Rainn Wilson, who plays buffoon Dwight Shrute on NBC's "The Office," could have the oddest fan base of any actor in primetime.
"I get a lot of teenage boys and guys in the mid-20s who like to come up and (yell) 'Yahoo! Dwight rules! Dwight rocks and rolls.' I also ran into ('Angels in America' playwright) Tony Kushner, and he told me he loves my work," Wilson says. "So there you go."
Dwight is the office nerd who thinks he's more cunning than he is and not nearly as bright as he wants to be. He also is a little power hungry, desperately wanting to rise above his co-workers at a modest paper-company office in Scranton, Pa.
In one episode, when a nervous Dwight was forced to address a convention of fellow paper salesmen, he turned his speech into a Mussolini-esque moment, complete with a mad grin and fists in the air.
"There are a lot of people out there like Dwight," the 40-year-old Wilson says. "His comedy comes from a lot of different places. He's in every office in America."
Before "The Office" introduced him and Dwight to a wide audience, Wilson was a character actor known mainly for his short stint on HBO's "Six Feet Under." He played asexual mortician Arthur Martin. He also had parts in indie films such as "House of 1,000 Corpses."
When he took on "The Office" he didn't expect a long stay.
"I thought we'd be one of those shows that, if we're lucky, we'd be like 'Arrested Development' and maybe go two seasons," he says. "But this is great. It looks like we are going to be on for a little while. I'm astonished."
The numbers may not be there, but the industry love is. Most critics rave over "The Office." The Academy awarded it as 2006 Outstanding Comedy at this year's Emmys.
Wilson, touted as a shoo-in for a supporting-actor nomination, was shut out. All Wilson would say of the overlook is, "the Emmys are notoriously conservative."
"The Office," while far from a top-10 smash, has opened doors for Wilson in other ways. He recently co-starred in "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" and has plans for more. Over the summer he shot "Mimzy," a sci-fi comedy.
Fans of "The Office" include many top executives in the movie industry, Wilson says. "There are a lot of doors opening for me in terms of films and comedy," he says.
Still, there's a downside to such industry attention, he says. The roles he is being offered are "very broad" comedies, essentially typecasting him.
He says his parents — "screwed up hippies," as he lovingly refers to them — are to blame.
"I grew up with the misfits in suburban Seattle," he says.
He also moved around often. His first job — coming as no surprise — was in theater and improvisational comedy in Chicago.
Wilson, though, is far from the screwed-up characters he plays. He's been married 11 years to fiction writer Holiday Reinhorn. They have a 2-year-old son, Walter.
He counts "The Office" as the cherry on top of his cake.
"All I can figure out is that if I am appealing to teenage boys and Tony Kushner," he says, "then I must be doing something right."
An hourlong episode of "The Office" repeats tonight at 8 on Ch. 5. The show is normally seen on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.