From the sensational and spoilery to the plain old interesting and intriguing.

Greg Daniels’s and Rainn Wilson’s conference call with the media yesterday has ignited the interwebs with Office buzz. I gave you all the juiciest bits this morning, but I wasn’t going to leave all the quality, non-spoilers on the cutting room floor.

That’s not to say this post is guaranteed spoiler-free, but it is a bit less toxic for the spoiler-averse. Again, the topics jump around quite a bit.

What’s more, these two don’t stay serious for long.

On the secret to a successful sit-com, Daniels said, “I think it’s a lot about trying to be original and trying to be funny and not being scared of also having some emotion in it or being real and taking the characters seriously—and developing a hit that was a hit in another country already.”

The British version was similar script-wise, he said, but the production was bleak to match the satire they were creating. The American version was meant to be more character-driven and a lot longer than 12 episodes.

Still, he admitted it took until the second season to get the tone down right where the audience could feel for the characters.

You get the sense that, like a lot of fans, Daniels is down on the first season. I don’t know why he should be since I find that, after the pilot, it’s indistinguishable from the top quality of season two.

Wilson said the writers strike gave him more time with his 3-year-old son, Walter. He also traveled to Israel, did some writing and worked on his backhand.

“It has been a huge love fest,” he said of the vibe on set since the cast and crew returned to work. “It’s kind of crazy. It doesn’t make for great print journalism, but I will say that everyone is like our other family, and it’s like our other family got together like at a big family reunion, and it’s been really, really fun. And we’ve had a blast these first two weeks. It’s great to see everyone again. Batteries were definitely recharged.”

Wilson said his son will often recognize him on the TV screen but usually goes right back to what he was doing.

“It’s pretty normal for him,” Wilson said. “There’s also a Dwight bobble head up on the shelf, which he used to really be into, but now he couldn’t care less about it.”

He joked that he and his wife role play in the bedroom with him playing Dwight and his wife playing any other character on the show. Asked if she might ever want to write an Office episode, Wilson said she had a 400-page spec script for Daniels, all in prose.

Asked about keeping the show on track despite the fact that there are now several breakout characters, Daniels said it was all part of trying to keep people off balance.

“Obviously Dwight is super funny and people love Dwight and they buy Dwight dolls and stuff like that. But if it just became the Dwight Show…” he said.

”…there would be nothing wrong with that,” Wilson chimed in.

Once upon a time, Wilson revealed, he was an office’s Pam, working as a receptionist for an advertising agency in New York.

“I guess I was most like a Jim because my heart really wasn’t into it,” he said. “I was also very capable, which is a lot like Jim too. I think Jim is very capable. But I don’t think they missed me.”

Wilson admitted the cast and crew gets a little batty after eight hours under the fluorescent lights on set. When things get a little stir crazy, they do Brian Baumgartner imitations or get Ed Helms to do his Tom Brokaw impression.

Wilson’s impression of this impression is good, but his Greg Daniels is uncanny. Is uncanny the right word?

Looking back on The Office Convention last October, Daniels said it was fun and impressive how many fans came, many from far away. He was also impressed by the beauty of Scranton and the surround environs.

“There’s a lot of weird kind of Scranton-specific things that we saw that I’m sure will come into different episodes,” he said. “So I think it was very good for the creativity here.”

Asked what character he likes most to write for, Daniels said Dwight’s talking head interviews are a favorite. He personally subscribes to survival guides for fodder and tunes in to Discovery Channel specials like the 10 Biggest Threats to the World. It all filters into Dwight’s brain eventually.

Wilson said he thinks the writers as a whole are gonzo for Creed.

“I think the writers would like to write for Creed a lot more,” he said. “My sense is that Creed works best in some little doses here and there, but I think the writers really get off on how crazy that man’s brain is.”

About his upcoming movie, The Rocker, Wilson explained that he plays a former heavy metal drummer from an up and coming band who gets kicked out when they are on the verge of success. Twenty years later, his life having gone nowhere, he gets a second shot at fame with his nephew’s garage band.

If there’s such a thing as a sweet family rock and roll comedy, this is it, he said.

“I wear a nice heavy metal wig, and I reveal a lot of my butt crack and my torso, and we rock out,” Wilson said. “And I actually learned to play the drums for the movie.”

He said he was more of a punk fan growing up, but he heard a lot of Ratt, Cinderella and Whitesnake along the way. But as part of his lessons on set, he was taught how to look and play like a metal drummer. He also went to see Rush, who aren’t really a metal band but by have his reckoning is the best drummer of all time in Neal Peart.

The interview turned completely conversational as it progressed, and Wilson at one point recalled a particular man who once visited the set.

“It was like Michael Scott came in to watch Michael Scott being filmed,” he said. “And he was giving Steve notes, he was giving Steve acting notes. He was giving Steve Carell acting notes, this guy who was like an investment banker who works in an office. He was like ‘Hey, really great to meet ya. Hey I really liked the take when you blah blah blah blah. That was funnier than the other take.’ And it was like, that’s a normal guy who works in an office.”

According to Daniels, John Krasinski had a similar experience when he went to Scranton to shoot some video and get a feel for the city prior to the start of shooting on season one. He met a salesman at a Scranton paper company who started doing politically incorrect impressions for Krasinski’s video.

Daniels said he feels more intense competition from the Girls Gone Wild series than from CBS’s successful Monday night comedy lineup. More seriously, he and Wilson agreed that the more successful comedies that there are on the air the better for comedy writers.

And finally, while I promised this post would be mostly spoiler-free, there is one small reveal about the final run of episodes. I’ll let Greg and Rainn explain.

“We’re going to play with time a lot, I think, like Lost,” Daniels offered. “Get suddenly weirdly sci-fi.”

“There’ll be a hatch under Dwight’s desk,” Wilson added.