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Minor spoilers for Rooster Season 1, Episode 3 are ahead! Read with caution, and stream the show with an HBO Max subscription. Then, catch new episodes every Sunday at 10 p.m. ET.
When I watched Rooster, I was immediately struck by how brilliant Steve Carell is as a physical comedian. That specifically came to mind because he hilariously falls a lot in the new comedy on the 2026 TV schedule, and it reminded me of some of the funniest gags in The Office. So, I asked the comedic actor what he learned from his work on that great sitcom that applied to his new HBO series. In response, he compared one scene in Rooster to a fantastic moment from The Office.
This conversation all started because I had asked Carell about which moment of physical comedy in Rooster made him laugh the most. I had mentioned to the actor that his character Greg falls a lot, too, which led him to recall the following moment from Episode 3:
There’s a whole storyline that he wears shoes – and he’s not a dress shoe guy, but he figures, ‘Well, I’m sort of a professor now, so I have to look like one.’ So he puts on these shoes, but they’re slick on the bottom. So that was sort of fun to play and to kind of foreshadow what was going to happen later in my just walking like stuff that wasn’t pointed to or talked about, knowing that there was going to be something – like a big splash – later on.
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In the episode, when Greg takes heads to the first class he’s teaching, he slips with his new dress shoes on. That’s amusing; however, the real laugh-out-loud moment comes later when he’s trying to walk up a shortcut on campus.
Traversing the path that is a little bit steep, Greg totally loses his balance and slips uphill first. Then, he eats it and tumbles down to the bottom of the incline. After that, he simply gets up and says, “That was a dangerous shortcut,” before going to class. However, the second he walks into his classroom, his students immediately clock that he got injured.
It’s both a comedic moment and, as Carell said, it kind of foreshadows bigger things that happen with Greg, his work, and his relationships.
So, after we spoke about that moment, I asked the Crazy, Stupid, Love actor if there was anything he learned during his time as part of The Office cast that helped him on Rooster when it came to physical comedy. In response, he said that the experiences were “very similar” in terms of the tone of the set and the “freedom to try anything.” He also literally compared Greg’s accident to a moment where Michael Scott fell, too, telling me:
The one that comes to mind was when Michael Scott falls into the koi pond. And I think the trick there is to act like it wasn’t premeditated, and this is all like happening in real time. People fall down. It’s never elegant.
Well, if you want to learn about the art of falling down in a very funny way, look no further than Season 6, Episode 8 of The Office (which you can stream with a Peacock subscription). Michael falling into (and getting out of) the koi pond is so over the top and hilarious, and it’s a prime example of Carell’s comedic genius. He knows how to commit to a bit, and he knows how to make it look like it was unintentional.
And guess what? He did just that on Rooster, too.
Overall, I can totally see why the koi pond came to mind when I asked Steve Carell about The Office and Rooster. While the two shows are very different, his comedic sensibilities transferred over beautifully, and now we get to see the actor falling down and committing to the bit in new and humorous ways. So, let’s all thank the koi pond and the actor who fell in it for giving us even more really, truly funny television moments like the two described in this story.
