Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive show news, updates, and more!
Dwight's Greatest Prank on The Office Was Never Actually Revealed - Here's What Happened
How Dwight’s unmade sitcom spinoff led to one of The Office’s greatest cold open gags.
Oh, to be as fearless in the face of a good social shunning as The Office’s Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson). If there’s one thing that the iconic NBC comedy’s resident party-pooper is especially good at, it’s maintaining frame — even when everyone else in the room thinks you’ve gone, like, completely off the rails.
Dwight’s hilarious soil-slinging ritual at the cold open start to “The Farm,” the 18th episode of The Office’s 9th and final season (stream the entire series on Peacock here), has to be up there with some of his most out-there, offbeat gestures ever. And, when you reflect on Dwight's shameless history on the series, that’s really saying something.
RELATED: The Office's Hysterical Olympics Episode Deserves a Gold Medal
Behind the scenes, though, there’s a funny bit of backstory to the odd, Schrute-family act of “mourning” that leaves all of Dwight’s coworkers disgracefully caked in a face full of dirt to kick off the episode. As it turns out, in fact, there’s a scripted (but not seen) missing piece to the puzzle, one that shows even Dwight has a threshold for knowing when an outrageous gag has (almost) gone too far over the top.
Dwight’s dirt-throwing ritual on The Office was originally a prank
Dressed in a strange makeshift tux and toting two tiny pails of dirt (one filled with red soil, the other with black), Dwight glides into the office during the cold open of “The Farm” with a seemingly tragic announcement. His dear aunt Shirley has died, and it’s a believably wacky Schrute family tradition for Dwight to select which of his colleagues is “invited” to the funeral by smacking them right in the face with a symbolic fistful of red dirt.
Those who don’t get invited aren’t exactly off the hook themselves, though: They still get smacked in the face too, but with a gob of black soil from the bucket Dwight’s holding in his other hand. Either way, everyone in the office soon realizes they’ve courteously got to let Dwight throw dirt in their faces (he’s in mourning, after all!) — and as the hit count tallies up, it looks like Oscar (Oscar Nunez) is suspiciously all by his lonesome as the only one who gets struck (aka “invited”) by a fistful of the red stuff.
RELATED: TV Spouses Angela Kinsey and Rainn Wilson Play Tennis Together for Office Reunion
Wilson, of course, plays the whole thing with a completely somber and straight face, totally selling the idea that the silly ritual of tossing of dirt in people’s faces is just a typically on-brand Dwight quirk. But as costars Jenna Fischer (Pam) and Angela Kinsey (Angela) revealed in a recent episode of The Office Ladies podcast, even Dwight was meant, in the original script, to view the entire dirt-slinging encounter as a nothing more than a prank that plays on his coworkers’ sympathies.
Did Dwight just make up his dirty dirt ritual on The Office?
According to Kinsey, viewers never got to see a key part of Dwight’s dirt-slinging story, which would’ve explained how Dwight simply made the whole filthy ritual up just to hilariously humiliate his colleagues.
Onscreen, the actual cold open ends just as Dwight’s winding up with an extra-big, extra-nasty handful of earth, one intended to smack Jim (John Krasinski) right in the kisser. But in a bit of bonus material that never made it to air, said Kinsey, “Dwight heads to his car [afterward], he’s tossing the pails of dirt aside and ripping off his tux — and he looks to camera and says, ‘Not a bad custom! I should tell the other Schrutes that something like this could really catch on!’
“And then,” Kinsey added, “he looks at the camera crew and goes, ‘What?! Oh, give me a break — my aunt just died!’ — So it wasn’t a custom at all for his family!”
Turns out, it was all just a dirty prank — one that Kinsey and Fischer agree is arguably one of Dwight's best pranks in the entire series.
“The Farm” was a backdoor pilot for Dwight’s comedy spinoff of The Office
We’re not sure how much it would change the crazy tone of the whole cold open gag to show Dwight being just a wee bit more devious than usual. After all, cutting to the show’s opening theme just as Jim’s about to get socked with a soil bomb is already funny enough. But in any event, there’s a bigger picture to both the Dwight-themed cold open and to the episode itself.
As Kinsey and Fischer recounted on the podcast, “The Farm” was actually meant to serve as the pilot episode of a potential sitcom spinoff of The Office called The Farm, starring Wilson, who was intended to reprise his role as Dwight. The never-launched series would’ve put Dwight out on the land at his family’s old Pennsylvania home place, where he would’ve left his Dunder Mifflin life behind to take up an agricultural career… as, um, well, a beet farmer.
RELATED: Steve Carell Reveals His Theory for Why The Office Is Still So Popular (EXCLUSIVE)
Once The Farm didn't move forward, The Office still managed to make hilarious use of the pilot’s scripted leftovers, which themselves found their way into “The Farm” episode in Season 9. All of the Schrute family hijinks that unfold on location at Dwight’s family farm in the episode (which include funny guest appearances from Silicon Valley’s Thomas Middleditch, Breaking Bad’s Matt Jones, The Good Place creator Michael Schur, and more) were lifted straight from the spinoff’s never-aired pilot.
Everything that takes place back at the actual office in “The Farm” episode was added in by The Office writers to balance out the gang’s ongoing struggle with empathy. The episode cross-cuts between the bonkers barnyard story back at Dwight’s farm (just check out how the fam makes sure Aunt Shirley’s really dead!), and an equally insane cupcake-laced forgiveness storyline involving the loathsome Todd Packer (David Koechner) back at the Dunder Mifflin offices.
You can binge “The Farm” along with all nine silly seasons of The Office over on Peacock, where the entire classic comedy series is streaming here.
