Paul Lieberstein

Jen Salata and I were taking over as showrunners for season five, and that was absolutely part of getting rid of me.

Give me some time to just showrun and concentrate on that.

Did we know for a fact I'd be coming back?

No, not for a fact.

Didn't really think about it that far in.

There was a lot of things started.

Pam's acceptance to art school, that was something we had talked about for a long time.

We always knew she liked it, but we were looking for a whole new...

complication after doing so much with the romance.

And then Angela's engagement to Andy, we always knew that was not a relationship to be.

That was a bad relationship, a comedy relationship.

But it gave us some fun stuff, obviously.

Amy Ryan, her agents were asking her, well, what do you want to do?

And she said, I want to do the office.

And at the very same time, we were talking about her.

And I don't really know who reached out to who first.

I worked with Amy like a million years ago on another show, and we knew each other.

And I was all for it.

I loved working with her both times.

So we didn't know how much of an arc was it going to be with Amy.