One of the most beloved characters from The Office US, Creed Bratton, is bringing his one-man show to New Zealand this week. Photo / Getty Images
One of the most beloved characters from The Office US, Creed Bratton, is bringing his one-man show to New Zealand this week, promising a night of laughs, music and outrageous stories.
But the role that gave him prominence on our shores very nearly never came to pass, he’s revealed.
Bratton played a semi-autobiographical version of himself on The Office, though it was the fictional flourishes – quips about a mysterious past life that involved homelessness, cult membership and criminal dealings – that turned him into a fan favourite.
In an interview with Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan that aired on Sunday night, Bratton explained that he “slipped on [the show] by the skin of my teeth” and clawed his way from extra to fulltime speaking cast member across the course of several seasons.
“I had met a director on The Bernie Mac Show called Ken Kwapis and found out he was going to do the American version of The Office,” he said.
“I had seen the Ricky Gervais-Stephen Merchant show [The Office UK] which I, like everyone else, thought was brilliant. Right away I went ‘oh my God, I would love to be on that.’
The Bernie Mac Show was starting to phase out at that time, and Kwapis told Bratton that while the cast for The Office US had already been locked in, he would try to work him in if he could.
“I went there and after about three weeks I realised that there’s a bunch of really talented people and I better get my game going,” Bratton told Real Life.
“So I wrote about an hour’s worth of material, ad-libbed a bunch of stuff, shot it in a suit in front of a window – just like the talking heads thing on the show – and gave it to [The Office US screenwriter] Greg Daniels.
“I didn’t tell my kids, didn’t tell anybody that I was doing this, just did it. And you’re not supposed to do this; you’re not supposed to go in and run around casting. You’re supposed to go through the casting procedure – there’s a protocol for all this.
“I avoided all that somewhat, like my character, and they liked what they saw. They gave me the shot for the Halloween episode. I had a six-and-a-half-page scene with Steve Carell and as they say, the rest is history.”
Bratton told Cowan that a contributing factor to him getting on The Office may have been a chance encounter with The Office creator Gervais at a restaurant in London in the early 2000s, in which he accidentally prevented a man attacking Gervais’ dog.
“I was at this lovely restaurant with friends and it was going really well. All of a sudden, this little dog started [yapping]. I’d had a couple of drinks and it was just going into my head and hurting so bad,” he said.
“I looked over and I saw this other guy going through the same thing. He got up, started walking toward the dog, and I jumped up, and just before I get to that dog I start to put up my hand and I’m going to tell him ‘hold it right there, buddy, let me kick that dog’.
“[But] when Ricky Gervais sees me put up my hand, he stands up. He’s in the restaurant – go figure. He says ‘brave American, my God, you saved this little dog’.”
Bratton says he used the misunderstanding to his advantage when The Office US were considering making him a regular on the show.
“They were vacillating and I didn’t want that, I wanted to be on the show. So I called my manager and I said, ‘call Ricky Gervais’ manager and tell them it’s Creed Bratton, the guy that saved the dog – Ricky will remember.’
“And he went, ‘oh my God, you did that?’ So they said ‘Okay, well then Ricky says he’s got to be on the show’.”
Now 82, Bratton is still working. He has taken his one-man show all over the world, though the long-distance travel is taking its toll.
“No one enjoys that,” he told Cowan. “That’s not what I enjoy. I enjoy getting on stage, performing for the people that know my music and still being able to sing well and play.
“I’ve got good DNA. My mother was very youthful, into her 80s [and] I do a lot of things to stay healthy.”
Bratton is performing at Auckland’s SkyCity Theatre at 8pm on Wednesday night. Tickets are available from Ticketek.
Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.