Brian Baumgartner

Kevin Malone wasn't supposed to happen. Baumgartner walked into his audition for The Office with the Stanley Hudson sides and performed them as Kevin anyway. The gamble worked. Greg Daniels was apparently so taken that the role became his on the spot. Nine seasons, a Daytime Emmy in 2007 for The Office: The Accountants webisodes, and a character who became one of the most quoted figures on 2000s television. He built Kevin as a slow study in oblivious dignity, which required more craft than the character's famous chili suggested.

After The Office ended in 2013, Baumgartner didn't diversify so much as double down. His Spotify podcast An Oral History of The Office (2020) and the follow-up iHeart series The Office Deep Dive racked up 20 million combined downloads in their first year. Welcome to Dunder Mifflin, the companion book he co-authored with Ben Silverman, hit the New York Times bestseller list in 2021. He's become The Office's unofficial archivist and custodian, mining the show's nostalgia economy more systematically than anyone else in the cast. Whether you find that admirable or exhausting probably depends on how you feel about the show.

Before Dunder Mifflin, Baumgartner was artistic director at Hidden Theatre in Minneapolis and performed at the Guthrie. The serious-actor-playing-a-buffoon thing wasn't accidental. He and Ed Helms were both at The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, which makes their Office run a small alumni reunion. He's since co-written two cookbooks, which tracks given the character's relationship with his chili. The Kevin version audiences remember was a specific, built performance. That it held up across nine seasons without curdling into parody says more about his craft than his reputation suggests.