Felicity Ward’s Hannah Howard follows in the fine, middle management traditions of David Brent and Michael Scott. She, too, has risen to the top of her branch for reasons not immediately apparent to anyone from outside the company or anyone under her. She, too, sees herself not just as the team captain but its most fun member. And she, too, has two first names, albeit one that would be a bloke’s.
But Ward’s Howard is also a pioneer of sorts. The Office Australia is the 16th version of the workplace comedy that started in 2001 with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s influential two-season BBC mockumentary. As the format set up branches in the US, South America, across Europe, the Middle East and India, there has never been a woman in charge.
Yes, agrees Ward via Zoom from her London home, she has broken a glass ceiling of sorts– helped by Kiwi lead director Jackie van Beek and Australian screenwriter Julie De Fina.
“Yes, but do you know, what I love is that at no point is it relevant that she’s a woman; she’s just a terrible boss. She’s just terrible. She’s incompetent … honestly, the greatest thing about this show is playing the lead that’s a woman who’s incompetent, right?
“Because so often, in, like, 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation, which are just extraordinary, wonderful sitcoms, they’re still pretty competent women. Even Marge Simpson is the one who gets the stuff done. Hannah Howard ruins everything. She cannot do her job. She can’t do other people’s jobs. It’s so joyful playing it.”
When she was pondering Hannah and what makes her the way she is, did Ward ever ask the producers and writers: How did she get the job?
“Look, I have thought about that, but did you ever ask how Michael Scott or David Brent got theirs? You don’t, you just go, ‘they’re bad’. David Brent is a terrible boss, and everyone knows a David Brent. Michael Scott is a terrible boss, and everyone knows a Michael Scott. Same with Hannah Howard. How did she get the job? How did any of them get the job? But they’re out there. That’s the sort of audacity of it.”
Ward has been a stand-up comedian and semi-permanent fixture on Australian television since the late 2000s and a regular Trans-Tasman comedy festival visitor. In the past decade, she has lived in the UK, where she’s currently on a stand-up tour just as the Amazon-backed The Office Australia arrives on Prime Video globally, except for the US.
She had seen and loved the UK original but before filming The Office Australia in Sydney she hadn’t seen the US version, which ran for nine Emmy-winning seasons, having shaken off its “remake” origins. She watched it afterwards. “It turns out Steve Carell is quite talented. He’ll go far. I think.” Judging by the preview episodes seen by the Listener, the Aussie iteration is closer in tone to the American. And, says Ward, like the American version, the hope is that The Office Australia will become its own thing.
The show still retains a mockumentary point of view – something that Ward had to play to in her performance. “Jackie just kept saying, ‘Hannah keeps looking at the camera because she wants to play to all her fans’ … it’s more nuanced than smug. It’s like private delusion.”
And there were plenty of opportunities, she says, to go off script. “We improvised loads and loads, to the point where I have no idea any more what made it in and what didn’t make it in because it’s all just one blob of comedy.”
Van Beek and husband Jesse Griffin direct the series and the cast includes Kiwi actors, including Edith Poor (as the show’s resident officious Gareth or Dwight), Jonny Brugh, Lucy Schmidt, and Josh Thomson, who is cast against type as Martin, the strait-laced man from HR.
“The dynamic between Martin and Hannah is probably my favourite because his character is the only one that can genuinely challenge my power, and the only one who doesn’t tolerate me.”
But the show is clearly designed for an Australian audience first – one episode is devoted to the alcohol-fuelled havoc Melbourne Cup day can cause to Australian businesses. Ward says that episode resonated. “I was betting on Melbourne Cups since Empire Rose in 1988. I was 8 years old, I think, when I won my first cup.”
But there’s something else even more timely about the series. It begins with Howard getting the news from head office that her branch is to shut as everyone will be working from home.
...what I love is that at no point is it relevant that she’s a woman; she’s just a terrible boss. She’s just terrible.
Fearing she’s about to lose her fiefdom, she makes everyone return to the office with a plan to prove to her bosses that her team is better managed by her in person. It certainly captures a mood of post-pandemic office life and the push back against WFH.
“The brilliant thing about the concept is that it’s post-Covid without ever referencing Covid. We all thought we would learn from Covid, because the model got broken – that model of capitalism couldn’t work. It’s amazing watching a lot of the old guard try to sticky-tape the old model back together. Like, it’s broken, mate, you’ve got to do something different. So, I love the relevance of that, and I love the modernity of that without it dating the show.”
And now that the series is about to go out into the world, Ward admits to a certain nervousness.
“Terrified, absolutely bricking it. It’s not just that it’s The Office, one of the most beloved comedy franchises of all time … the passion of Office fans is borderline unrivalled.
“Even if it wasn’t The Office, I’d be pretty nervous. It’s going to be my face around the world, everywhere.”
But Ward says she was reassured by some hardcore devotees among the cast and crew, for whom it was a dream come true to work on a remake but who were also nervous about how it might turn out.
“Within a week of filming they were like, ‘Oh my god, I love this so much.’ So, getting approval from Office fans while we were filming was wonderful.”
She’s seen the whole series. She likes it and would watch it, even if she wasn’t in it. “By the fourth episode, I found myself comfort-watching it. I didn’t feel the adrenalin of watching myself – and that’s a really good sign.”
The Office Australia is on Prime Video from October 18.
