Pictured left to right, Chelsea Frei, Melvin Gregg and Ramona Young at the Top of the Rock in New York on Wednesday, September 24, 2025. Credit: Ralph Bavaro. Courtesy: Peacock
Season one of “The Paper” — which premiered on streaming service Peacock earlier this month — has been generally well received, scoring a 7.1/10 on IMDb within its first few weeks of being released.
Just one day before the show’s release, it was announced that “The Paper” had already been renewed for a second season.
The “mockumentary” style show, which takes place in the same universe as the critically acclaimed “The Office,” earned “strong early buzz,” which led to NBCUniversal’s decision to renew the show ahead of its release, according to a Sep. 3 Variety article.
The Lantern was able to interview actors from “The Paper” following the show’s release as part of a virtual roundtable with other university student newspapers. The actors — who all play reporters on the show — discussed everything from preparation for their roles to how working on the show has shaped their view of journalism.
As a spinoff of “The Office” and with news outlets finding similarities and differences between the shows to compare, the actors of “The Paper” are adamant that their show is its own unique project.
“Personally, I didn’t look at it as if we have to forge something completely new,” Melvin Gregg, who plays Detrick Moore on “The Paper,” said. “The show is new. So I just approached it like it was any other show … I didn’t look at it like, ‘Oh, we have to make the new ‘[The] Office,’ and I don’t want people to think it’s a new ‘[The] Office.’ It comes from the same mind, but [it’s a] different show.”
Chelsea Frei, who plays Mare Pritti on the show, said although the show is its own creation, there was pressure at times knowing that “The Paper” was following a successful show like “The Office.”
“I am the biggest ‘[The] Office’ fan ever, so I was very nervous, and it did kind of overwhelm me for a little bit,” Frei said. “I used to watch ‘The Office,’ like, every night before I went to bed and I stopped the minute I got the part because I was like, ‘I cannot be watching this and then going into work, it’s just gonna freak me out and feel too daunting.’ So, I think it’s a healthy mixture of remembering the legacy that we get to be a part of and also doing our own thing.”
With “The Paper” proceeding “The Office,” actor and comedian Oscar Nuñez returned to his role as accountant Oscar Martínez.
The concept is that the documentary crew who filmed the happenings at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company found out that Oscar is now working at the Toledo Truth Teller, and decided to capture the happenings there, per prior Lantern reporting.
Frei said that having Nuñez’s experience on set of “The Paper” helped many of the actors take on the act of “fake working” in an office setting.
“I think we also got to learn from the best, which is Oscar,” Frei said. “He has perfected fake working for over 20 years. So he was very good at teaching us — it’s honestly its own skill, because it can get boring, so you end up really having to busy yourself. If you watch [Nuñez] throughout, it’s like a masterclass of just fake working.”
Ramona Young, who plays Nicole Lee on “The Paper,” said fake working is something you had to get good at, since you never know when the camera is on you when filming a “mockumentary” style show.
“Our show is really unique,” Lee said. “Normally — when you go on set — you have to set up half the set, and then take down half the set, and then move the cameras on opposite sides to get both characters. But in the world of ‘The Paper,’ there was, like, a full set. You would feel like you’re walking into a real room and cameras would just move around, and you would never know when the camera was on you. So you would kind of have to be in that world the entire time.”
When it came to preparing to play someone from the midwest, Gregg said getting real-life input from TikTok was a huge help.
“I went to TikTok and I typed in Toledo, Ohio, and I looked at the people from Toledo,” Gregg said. “I took what I could from them and just, like, the energy of the space. And, yeah, that was my trip to Toledo through TikTok.”
Similarly, Young said she used the internet to help her prepare, but also utilized Toledo’s local newspaper to find out more about the city.
“I used a lot of social media,” Young said. “I looked up top 10 restaurants to go to, top 10 neighborhoods to avoid. I also subscribed to The Blade — [I] love The Blade.”
Frei said the show’s stars were able to gain insight into local journalism — and its importance — by meeting with reporters at a small newspaper in Los Angeles.
“We got the chance to meet some reporters at the Palisadian Post, which is the Pacific Palisades’ paper,” Frei said. “They couldn’t have been lovelier and it was important to talk to people at the local journalism level and just realize how hard their job is, how it’s kind of this uphill battle and also how it’s honestly becoming increasingly more important.”
Young said the experience of preparing to and then playing a journalist at a small newspaper gave her a new perspective on the importance of physical newspapers.
“I think there’s something about physicalness or being in person that creates a relationship — or a dynamic — that allows journalism to enter a depth that you might not necessarily see with just digital or social media,” Young said. “There’s something about the quality and the relationship of having something physical or person to person.”
All 10 episodes of season one of “The Paper” can be streamed on Peacock. Season two of the show is already being worked on by creators Greg Daniels and Michael Koman, with the intention to release the second season around this time next year, according to a Sep. 3 Variety article.
