Greg Daniels Reveals 'The Office' Writers Considered Making Michael Scott a Murderer

Most people will know Greg Daniels best for being the showrunner of The Office, a job which earned him two out of his four Emmy Award wins. As reported by Screen Rant, the acclaimed creator dished in a recent interview with The Guardian on why the American version of the much-loved show almost wasn't made, along with the proposed life-changing event for Michael Scott that forced him to put his foot down.

"The UK version hadn’t finished airing and I’d never heard of it. My agent sent me a VHS tape of season one. It had a somewhat boring title so I didn’t look at it. He told me he wanted to show it to someone else if I wasn’t interested, so I popped it in. I watched the entire first series that evening," Daniels admitted. However, once the show really got going after Steve Carell's role in The 40-Year-Old Virgin made him a household name, Daniels explained that sometimes ideas in the writers room got too wacky for their own good. He recalled one particular instance, saying:

“There were times where [the writers] would become enamored with a joke, and I'd have to put my foot down. For instance, they really wanted Michael to kill Meredith with his car. That was an early pitch, where he runs her over in the parking lot and then comes back, gets a tire iron and finishes the job. I was like "You can’t do that, that’s crazy!"”

Michael being a murderer definitely would have changed the tone of the show, so it makes sense that it never happened. Imagine the courtroom scenes we would have had to endure! The Scranton Strangler storyline would've definitely paled in comparison.