I was so, I was so proud to be given the line the, the, in the very last episode of, of the series, "I wish there was some way to know you're in the good old days while you're actually in them." And I just got chills saying that because I did know working on that show that I was in something so special. Those are the good old days. It's like the lesson is to just, like, love the mundane o- of a... If you're in a good place, like, cherish the mundane because that's where nostalgia is built. It's not built in the big moments. It's built in the, the small moments.

   5. AGAdam Grant9:22

      I was reading some research on this recently about how mindfulness is the opposite of flow.

   6. EHEd Helms9:26

      Interesting.

   7. AGAdam Grant9:27

      Where when you're in a mindful state, you're, you're fully kind of aware of the situation.

   8. EHEd Helms9:31

      Yes.

   9. AGAdam Grant9:31

      And when you're in a flow state, you're so deeply absorbed that you're not attuned to the fact that you're enjoying it.

   10. EHEd Helms9:36

       Yeah.

   11. AGAdam Grant9:37

       And I think by definition, right, if you start to become aware, you start to, like, evaluate and analyze, and you lose the moment.

   12. EHEd Helms9:45

       Yeah.

   13. AGAdam Grant9:45

       Maybe that's not a bad thing.

   14. EHEd Helms9:47

       No, I think, I think that's a beautiful thing.

   15. AGAdam Grant9:50

       Okay. So let's, let's talk about some SNAFUs, uh, that you've

6. 9:53 – 12:46

   Snafus in history

   1. AGAdam Grant9:53

      been fascinated by. What's your favorite SNAFU from the book?

   2. EHEd Helms9:56

      Th- there's one that stands out because it is so crazy, and that is in the 1950s, the Cold War was getting, you know, very intense, and the United States really wanted to flex nuclear muscle. And there, there was very much an arms race with nuclear development. And so someone hatched the idea, let's shoot the moon with a nuclear missile. And the logic was everyone can see the moon.

   3. AGAdam Grant10:23

      [laughs]

   4. EHEd Helms10:24

      So if we hit it with a nuclear missile, it'll just be this, like, yeah.

   5. AGAdam Grant10:29

      [laughs]

   6. EHEd Helms10:29

      Check this out, Soviet Union. Look what we did to the moon. We can do that to you, too. And a lot of time, and money, and resources went into this. Carl Sagan worked on this.

   7. AGAdam Grant10:42

      [laughs]

   8. EHEd Helms10:43

      And he loves planets.

   9. AGAdam Grant10:46

      [laughs]

   10. EHEd Helms10:46

       Right? He was right out of grad school. This is a true story. He was very young, and he worked on this. The only reason this whole thing was uncovered is because one of Carl Sagan's biographers found a fellowship application that, that he had, uh, filled out at the time, and he had put this project on the fellowship ap- application. And they were like, "Okay, I'm gonna table my Carl Sagan research [laughs] and go into this for a minute." They eventually realized that this is a terrible idea because-

   11. AGAdam Grant11:14

       [laughs]

   12. EHEd Helms11:14

       ... any miscalculation or malfunction of the, of the, you know, rocket could very easily miss the moon, be slingshotted around the gravinal, gravitational field of the moon, and just come right back to Earth. And they decided not to do it. Thank God.

   13. AGAdam Grant11:32

       [laughs]

   14. EHEd Helms11:33

       It... That's like Wile E. Coyote.

   15. AGAdam Grant11:34

       Can't believe that happened.

   16. EHEd Helms11:35

       Yes. It's crazy.

   17. AGAdam Grant11:37

       I'm curious about the bigger lessons that you've learned from, you know, three seasons of the podcast, from writing the book, about how to prevent a SNAFU or how to clean one up. For me, the most obvious lesson is, like, so often these things happen because groups polarize and then fall victim to groupthink, and-

   18. EHEd Helms11:52

       Yes

   19. AGAdam Grant11:53

       ... they get overconfident, and they don't have enough dissent, and they don't question themselves, and they, they end up on a path that they shouldn't be on.

   20. EHEd Helms11:59

       Absolutely.

   21. AGAdam Grant12:00

       Surely there's more to them than that. [laughs] Like, what-

   22. EHEd Helms12:02

       Yeah

   23. AGAdam Grant12:02

       ... what else have you found to be common patterns?

   24. EHEd Helms12:05

       That's the biggest one, what you just said. The, the, the enclosed bubble of groupthink. Especially when you get back into the '50s and '60s, there are clearly no women involved in some of these decisions. That, of course, contributes to, like, a very siloed set of values and opinions. And, and I think, um-

   25. AGAdam Grant12:26

       Are you suggesting that women are smarter than men, Ed?

