It’s been a minute since I’ve been well and truly hyped to see a new show pop up on Netflix, but who wouldn’t be if it’s from The Office creators and boasts a truly ridiculous cast. I’m talking about Space Force, of course. The one with Steve Carell and a cast where you can point to each of their faces and think, “oh, I know you.”
Where do I even begin?
“I mean, the first thing I say is ‘Steve Carell, guys’,” actor Diana Silvers says of the show. “So of course you’re going to watch it.” And look, she’s right.
Space Force follows decorated pilot / four-star general Mark R. Naird (Carell) who dreams of running the Air Force. But he’s forced to shift gears when he finds himself tapped to lead the newly formed sixth branch of the US Armed Forces: Space Force. Skeptical but dedicated, Mark uproots his family and moves to a remote base in Colorado where he and a team of scientists and “Spacemen” are tasked by the White House with getting American boots on the moon (again) in a rush to achieve total space dominance. Hell yeah.
The series comes from co-creators Carell and Greg Daniels (The Office), and is described as a “new kind of workplace comedy, where the stakes are high and the ambitions even higher.” Howard Klein, who also worked on The Office, serves as executive producer, with Daniels as showrunner.
Silvers, who has Booksmart and Ma to her name, plays General Naird’s daughter, Erin.
“She’s a bit of an outcast in Colorado,” Silvers tells me over Zoom. In DC, where the family used to live, Silvers reckons Erin was a straight-A student, had heaps of friends, and was close to her parents. “And I think when the whole life change happened – she just kind of fell apart and she’s now navigating school life, home life, her dad’s never really around, and her mum’s not around.”
Looking at the cast alone, it’s hard not to be impressed. Along with Silvers and Carell is John Malkovich, Tawny Newsome, Ben Schwartz, Lisa Kudrow, Jimmy O. Yang, Noah Emmerich, Alex Sparrow, Don Lake, and the late and great Fred Willard.
“I just think it’s a really clever and witty comedy – intellectual comedy, you kind of have to think a little bit, which I think sets it apart from other classic slapstick comedies,” Silvers says.
So speaking of comedies, I asked Silvers on a scale of 1 to 10, “how much do you love The Office?”
“Like, 50,” she says without missing a beat. “I’m such a dork on The Office it’s embarrassing – I mean, I take pride in it so it’s not that embarrassing.”
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“I could quote something from every episode – like I’ll be watching and I’ll be talking with them,” she says. “It just reminds me of home, you know? It’s that show you put on no matter what you’re doing as background noise – that’s The Office to me.” When Silvers is cooking, she’s not listening to music. She’s listening to The Office.
So, I continue, “what is it like being an Office fanatic and starring in a Netflix show with Michael Scott?”
“I was just like this,” Silvers is pinching her arm, “every day on set. “Just like, ‘this is real, Steve Carell knows your name.’”
“I kind of had this embarrassing moment when I was on Twitter when I realised Steve Carell follows me on Twitter and I was like, ‘OH MY GOD’. And then I was like, ‘Diana, you know each other. You work together… but still, inside I’m 16 and obsessed with The Office.
“It was just… it was very strange.”
But Silvers is a professional, no doubt about it. The moment she’s on set, it’s work, work, work.
“There was this one moment during a table read when Steve finds out about [REDACTED] and he – at the table read – goes ‘NO, GOD NO’ and I was like, ‘IT’S HAPPENING’, but he didn’t play it that way in the actual show obviously. But on set, it’s just a switch I turn off and it’s like, ‘alright, I’m at work now.’”
Space Force lands on Netflix Australia on May 29 at 5.00pm, AEST.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4mY2asIjWk
