'Don’t let bullies off the hook': The Paper star Oscar Nuñez on Trump, truth, and The Office
In a time of publishing industry freefall, a new spin-off from
The Office mines the bleakness of today’s journalism landscape
for laughs. Big Issue speaks to stars Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Nuñez and Sabrina Impacciatore
How do you follow up one of the most iconic television shows of all time?
With a healthy dose of fear, according to actor Domhnall Gleeson.
“I’d seen a lot of The (American) Office before. And the UK Office was, I mean, the biggest thing on TV… I was obsessed with it,” the actor – best known for roles in Star Wars and Harry Potter – tells Big Issue.
“So, yeah, it felt mad to get a call, and then sort of daunting.”
Big Issue is in Central London to discuss the brand-new US Office spin-off, The Paper. The interview suite has been decked out as a simulacrum press room: framed front pages, stacks of newspapers, a large photocopier, ‘Employee of the Month’ pin-boards. Gleeson sits on one side of a large editor’s desk.
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Anticipation for the show is extremely high. Despite concluding in 2013 – following nine critically and popularly lauded seasons – The Office has only grown in US public imagination. In 2020, locked-down Americans cumulatively streamed more than 57 billion minutes of the show – that’s over 108,000 years of viewing – while devoted fans immortalise it online with countless gifs and quotable memes.
So yeah, Gleeson acknowledges, big shoes to fill. But The Paper, he adds, is “something different.” Created by Greg Daniels – the man who adapted The Office for American audiences – the show carries the familiar mockumentary DNA but explores new – and timely – territory.
The film crew that once followed the staff of Steve Carell’s paper company is now chronicling the trials of a struggling local newspaper in Ohio. While the mockumentary mines its newsroom setting for laughs, it also touches on some bleak industry realities.
Over the past two decades, digitisation has transformed the news business beyond recognition. In the US, newsroom employment has fallen by over a quarter since 2008, with the steepest losses in local and regional outlets. In the UK, total newspaper circulation has halved since 2005, while digital advertising revenue – once heralded as journalism’s saviour – is now dominated by tech giants. Filling the gap has been a race for online traffic, powered by clickbait, sensationalism and content designed to please algorithms.
Gleeson admits that he has “wasted a lot of time” falling down this internet rabbit hole.
“When it first started, just like everybody else, I was taken for a ride,” the actor says.
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“Like, oh, that looks like a person walking on Mars. When did a person actually walk on Mars?”
You know the sort of thing. Strings of random capitalisation and evocative falsehoods: Life insurance companies HATE this trick! You won’t BELIEVE what this child star looks like now! 15 Eerie Photos Taken RIGHT Before Disaster!
Clickbait is just one symptom of an industry in freefall. Print journalism has been shedding jobs for decades, with local news often the first casualty.
A June 2022 report estimated that roughly 70 million Americans live in a county with one or no local news organisation. In the UK, about 320 local papers have closed since 2005 and two-thirds of regional journalists have lost their jobs.
At least 38 “news deserts” leave around 7% of the population without local publications. A 2022 report called the “collapse of local reporting” a “slow-burning crisis in Britain”, with devastating consequences for democratic engagement.
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Sabrina Impacciatore, best known for playing resort manager Valentina in Season Two of The White Lotus, portrays the Ohio paper’s managing director. She herself has been the target of “bullshit” content.
Staff on the paper. Image: PEACOCK
“They’re trying to sell you stuff. So it’s all about selling, selling, selling. I put my name into Google, and there’s my face, like ‘Sabrina says this,’ and then I click on it, and there are these articles full of things to sell,” she says. “They’re only sensational titles, just to hook your attention. It can be like, very bad, like, ‘Sabrina has been beaten up by her boy’, like, something really that’s wild, you know, just because maybe once I said I had a complex relationship.”
She used to have a higher opinion of the industry.
“Now that you make me think about it, wow, I wanted to be a journalist,” she muses. “I think I could have been a good journalist – someone who would die to write something meaningful, to help people think, to see reality, to see the truth.”
Despite these early ambitions, Impacciatore is thrilled to be acting – particularly in this role.
“I had never seen The Office before, so can you imagine when they called me? My agent could not believe it. They said, ‘This is a big deal. This is a big thing.’
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“My audition lasted 45 minutes on Zoom with Greg Daniels, all the producers, and the casting director. I did my bit, heard no reaction – no one was laughing. I thought, OK, that’s it. Then they all appeared and said, ‘We were muted! We had so much fun!’”
Gleeson and Impacciatore are new to the world of the mockumentary, but a familiar face from Dunder Mifflin is returning.
It’s good to be back, says Oscar Nuñez, reprising the role of Oscar Martinez – the accountant he played for nine seasons of The Office.
“Greg Daniels and I were having lunch, and he said, ‘I’m thinking of doing this.’ I said, ‘Think away. Yes, of course I’m interested.’”
Among the awkward office-based humour are glimpses of the reality of hollowed-out operations relying on centralised wire services.
“This is tomorrow’s front page. We have an account that lets us pull stories directly off AP,” compositor Mare tells the documentary crew in episode one. She selects a headline: ‘Elizabeth Olsen Reveals Her Nighttime Skin Routine.’
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“I just drag it over to one of the empty boxes and drop it in.”
A lack of genuine local news is leading to “a measurable decrease in participation in civic life”, warns a 2023 report from the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
“Worryingly, it is the most deprived communities in the UK where local news is most likely to be limited or absent, compounding the disadvantages such areas face.”
In the states, a lot of national journalism has lost its teeth – with serious anti-democratic consequences.
“People keep saying in the States, ‘We have elections coming up, and everything will be taken care of,’” says Nuñez.
Will Donald Trump refuse to allow elections? Image: Newscom / Alamy
“My big issue is he [Donald Trump] is not going to allow elections. He’ll say, ‘We’re going to temporarily delay them because everything is in upheaval’. He’ll call the National Guard and say, ‘We’ll have them later,’ and we may never have elections again.
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“If you’re a reporter, and I say, ‘That’s a terrible question, get out of here,’ the next person has to follow up with the same question. Don’t let me off the hook. You have to stand up to bullies. You can’t appease them, because they’ll keep shoving you and saying, ‘What are you going to do about it?’”
It’s a surprisingly sobering conversation for a comedy TV show press junket. Yet there are glimmers of hope. A recent poll found that more than 80% of Brits trust news from their local media – a seven-point rise since 2018.
The Paper may be played for laughs, but it draws on a serious truth: there are still people fighting to keep local journalism alive. Gleeson sees that spirit in his character.
“[My character] sort of represents a thing that I hope for in my real life, which is that there are enough people who care about it deeply enough, and understand how important it is deeply enough, that they continue to do it, despite the fact that it can be a difficult thing to do.”
He’s quick to add that he doesn’t have all the answers. “If you’re relying on an actor in a sitcom to offer up the answer to save the world… I hate to tell you, but we might all be in a lot of trouble.”
Still, avoiding clickbait is a start. Buying your local newspaper wouldn’t hurt either.
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