-Our next guest is a "New York Times" best-selling
author and actor you know from "The Office."
His new show, "The Premise,"
is streaming now exclusively on FX on Hulu.
Let's take a look.
-I know you want to make a difference,
and maybe this isn't how you imagined it,
but this is your chance to be a hero.
This is your chance to make a difference,
a big difference, in a man's life.
Ethan...
this is your shot.
-And, Ethan, you are not throwing away your shot.
-Please welcome back to the show B.J. Novak.
♪♪
-Hey.
-Hi, buddy. -How are you?
-Thanks for being here. Great to see you, too.
Have to wave? -[ Laughs ]
-Hi, everybody. Hello. It's great to see you.
-I asked Nathan this question.
And I know you did some early stand-up days.
You probably played in some pretty bad rooms,
as well as far as audiences.
-I have definitely gotten the kind of silence
that you get in a room like this.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-Where did you first do stand-up in New York?
-The first -- Well, the first show I ever did was in L.A.
It was the Hollywood Youth Hostel.
-Okay.
-It was October 10, 2001,
so it wasn't a funny time.
-Right.
-And there weren't a lot of English speakers in the crowd.
-Gotcha. -And the guy before me killed.
He did an impression of Robert De Niro taking a dump.
-Oh, wow.
-Which transcends language barriers.
And I should have taken that cue.
And my very dry, ironic one-liners
about the tragedy that had just happened did not -- did not
play as I hoped.
And the emcee said sort of the most crushing thing
to hear after your set.
He said, "Takes a lot of courage to get up here."
Yeah.
So, yeah, sometimes, the compliments are more --
-More cutting than, yeah, the zingers.
Your face is the poster for your new show.
-Which is also kind of your face.
-It is. -Yeah.
-And I'm not going to show a picture...
-Thank you.
-...of your show, but I'm pretty certain we almost have
the exact same pose that I had when I first did this show.
Like, I think, like, just some version --
-Where's -- which camera do I -- -Yeah, they're right there.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-Yeah, it's a very obnoxious look,
but it's the only way, I guess,
to convey, "This is kind of a comedy."
-Yep.
-Because just me like that, you know, it's dramatic,
and...is kind of not it.
But it's not -- Yeah, I don't love it.
-It's -- Did you -- Were you worried and have you seen yet --
Being in the city, has it been defaced yet?
-I'm dying for it be defaced. -Yeah.
-I have not -- That's when you know you've made it,
when your billboard is defaced.
And I look forward to it being defaced,
but it's just -- It's been left alone.
-Oh, that's -- Yeah.
-But my plan is to, someday, star in something
that is just really an experiment to be defaced.
I have this vision of making a movie called
"The Invisible Trumpet," and the poster is me just like this.
-Like, can they resist?
-Yeah, no, it would really be --
I really envision it as an art contest.
-Yeah. -You know what I mean?
You would see what people came up with.
-I wonder if, for a certain level of graffiti artists,
they might think, "Too easy.
I'm not gonna even do this."
-I mean, yeah, it's sort of "The New Yorker" caption contest
for, you know, the defacer community.
Right, 'cause what would they draw?
Maybe someone would break -- break your heart with
what's in my mouth.
-With some beautiful piece of art.
-Yeah, or make a statement.
-So, this is an anthology series -- five episodes.
-Yep. -It's great.
What I love about it is that they are like short films.
And I think --
-Well, I would say that they're like short movies,
because short films suck.
-That's a really -- I like what you're doing here.
I am fully on board with this.
-I think short films -- and I'm sure there are some
beautiful ones out there -- but short films
tend to be elegant meditations on loss or something like that,
whereas a short movie -- Movies are too long,
in my opinion.
Every movie is too long.
They're like 2 hours and 15 minutes,
and when you check your phone,
it's really like six hours in a given evening to watch a movie.
And a TV show -- you think of a TV show as shorter,
but it's even longer, because you're like 400 episodes behind
everyone if you start the show.
So, to me, a short movie is really like,
what if you had, like, a story that had
some comedy and some drama and was about something interesting
and good actors and you just made it in half an hour?
And you could watch an intense little movie,
and then the next one.
So that's why I wanted to do this show.
-I will say, with all sincerity,
I watched an episode -- because it was recommended to me.
One of the episodes is called "Butt Plug."
-Yeah.
-And it is incredibly dramatic...
-Yep. -...and also very funny.
But I -- One of the things I noted is that
when it was over, I could not remember the last time
I had sort of, like, uninterrupted,
watched half an hour without being distracted,
because it did have, like, the arc of a film...
-Yeah.
-...which was really cool --
and the stakes of a film -- and, yet, at the same time,
I did not feel like a huge chunk had been out of my day.
-That's exactly what I'm going for.
And I do love shows like "Black Mirror"
and "The Twilight Zone," but I hadn't --
Those aren't my voice.
My voice is this very particular brand of comedy
that you find funny or you don't.
Or you find dramatic or you don't.
But it's -- You know, the whole goal is,
what are these intense movies that, like,
aren't weighed down with some,
you know, subplot that kind of bloats it into 90 minutes?
I like movies, too, but too long.
-I mean, they're definitely not going to --
I think the movie community is not going to think
this was a glowing review by either of us.
-No. Or the short-film community.
-Right. Now they're going to come after us hard.
-Yeah, forget Sundance for me now.
-You have a great cast.
We saw Ben Platt, Tracee Ellis Ross.
But a really cool thing -- you got to work with Ed Asner
on maybe his last project
that we're going to get to see him in.
-Not my fault.
He was really wonderful and inspiring to work with.
He was, you know, 90 years old.
And he would rest between takes, which we asked a lot of him.
It was quite a role, but he wanted to do it.
But he would wake up -- And, you know,
his assistant would gently say, "It's time" and wake him up.
And we'd feel bad bringing him back to set,
but once he started, he would not stop.
He would do improv after improv and take after take.
And it just shows you that someone of that level
doing it that long, you just have to love it.
It's only love that can make you do that.
-It's a really cool thing.
Finally, "The Office,"
maybe more popular now than it's ever been.
-I know. Wow.
-You Instagrammed this the other day and said --
What was your phrasing?
"If you know..."
-Yeah, that sentence, IYKYK -- "If you know, you know."
I always have to, like, sound it out in my head.
-This was a drink that someone sent over to you.
-Yes, this is, I think, a 7 and 7
with seven maraschino cherries and sugar on the rim --
blend it, if you can --
which was what my character ordered for
Mindy Kaling's character on an "Office" episode
that I forgot long ago, because it was like 15 years ago,
but it's fresh in many people's minds.
And this was just last night.
-That is a very cool thing,
the long tale of love for that show.
-Yeah, but the drink I don't recommend.
-New episodes of "The Premise"
are available Thursdays exclusively on FX on Hulu.