Jen Salata

I directed episode 107 of the paper.

And I got to work with Alan Havey, who played Marv, who was Ned's boss.

And he was brilliant.

And I loved working with him.

And I thought that I just recognized him from TV, maybe from Mad Men or from movies that he's done.

And it wasn't until much later, like embarrassingly later, that I realized, oh my god, I directed him on The Office on the episode called Promos.

ninth season of The Office.

He played Esther's dad and he was trying to like swindle Dwight in some tractor deal.

And he was also fantastic in that.

Two very different roles, but I did not realize that I had worked with him before.

And he was just such a delight in the character of Marv and dealing with Ned and his daddy issues.

One tiny little behind-the-scenes moment that I just remembered today was that when Ned gave Mare a card that said, I'm sorry, I misidentified your sexuality, I remember being presented from our awesome props department a bunch of Basset Hound cards and Basset Hound images to put on the card and trying to figure out which sad Basset Hound looked most like sad Donal or sad...

Ned.

And that was just delightful.

And one of those, what are our jobs moment?

This is amazing.

I remember how difficult it was for me to figure out how to block the scene where Ned pulled Marv into the conference room, and then Ken and Esmeralda and Nicole were listening outside, and Atalola and Travis were also listening outside, trying to figure out where to put the cameras so that they wouldn't see each other, but then also have the camera movement feel real and feel fluid was really challenging.

And I would go down on set all the time when the actors were there and also when the actors weren't there and just try to think of how, you know, would I put the cameras here?

Would I put the cameras here?

And one time that I was down there, I think the actors must have not been there.