The Office Creator Greg Daniels Had Some Hilarious Casting Choices for Michael Scott Before Steve Carell [Video]

Most fans of The Office (U.S.) know that Steve Carell wasn’t the only name that was in the mix for the role of regional manager Michael Scott, but not all of us knew just how Oscar-worthy the list of also-rans really was.

In the active online Office fandom, the mythology of the “what could have been” casts basically has its own fan-fiction community — an alternate reality where Bob Odenkirk plays Michael, Patton Oswalt is Dwight, Adam Scott is the office hunk Jim Halpert and Kathryn Hahn is an outrageous, hilarious Pam Beesly is the subject of numerous Dunder Mifflin die-hards’ daydreams. The lore about the other actors up for the roles on the most beloved and enduring sitcom of the 2000s is still popular in part because of the surviving screen tests from the casting process, but there’s an entire world of A-list actors whose names came up during the casting search but who never made it …