   26. EHEd Helms12:30

       No, I'm stating that as a fact.

   27. SPSpeaker12:32

       [laughs]

   28. AGAdam Grant12:32

       [laughs]

   29. EHEd Helms12:33

       Uh, also the, the sort of power of fear, both as a motivator, a motivator to action, and a motivator to often terrible judgment. Um, sometimes amazing judgment.

   30. AGAdam Grant12:45

       Okay.

7. 12:46 – 17:36

   Lightning round

   1. AGAdam Grant12:46

      We have some more audience questions that we haven't covered yet.

   2. EHEd Helms12:50

      Heck yeah.

   3. AGAdam Grant12:51

      Okay. Uh, we'll do some of these lightning-style rapid fire. If Andy Bernard had a spinoff show [clears throat] , what would it be called, and what would he be doing now?

   4. EHEd Helms13:00

      It'd be called Andy Time.

   5. SPSpeaker13:02

      [laughs]

   6. EHEd Helms13:03

      And he would be the dean of admissions at Cornell.

   7. SPSpeaker13:06

      [laughs]

   8. AGAdam Grant13:08

      [laughs]

   9. EHEd Helms13:08

      Or no, he would not be the dean of admissions. He would be, like, a staffer in the admissions office.

   10. AGAdam Grant13:13

       Aspiring to one day.

   11. EHEd Helms13:14

       A- aspiring dean, yeah.

   12. AGAdam Grant13:16

       Who do you identify with more, Andy Bernard or Stuart Price?

   13. EHEd Helms13:20

       Andy, for sure.

   14. SPSpeaker13:21

       [laughs]

   15. EHEd Helms13:21

       Yeah. Uh, I mean, they're, they're both departures from me, but I... There's a lot of me in both. But I think Andy is a, a guy with very few tools to deal with the feelings that I, that I have. Like, I re- I relate to some of the, the thoughts and feelings and internal battles that Andy has, but I like to think I have a little bit better set of tools, and I have a higher emotional intelligence [laughs] than, than Andy. But I relate to his, some of his expressions of insecurity, for sure.

   16. AGAdam Grant13:52

       Wow. What's your favorite Office episode?

   17. EHEd Helms13:56

       Uh, this will probably surprise no one, but Dinner Party is-

   18. SPSpeaker14:00

       [laughs]

   19. EHEd Helms14:01

       ... is- it was some of the hardest laughs I've ever had-

   20. SPSpeaker14:04

       [laughs]

   21. EHEd Helms14:05

       ... in, uh, was shooting that episode.

   22. AGAdam Grant14:07

       Favorite scene?

   23. EHEd Helms14:08

       My favorite moment is when Steve is, uh, showing us how his flat-screen TV [laughs]

   24. SPSpeaker14:17

       [laughs]

   25. EHEd Helms14:17

       ... is adjustable.

   26. AGAdam Grant14:18

       [laughs]

   27. EHEd Helms14:20

       And it moves two inches.

   28. AGAdam Grant14:22

       [laughs]

   29. EHEd Helms14:22

       And he's so proud of that. And we must have done 500 takes of that, because none of us could get through it. It just was so dumb-

   30. AGAdam Grant14:32

       [laughs]
8. 17:36 – 19:05

   How to face your next snafu

   1. AGAdam Grant17:36

      got a lot of, uh, a lot of people here who I think are afraid to fail.

   2. EHEd Helms17:40

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AGAdam Grant17:40

      We've been talking this whole conversation about the value of failure. What would your advice be about how to confront the next snafu that we all face?

   4. EHEd Helms17:49

      You know, going back to what I was talking about earlier about finding kind of your people or finding the people that, uh, will, that will think what you're doing is awesome no matter what, whether, whether you're succeeding or failing in the moment, it... Part of that is, is how are you reacting to your peers' failures? What, what culture are you helping to build around you? So it's, so you're not, you're not necessarily... It's not necessarily like what, how do I handle my own failures? It's like what's, what sort of soup am I swimming in and contribute, cr- contributing to? Like, is this a yummy vegetable soup and I'm, like, a delicious carrot? Or is this, am I just, like, a gross cockroach that got thrown into this soup?

   5. SPSpeaker18:33

      [laughs]

   6. EHEd Helms18:33

      And because the right people, the right community, the right sort of vibe will... Failure just won't be so catastrophic. It won't feel so catastrophic.

   7. AGAdam Grant18:43

      Thank you.

   8. EHEd Helms18:44

      Thanks so much for having me.

   9. SPSpeaker18:45

      [cheers] [applause]

   10. EHEd Helms18:46

       Woo! [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 19:07