‘Breaking Bad’ star David Costabile reflects on his ‘Office’ cameo

It’s no secret that The Office had a stacked main cast, but over the years the show welcomed its fair share of big names to the set for cameos as well.

We’ve chatted about about cameos from Amy Adams and Robert Pine (Chris Pine’s dad), but on the latest episode of Stitcher’s Office Ladies podcast, former co-stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey rewatched the Season 6 episode “The Banker,” which features another familiar face: David Costabile.

You likely know the actor, who’s been in everything from The Wire to Suits to Billions, as chemist/meth cook Gale Boetticher on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Costabile also played the titular banker named Eric Ward in “The Banker” episode of The Office, so he reflected on his role for the podcast.

How did David Costabile get cast on The Office?

“The story with me in The Office is that I had known Rainn Wilson since college and we became lifelong friends,” Costabile explained. “We had created this play called The New Bozena. And that’s actually what brought us out to Los Angeles. We had been doing it in New York, and we had done it off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theater. And then we came to Los Angeles to do the show and to also see if we could sell it and make it into a TV show or movie or something, which we ended up doing — selling it, but not making it. And around that time we were out there, Rainn — and in fact, all of us — got auditions to go in for the pilot of The Office. Which we did. So it was incredibly fun.”

Costabile shared that he auditioned for the pilot of The Office, but it was clear that Rainn was born to play Dwight. “Then throughout the years, I would go in and audition for a bunch of things, and Allison Jones [casting director for The Office] always looked out for me, and it was very exciting to be able to to think that I could get on that show. And I really, really, really wanted to,” Costabile said. “Rainn was always… every season he would ask Allison. He would be like, ‘Can you put him on? Can you put him on?’ And so they finally got me on the show.”

A dynamic duo: Costabile and Lieberstein

The episode features a number of standout scenes, especially considering it was a clips episode full of old callbacks, but Fischer and Kinsey gave a special shoutout to the moments when Eric the banker and Toby shared the screen.

“I like that Toby is working so hard to defend the company. And when I was trading messages with David, I asked him if there was anything he remembered in particular about shooting this episode, and he mentioned these scenes between him and Paul [Lieberstein],” Fischer said.

“One of the things that I remember so strongly was I had a scene with Paul, and I wanted so badly to see if I could be drier and even more understated than Paul and sadly, I couldn’t do it,” Costabile said. “And I tried my hardest to do it, and I really, really wanted to because I love Paul’s acting, and I thought he was hilarious in the show and I wanted to see if I could actually go underneath where he was. And as I did it, I realized like, ‘Oh no. He has so many other levels that he could even ratchet back.’ And he did. He smoked me out, clearly, as we were doing the scene, because then as I was trying to get below him, he would just get lower and lower and smaller and smaller. And it was an incredibly fun game to try to play as we were shooting the scene.”

“It was like these two guys trying to out-bore each other,” Kinsey mused. “I thought it was so great. Their energy and tone was so perfect. I would like to see more of them.”