SPOILER WARNING!

“Goodbye Michael” was written by Office executive producer Greg Daniels, who spoke exclusively to EW about tonight’s landmark episode and bidding farewell to Carell.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What can viewers expect from Michael’s goodbye episode?
GREG DANIELS: It’s basically him settling his affairs and saying his last goodbyes to everybody. And he has gifts for them. It’s about how he deals with his own feelings. There’s lots of little references to the history of the show that the super fans are going to really enjoy. A tiny mystery story — which I’m not sure anyone’s going to catch and will come out a few episodes from now — is being set up here … There’s other stories: Andy [Ed Helms] and Deangelo [Will Ferrell] are trying to hold together Michael’s clients who are starting to bail, and they’re driving around calling on the clients. And the party-planning committee is trying to figure out the best cake and the best way to send him off. All the former chairmen are reuniting to give Michael a good send-off.

Were there more tears or laughs on the set while shooting his final scenes?
I think there were both. But it wasn’t so much tears as it was just this weird sense of “Oh my god, this is his last this thing, this is his last that thing.” I kind of felt like a priest who was sitting with him as he ate his last meal. (Laughs) But the actors were very emotional. You know the concept of breaking? An actor bursts out laughing and drops his character. They kept doing it here because they’d suddenly get really sad that they weren’t going to work with him next week. They were sadder than their characters were supposed to be. They broke, but going to “sad”… I got choked up writing his last moment with Dwight [Rainn Wilson] in a Coffee Bean… [But] by the time I was at the set, I had worked through a lot of it. I was just concerned about keeping it funny.

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