Jokes from the American version of The Office have permeated pop culture in countless ways, but in the case of musician Billie Eilish, some of these jokes can be interpreted as being facts. More specifically, in the Season 4 episode “Goodbye Toby Part 1,” Steve Carell’s Michael Scott wants to impress his new coworker Holly (Amy Ryan) by putting together a music mix for her, asking if U2 is the band from Scranton, Pennsylvania that made it big, causing John Krasinski’s Jim to deadpan “yes.” Eilish recalled that she watched the show at such a young age that she took this as fact as opposed to being a joke.
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“There’s so many things that are said, especially by Michael, in The Office that he says wrong on purpose, were written on purpose that, I didn’t even know the real word. So I said many words wrong because I learned them from Michael Scott,” Eilish recalled on the Office Ladies podcast. “This last June, we were in Ireland … I’m in my hotel and I get flowers delivered to my room and it has a little letter on it and it’s this really, really sweet letter and it says, ‘From Bono.’ And I was like, ‘Why would Bono, who’s from Scranton…’”
The hosts of the podcast, former The Office stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, expressed their disbelief at the confusion, with even Eilish herself explaining her own shock at having believed the gag for so long.
“I go, ‘Why would he send me something in Ireland? What does this have to do with him?’ And it was like, ‘Welcome to my hometown,’ or something like that. But U2 is from Scranton,” the musician recalled. “I kept asking everyone like, ‘What is Bono doing sending me flowers all the way across the world? Why would he do that?’ They were like, ‘Billie, what are you talking about? They’re Irish.’ I was like ‘No they’re not.’”
She added, “There’s no pause, there’s no laugh … Honestly, in my head, I thought Jim thought, ‘Oh, that’s a stupid question,’ because obviously, they’re the band that made it big from Scranton … I thought that was the vibe, instead of, ‘No, not at all.’ Their whole thing is that they’re Irish. This was in June!”
While this certainly isn’t the first time a joke from The Office has been misinterpreted, it’s surely one of the more hilarious examples.
What do you think of the musician’s remarks? Let us know in the comments!
