Felicity Ward leads The Office Australia as the first female boss in the franchise’s history. Photo / BBCS & Bunya Entertainment
After 24 years, The Office finally hires a female manager. The star explains why that’s not a big deal.
It is a dream come true. It is a nightmare. It is the starring role in the Australian remake of The Office.
Felicity Ward, the Australian comedian who’s about to clock in as the inept manager of the show’s blandly, nondescript workspace, is very clear about how this moment feels.
“I’m bricking it, Karl,” she says. “Absolutely bricking it.”
You can’t blame her. There’s sitcoms and then there’s The Office, a show so beloved and so wildly popular it became a global phenomenon. Twice.
The undying popularity of the 2001 British original and its 2005 American remake ensures this new version of The Office faces an intense performance review right from the get-go. Its daunting target is to simply match the lofty comedic heights of those predecessors while operating under the all-encompassing shadows cast by their respective stars, comedy titans Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell.
And all of this before we acknowledge that Ward is the first woman to lead The Office franchise in its 23 years and 13 versions, and what this means in an age of culture wars and online dogpiling.
After checking all those boxes, ‘bricking it’ seems quite reasonable.
“I don’t think I’ll have any real idea about what it’s going to feel like or how real it will feel until October 18,” she says, referring to launch day. “I don’t know whether it will have any impact on me or whether it will be very overwhelming.”
In the series, Ward stars as Hannah Howard, the obliviously clueless managing director of packaging company Flinley Craddick. It’s a part you could say she was born to play.
“What preparation did I do for the character?” she muses, sounding very much like a David Brent type, before answering her question. “Zero. I read the script and went, ‘This is me. This is every annoying attribute of my existing personality’.”
Then she laughs and says, “Take away the good bits and Hannah Howard is me. Which is atrocious but made work very easy.”
Aside from reading the script – and looking in the mirror – she did no other The Office homework. In fact, she admits she’d never even seen an episode of the American version until filming had wrapped.
“Not intentionally,” she’s quick to add. “I watched the British one and then the American one came out and everyone was like, ‘Oh, it’s exactly the same but not good,’ and because I was a dirty little sheep back then, I was like, ‘I don’t want to watch something that isn’t as good’. So I didn’t. And then I just kept not watching it.”
This is maybe something you shouldn’t be admitting while promoting your remake but, as she’s just confessed, she’s a lot like her character. It also made her comfortable following in the footsteps of two comedy legends.
“The character’s still a chump,” she reassures. “She’s a chump and she’s a boss, which is my f***ing favourite combination. A chump with power who’s an idiot? Yes, please!”
Ward is, of course, aware that some people won’t be able to see past the dresses and heels to give the show a chance. But she has developed a foolproof plan for dealing with that.
“You know that will happen so there’ll be a little week that Felicity will just move back from social media and let the internet have a little party. Everyone is absolutely welcome to their opinion. You just don’t need to message me personally.”
Besides, she says, what would be the point of photocopying the previous versions of the show?
“The only reason to make another one this many years later is that it has to be different,” she reasons. “Not everything has to be remade with a woman, but if you are going to do it, you may as well do something new.”
In another first The Office Australia is also led by women behind the scenes, being co-created and mostly written by Australian Julie De Fina and our own film and TV heroine Jackie Van Beek. Perhaps this explains the number of familiar faces among Hannah’s staff and suggests that a more appropriate title would be The Office ANZ.
But for Ward, the series holds a more meaningful connection to our shores.
“I was in Wellington shooting Time Bandits and had gone to town to do a Covid test. My agent called and he was like, ‘Hey, what are you up to?’. I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to spit into a tube, mate’ and he said, ‘I would like to offer you’ - and I just went, ‘Fuuuuuu** off!’. And he went, ‘You have been offered the lead in The Office Australia’.”
It was a profoundly poignant moment for both of them and the culmination of 15 years of hard graft and determination. It signified that Ward’s moment had finally arrived.
