‘Definitely not a sequel’: Irish fans early eagerly await release of The Office spin-off

Fans of The Office will be glad to know the wait is almost over for the Irish premiere of its spinoff The Paper. 

The Paper will follow in the same mockumentary style fans of The Office have come to love, but instead of selling paper these characters will be writing for one instead. 

Following the workplace of the Toledo Truthteller, a struggling newspaper company, it will feature familiar faces with Oscar Nunez reprising his role as Oscar Martinez as well as Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson playing Ned Sampson, the new Editor-in-Chief for the newspaper. 

Gleeson has described Sampson as a former toilet paper salesman, who takes up the job to revive the “failing newspaper” that has “fallen into the pattern of being a little bit lazy and clickbaity”, with no experience other than doing journalism in college that he “really enjoyed.” 

The team he heads has no experience writing for the papers with one character in the trailer saying, “I wrote a paper in junior high” and another declaring “I’ve tweeted before.” 

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Domhnall has expressed his delight at working on the series saying: “It’s been immensely good fun kind of diving into the half hour comedy sort of stuff because I’d done some of that at home and really enjoyed it. But the American version looks really different, and I loved it.” 

Gleeson has explained that while The Paper is in the same mockumentary style as The Office with the same production crew it’s “definitely not a sequel.” 

He clarified: "In some ways, it is a sequel for Oscar's character, because he was in The Office and now is in The Paper, so you get to see how his life has continued. But apart from that, it is totally separate. It's like the same documentary crew that were making The Office are just making a different documentary about a whole new workplace." 

Showrunners from The Office such as Greg Daniels, Ricky Gervais and Stephan Merchant have also worked on The Paper, with Jenna Fischer who played Pam Beesley in The Office visiting. 

On working on set with them Gleeson said: "It was a really fun and funny place to go to work, I mean, it's weird because the work is oddly serious at times, like, you know what you're trying to do is make sure you get the story across and that you get the jokes across and all the rest of it. But if you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong. 

Fans of the show will be happy to know that despite season one not being out yet – they have already been renewed for a second season. 

While all ten episodes were released in the United States on Thursday, Irish fans will have to wait as new episodes of The Paper are being released weekly on Sky, starting from this Friday.