“The Office”'s Brian Baumgartner Reveals the Real Reason Why Kelly, Ryan and Toby Sat in a Separate Space

The secrets of the Office set never stop coming.

On a 2024 episode of the Lightweights Podcast with Joe Vulpis that's making the rounds on TikTok this week, The Office's Brian Baumgartner offered an answer to a burning question: Why did Ryan, Kelly and Toby have to sit away from the rest of the characters in the "annex"?

"This is a fun little Easter egg," Baumgartner, 52, began. "There was the main office, the main bullpen right? Jim and Pam and the accountants and Stanley and Phyllis and Michael's office and all that."

"And then there was the other side, right?" he continued. "We called it the annex. If your desk was in the annex you were a writer, and they did this because the camera was always moving around. We were there all the time."

He went on to explain that series creator Greg Daniels "needed the writers in the writers room sometimes. So the people who were back there didn't have to be on set all the time, and they could go up and write, and then come back and shoot some group conference room scenes or a scene back there, but they weren't there all the time."

Ryan, Kelly and Toby were played by B.J. Novak, Mindy Kaling and Paul Lieberstein, respectively, who all wrote for the series throughout its entire run.

Elsewhere in the chat, Baumgartner revealed that in early seasons of The Office, "they did not allow hair and makeup people on set during the day, generally."

"Jenna [Fischer] had a compact in her desk, to put some powder on her face," he said. But "they didn't want makeup people coming in — they wanted everybody to look like they worked at a paper company in Scranton."

However, he admitted, as the series gained popularity, "this changed over time."

The Office ran from 2005 to 2013 and also starred Steve Carell, John Krasinski, Rainn Wilson, Angela Kinsey, Oscar Nunez, Leslie David Baker, Phyllis Smith, Creed Bratton, Ed Helms, Kate Flannery, Craig Robinson, Ellie Kemper and Melora Hardin, among others.

Costars Fischer and Kinsey have been rewatching and reviewing the series — with the help of their former costars — on their podcast, Office Ladies.

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