“The thing that was the most emotional was he said, ‘You stayed’,” she says, with a slight tremble still recognisable in her voice.
“This industry is so hard for so many people. It’s brutal – financially, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. It’s brutal on your intimate relations, partners and family. It can be crushing in so many ways. Now, my agent may lack a bit of emotional intelligence but he was so proud when he said, ‘You stayed’. I’ll remember that for the rest of my life.”
It’s the first time in our very funny interview that Ward drops out of her jokey persona, the significance of that moment obviously still very real to her. But when asked what gave her the resilience to carry on for so long she instantly hoots, “I don’t have an education, Karl! There’s nothing else I can do!”
We both laugh and as we’re back in jokey territory I prepare to move on. But before I can, she unexpectedly continues.
“This sounds like a bit of a hippy-dippy answer, but it’s the truth. Some people are born with a passion. I’ve had it for performing since I was a kid. I had an older partner, a few years older than me when I was younger and I watched him and a lot of his friends get to their mid-30s and they had a house and they had a partner and they were thinking about kids or they got married and they had a good job and they had friends and they had interests and they had all the things, but what they didn’t have was something in here,” she says tapping her heart. “And I will never be without that feeling. I have this creativity and whether I’m good or not, I have to do it.”
She trained as an actor and spent years as a waitress. She stumbled into comedy, “quite late”, doing her first gig aged 27. But the appeal was instant.
“Two minutes into my first stand-up set ever, I went, ‘This is it. This is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.’ I’d been waitressing for years by this point and one day I went, ‘Felicity, are you willing to be a waitress for the rest of your life? Because that’s what it might take.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah. If I’ve got to be a waitress, then I’ve got to be a waitress because I can’t not do this’.”
“It’s kind of daggy to talk about it,” she says, sounding self-conscious about sharing this personal stuff. “But it really was like a life-changing moment.”
Her next life-changing moment is only a few days away when Prime Video’s 200 million subscribers clock in for their first day at the new office. Some will enjoy it for what it is, some will be expecting the impossible and some will be sharpening their claws in preparation for tearing into it.
As for its star, well, she’s ‘bricking it’, but philosophical.
“The wonderful thing about a woman playing the lead in The Office is that nothing about it is about female empowerment,” she says. “She’s just a f***ing terrible boss who’s a woman. That’s all it is!”
Then Felicity Ward laughs and says, “It’s The Office and it’s a woman and that’s it.”
All eight episodes of The Office Australia are streaming on Prime Video from October 18.
The boss
The multi-talented writer, actor and director Jackie Van Beek co-created the series. Her influence and comedy style, honed in the hilarious awkwardness of her movies like The Breaker Upperers and TV series Educators, a natural fit for the franchise’s trademark cringe.
The Middling Middle Manager
Award-winning Australian comedian Felicity Ward leads the show as Hannah Howard, a boss every bit as incompetent as David Brent (Ricky Gervais) or Michael Scott (Steve Carell). Ward made her name in sketch comedy before successfully going solo.
The Stickler
Like the boss, the character of Gareth or Dwight – depending on which Office you prefer – has also been gender-swapped to become Lizzie. She’s played with gleeful pedanticism by Aucklander Edith Poor.
The Exasperated HR Dude
Timaru ex-pat and screen regular Josh Thomson stars as Martin, the human resources representative worn out from navigating Howard’s constant and inventive new ways of breaching head office policy.
The Oddball IT Guy
IT guys can be awkward at the best of times and Auckland’s comedic actor Jonny Brugh lives up to those expectations playing Lloyd, a peculiar person preoccupied with getting home rather than fixing people’s PCs.
The star-crossed lovers
It wouldn’t be The Office without a will they/won’t they romance. Here Aboriginal actress Shari Sebbens and Sydney’s Steen Raskopoulos get their flirt on as sales reps Greta and Nick.
Timothée Chalamet had long been interested in playing Bob Dylan.