The new series is set at the Toledo Truth Teller, a once distinguished daily paper based in Toledo, Ohio, that has since fallen on hard times. “In the world of paper products, one of the most disrespected are local newspapers,” Daniels says, adding that as they disappear and the truth and facts become endangered by social media, people are now feeling nostalgia for what has been lost.
The Truth Teller’s staff has been slashed and the remaining employees are disheartened; the paper relies on wire copy for print and clickbait for the online version. Then the idealistic Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson) arrives, hoping to restore the paper to a serious local news gathering organization, and recruits his staff of accountants, circulation managers, and others to volunteer to do actual reporting in the community.
Ned had been a star toilet paper salesman for the Truth Teller’s parent company and has always dreamed of working in journalism, so he jumps at the chance to run a media outlet. The staff’s inexperience, combined with their enthusiasm, drives much of the humor.
“The show is a love letter to local newspapers,” says Brookline native Alex Edelman, who both writes and acts on the show. (His character, Adam, is an accountant at the paper and perhaps lacking in the intellect department, but makes up for it with puppy-like exuberance.)
When Andover native Chelsea Frei first auditioned, the show was “shrouded in secrecy.” There was no mention of “The Office” or a mockumentary. “I’m happy I didn’t know, because I was the biggest ‘Office’ fan and would have buckled under the pressure,” she said during a video interview while visiting family on Martha’s Vineyard. (Not knowing anything about the show, she even tried out a Boston accent during her audition, reviving the “wicked” of her childhood. Her character, Mare, a compositor with a reporting background who has grown disillusioned with the Truth Teller but embraces Ned’s goals, does not have the accent.)
Ramona Young’s audition script had “no context or description of the character, just weird scenarios like being stuck on a plane with someone you know.” Even when Daniels and Koman took her to lunch after she got the job, she had to tell them she hadn’t gotten a script yet. “I said, ‘I don’t even know the name of my character.’” (She plays Nicole, a circulation manager whose guardedness hides a desire to be part of something bigger.)
Daniels wanted to find the right actors before pulling the trigger. “Eighty percent of what makes a show great is casting, and if I didn’t think it was going to work, I was going to kill it.”
There was one cast member Daniels wanted all along: Oscar Nuñez, who played the accountant Oscar Martinez on “The Office.” Nunez didn’t hesitate, saying he trusted Daniels to make the new show distinctive.
Oscar now works in accounting at the Truth Teller, and bristles with hostility when the camera crew arrives. While the show is both clever and silly in ways “Office” fans will recognize, it also bears Daniels’s trademark for taking comedy seriously.
“Greg is a master of detail, of getting us to dig deeper,” says Frei, adding that he had his actors plunge into the world of local journalism. “It’s one of the most amazing parts of this whole experience — I talked to reporters at the Palisadian Post, and when the Palisades fires happened, you saw the information they’re getting on the ground [that] no one else had.”
Daniels has sent people out to talk to real folks since his “King of the Hill” days. “It helps prevent stereotypes and recycling old sitcom plots,” he says. “The closer you are to real life, the more original the writing is. And for the actors, the more they know what their character’s life is like in a realistic way, the more it becomes second nature and they can concentrate on being funny.”
While Nuñez says it was easy to slip back into Oscar, other cast members sought his guidance about acting with a fake documentary crew. “You’re always trained to act as if there isn’t a camera watching you,” Frei says.
Young created various options before shooting started for a scene. “I’d have one plan if they wanted me to notice the camera, but if they say ‘Don’t notice the camera,’ I had backups,” she says.
But she also had to get used to addressing the camera directly, an integral part of these shows. “Nicole is more like me than any character I’ve played, and they always encourage us to be incredibly honest when we’re talking to the camera,” she says, which left her feeling vulnerable. “I love acting with a fourth wall, so I’m still trying to figure this out. But it’s a good challenge.”
Young says Daniels is also open to ideas from everyone. “They might not necessarily use the ideas, but they make me feel really involved,” she says, explaining that she shared journal entries she wrote in character and books Nicole might have read.
Nuñez, who watched all 10 episodes the night before our interview, says Daniels’s emphasis on story makes his shows distinct. “You can’t stop people from comparing it to ‘The Office,’ but they shouldn’t,” he says. “It stands alone as its own show.”
“The Paper” feels more like a descendant of Daniels’s “Parks and Recreation,” where Leslie Knope’s boundless enthusiasm both for her fellow humans and for the potential of good governance countered what Daniels says was “a certain bleakness” on “The Office.”
“On ‘The Office’ they were just selling paper, but [the staff of ‘The Paper’] is on a mission,” Nuñez says. “Ned wants to create a good local paper, with integrity, which sounds like a fairy tale now.”
Daniels agrees, saying, “Ned is actually inspirational and has an audacious plan. I just would not have trusted Michael Scott with any plan.”
Even when things go amok, the series celebrates the idea of seeking to do good. “There’s a sense that trying is a very good thing, that there’s a nobility in operating with integrity,” Edelman says. “The characters are trying to build something, and they become more of a community and better at their jobs because of it. There’s something optimistic and loving about this series.”
THE PAPER
On Peacock; premieres Sept. 4
