Cast members on the hit sitcom The Office were provided with fully functional computers with actual internet access to make their background acting look more authentic.

A closer look

Cast members on the hit sitcom The Office were provided with fully functional computers with actual internet access to make their background acting look more authentic. Instead of pretending to type furiously on dead plastic keyboards like standard Hollywood productions, actors like John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer were literally just browsing the web, answering personal emails, and buying stuff on Amazon while Steve Carell delivered his lines. This brilliant stroke of set design meant that whenever you saw a Dunder Mifflin employee looking utterly dead inside while staring at a spreadsheet, you were witnessing a millionaire actor genuinely zoning out on an early version of Facebook. It is deeply poetic that a show explicitly designed to satirize the mind-numbing boredom of corporate America achieved its legendary realism by actually paying its actors to slack off on company time!