Rainn Wilson On How His Deepest Struggles Led To His Best Roles
The Daily Stoic
Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures
4.5 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 September 2023
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ryan speaks with Rainn Wilson in this second of a two-part conversation about the best entry points for the average person into philosophy and spirituality, why the serenity prayer applies to everyone, how the struggles he experienced in his early acting career led to him landing the role of Dwight Schrute, why he wishes that he enjoyed his time on The Office more, his take on the state of the writers’ strike, and more.
Rainn Wilson is an actor, comedian, author, podcaster, writer, and director. He is most known for his role as Dwight Schrute on the NBC sitcom The Office (2005-2013), for which he earned three consecutive Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Highlights of Rainn’s extensive film and television credits include Galaxy Quest (1999), Almost Famous (2000), Full Frontal (2003), Six Feet Under (2003-2005) and Mom (2018-2021). Outside of acting, Wilson published his autobiography, The Bassoon King, in 2015, and co-founded the digital media company SoulPancake in 2008, and as an author and podcaster he spreads a message of building togetherness and community by way of spiritual and philosophical awakening within the global culture. You can follow Rainn on Instagram @rainnwilson and Twitter @rainnwilson, and on soulboom.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation |
| 0:09.7 | inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues |
| 0:15.1 | of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper |
| 0:21.2 | dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we explore at length how |
| 0:28.7 | these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. |
| 0:35.9 | Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, |
| 0:41.3 | be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, |
| 0:46.8 | and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. |
| 0:50.8 | Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. This is part two |
| 1:03.0 | of my interview with the one and only Rain Wilson. We don't talk a lot about the office in this |
| 1:09.2 | interview or in part one. Why? Because it's the middle of an actor's strike and a writer's strike. |
| 1:15.7 | And I want to support that. Actually, I was with my kids when we were doing the launch for Daily |
| 1:20.7 | Dad back in May in New York City and a march of writers walked by and got to sort of explain |
| 1:29.6 | what was going on to him that the people who make the stuff, write the stuff like I do, but write |
| 1:34.8 | the stuff that he sees on television and movies. These people are striking to get paid fairly and |
| 1:42.0 | to participate fairly in the upside of the things that they create and to be protected and |
| 1:48.4 | not exploited. And then when we were in LA for the summer, we obviously passed a lot of different |
| 1:53.2 | picketers and they always liked me to honk the horn as I went by. So anyways, we're not talking |
| 1:57.6 | about the office and you might go, oh, well, how could you find two hours of things to talk about |
| 2:02.0 | with Rain Wilson? Well, if you listen to part one, you'll know it's because Rain Wilson is a fascinating |
| 2:06.4 | guy, a spiritual guy, a thinker, and his new book, Soul Boom, why we need a spiritual revolution, |
| 2:12.8 | is all about precisely that. And in this big, in-depth interview here, and I talk about his faith, |
... |
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