Few TV characters have made me laugh harder than Kevin Malone on The Office.

Angelus cats are cute, so cute that you just want to eat them. But you can't eat cats.

You can't eat cats, Kevin.

This is the last laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and on today's bonus episode, I speak to Brian

Baumgartner, the actor who played Kevin for nine seasons on that iconic show, and yet sounds

almost nothing like him in real life. Brian just launched his own podcast, an oral history of the office, where he talks to the cast

and creators of that show about how it all came together and why it is even more popular

seven years after it ended its run on NBC.

On today's episode, he reveals which role he originally auditioned for,

his favorite Kevin storyline, and the moment Steve Carell made him laugh the hardest on set.

Okay, here's me with Brian Baumgartner. So, I mean, I guess we should start saying,

you're starting this podcast, an oral history of the office, which when people

hear this, at least the first episode will already be out. That's exciting. People can check it out.

Is it all done already? Did you already record all of the interviews and all of that? Yes. We've

assembled about 120 hours of interviews. Right. And I mean, it was a huge labor, but a labor of love. So we started

recording back in December, meeting with Casp, not just CAST, but some of the key directors

from the show and camera people, director of photography, network executives, because really we

wanted to hear from everybody and get different perspectives

on what the show was, how the show was constructed, and why at least potentially now it's

the most watch show in television, and we haven't filmed in seven years. How did this come to be?

How did you decide that this was something that you wanted to do? Well, Ben Silverman, who was the original person behind acquiring the rights and partnering with

Ricky Jervais and Stephen Merchant, who started this whole thing with the British version,

...