Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute)

We're gonna talk about The Office, I promise.

(laughs)

Stick around, folks. (bell ringing) Rainn Wilson! Actor, writer, producer, you know as- Dwight Schrute, assistant regional manager. One of the most iconic characters- In TV history. Hold on, Michael, I am coming. (dramatic music) I experienced a lot of pain in my life. Neglect, abuse, abandoned. And then with anxiety and depression and addiction, I remember getting these anxiety attacks that would leave me shaking on the floor and sweating, and I thought I was dying. Waking up at 3:00 in the morning going, "Why should I keep living?" But this is the curious thing. I'm grateful for it. There's a reason why so many comedians come from painful backgrounds, because comedy shifts your perspective away from pain and trauma. Here's your choice, you can kill yourself or do comedy, and that was my path. It's my greatest dream come true.

You said, "When I was in The Office, I spent several years mostly unhappy because it wasn't enough."

I wanted more opportunities, I wanted more money. And as long as we wanna promote the ego satisfaction, we'll never be happy. We all have a shadow, and it's always there. And it's self-important and righteous and entitled, but I'm not going to get rid of those aspects of myself by keeping that shadow at arm's length. You need to embrace and accept and love one's shadow. Sit the shadow on the lap almost like a ventriloquist dummy. Hello. Speaker 2 　 You, diary of a CEO. Get a new T-shirt, idiot.

(laughs)

That's a wrap. (dramatic music)

I think this is fascinating. I looked at the back end of our YouTube channel, and it says that since this channel started, 69.9% of you that watch it frequently haven't yet hit the subscribe button. So, I have a favor to ask you. If you've ever watched this channel and enjoyed the content, if you're enjoying this episode right now, please can I ask a small favor? Please hit the subscribe button. Helps this channel more than I can explain. And I promise, if you do that, to return the favor, we will make this show better and better and better and better and better. That's a promise I'm willing to make you if you hit the subscribe button. Do we have a deal? (upbeat music) Let's start with your context. Um, I always think the, the earliest years are the most important. So, could you take me back to your earliest context and give me the factors that I need to understand to understand you?

Sure. Uh, couple of key pieces in my background that have made me who I am and, uh, led me to lead the life that I live, uh, are, my mom, uh, took off when I was a year and a half, uh, lived with my, with my dad. And we were members of the Bahá'í Faith, uh, which, in a nutshell, is the newest of the world's religions. Uh, there's about six million Bahá'ís around the globe. It's the second most widespread religion, so wherever you go in the world, there's gonna be Bahá'ís. You know, you go to Mongolia or Thailand or, you know, Botswana or whatever, there's gonna be Bahá'í communities. And after my dad had been kind of essentially abandoned or felt abandoned, they got divorced, uh, we moved to the jungles of Nicaragua when I was three years old. Here was this abandoned kind of toddler kid living in the, literally the jungle. Uh, and my dad was an abstract painter and science fiction writer, and Bahá'í, and, uh, that's, that's how I grew up. And then, when it was kinda around kindergarten time, first grade time, we moved back to Washington State. And, um, those are some key pieces. Yeah.