Is your name a family name or just a random name your parents really liked?
It comes from my hippie parents who were living in Seattle in the late 1960s. Rainn Dietrich Wilson. My dad wanted to name me Rainer, after Rainer Maria Rilke the poet. But they thought it was too similar to Mt. Rainier so they just converted it to Rainn.

Did you take a lot of heat as a kid for having an unusual name?
Oh yeah, definitely.

Is it a joyful reunion to get back on the set after the summer break or are you like “Oh no, it’s these people again”?
It’s a little bit of both. But I’ll tell you something, I have never in my life witnessed a group of people that get along better and love each other more than the cast of The Office. I know that makes really boring copy. Everyone wants their Isaiah Washington story, but we really just have a blast together.

You’re right. It isn’t what people want to hear. They want the juicy gossip like Phyllis Smith is a diva and that Ed Helms is a whiner that nobody gets along with.
Yeah, like Steve [Carell] and Jenna [Fischer] aren’t talking to each other. But no such luck.

Speaking of Steve Carell, it seems like every summer he just adds another huge film to his resume. Is he just becoming a huge ego to work with at this point or is he still as down-to-earth as he ever was?
I’m not even going to make the obligatory Steve-is-a-big-a****** joke. He really is the sweetest, most considerate guy you’d ever want to work with. The thing about Steve is that he wants everyone to be funny. He wants everyone around him as funny as possible. He never steals anyone’s thunder and that’s how confident he is in his abilities to make people laugh because he’s always going to be the funniest one.

So is he the Michael Jordan of the cast, elevating everyone’s comedy game?
Yeah, and I’m a Pippen to his Jordan.

This is your second Emmy nomination, but you’ve never won before. So how are you feeling this year? Do you think this is going to be the year of Rainn?
I was very nervous last year. It was my first time being nominated for anything major in my life. I was kind of worried about it. Then when they said, “Coming up next, Supporting Actor in a Comedy after this commercial break,” I felt like my heart was literally going to explode into my throat and that they were going to have to cart me out of the Shrine Auditorium. But this year it’s like you know what, I don’t know what the voters decide. There are a lot of talented actors nominated and you just never know. It’s totally out of my control. So hopefully I just don’t embarrass myself in the speech. But maybe I’ll jot down a few ideas in my pocket and then we’ll see how the cards fall.

When you’re at these big awards gatherings, do other famous actors or directors come up to you and gush about how awesome you are in The Office?
The place where that happens is at the Golden Globes because the Golden Globes is the oddest assemblage of people you’d ever want. You’ve got Martin Scorsese next to Kiefer Sutherland next to T.R. Knight next to Forest Whitaker. So it’s the craziest mish-mash of film and TV folk. One of my favorite actors of all time is Chris Cooper and he is someone that I ran into at some party at the Golden Globes and he was very complimentary and that really meant a lot coming from an actor of that caliber.

Do you remember what he said at all?
He was very low key. He said, “Rainn you are the greatest actor of this and any other generation. If I was a woman I would want to bear your children.” But if it wasn’t that he might have said, “Hey man, I like your work. I think it’s really funny.”

So he didn’t say, “You’re amazing. What’s your address; I’ll mail you my Oscar?”
Yeah, he said, “I’ll loan it to you so that you can see what if feels like.”

This is the Emmy awards 60th anniversary and I’m told the ceremony will be remembering some of the great TV icons of the past. I’m curious who some of your favorite TV people are, either past or present?
I liked that actor Bill Daily from The Bob Newhart Show. That’s one of my absolute favorites. He made me cry as a kid because he was so damn funny. I don’t know if he’s absolutely an icon. But I loved the early Superman with George Reeves. What else? There’s so many. I loved M.A.S.H. I think I saw every episode of M.A.S.H.

Have you ever met any of these people, who are still alive, that you liked growing up?
We were introduced at the TV Land awards by Ed Asner and Captain Kirk. So Lou Grant and Captain Kirk introduced us and I shook their hands. So those were definitely two idols. I love Mary Tyler Moore and Star Trek was my life when I was seven years old. 

You’ve heading into your fifth season of playing Dwight. Over the years, have you added little accessories or nuances to the character or even changed him in subtle ways?
I really created Dwight from season one and as far as I can tell, my beeper, my watch, my phone, my wardrobe are all the same. The only thing that’s different is that I would say Dwight is maybe a little more confident than he was. That also makes sense from the story because he’s gone through so much and he’s more secure in his place there in the office after four seasons of being Michael’s right-hand man. I think having a relationship has made him more sexually confident. But I also think the wonderful thing we’ve come to learn about Dwight is his whole farmer side of him. I think of it much more as a farmer dressed in city-folk’s clothes than I ever did in the first few seasons.

On the show Dwight is the target of many pranks from his co-workers. When the cameras aren’t rolling do you like to pull practical jokes on the set?
My favorite thing to do is to steal a walkie-talkie and call crew members to various locations on the set. I’ll grab the walkie-talkie and I’ll be like “Hey head camera, meet me at craft service.” And then you’ll see head camera walk to craft service. So you just get them to do stuff like that. That’s always a treat and it never gets tired.

Do they ever exact their revenge on you?
They can’t really, that’s the great thing because I would totally get them fired in a heartbeat. The other thing we’ve been enjoying for about six months is doing Kevin impersonations and that is really fun. [In voice resembling the character of Kevin] “But Michael, Oscar said that he didn’t want to go to accounting.” I do kind of Kevin as Scooby Doo. Everyone kind of has their version of Kevin that they do.

Do you do these impressions while Brian Baumgartner [who plays Kevin] is in the room?
Yeah, and it drives him crazy. It absolutely drives him bonkers.

So last season ended with Dwight and Angela, his former flame who is now engaged to Andy, getting frisky in the office while no one was around. What’s going on there, are they back together? What’s the fall out going to be?
Well the situation has been painted. She’s engaged and she’s seeing Dwight on the sly. But I can guarantee you that the poop is going to hit the fan.

Does that mean Dwight and Andy are going to rumble?
Probably, it’s going to be like the Sharks and the Jets.

So besides fighting Andy, what else is in store for Dwight this season?
I’m trying to think about what I can talk about. They really don’t want us to talk about anything. [Pauses] I don’t know man. But I don’t even know what goes on this season; let me put it that way. I have no idea what happens three episodes or 12 episodes from now and I don’t ask. They keep writing me this great stuff and I just show up. So it’s not like I have this great wealth of information like “Oh, Dwight is going to open a florist shop.”

Switching topics for second, this story has been everywhere that you have a role as a college professor in next summer’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Can you elaborate?
There’s really not much to say. It’s hysterical that this swept the Internet and became this huge news item. I did a one-day cameo as a professor and it really wasn’t much of a role at all. But I think people just got so excited by the idea of Dwight and Michael Bay working together.

Well finally, I read an interview where you said you basically lived in poverty for the first 10 years of your acting career while you were a struggling actor. Now that you have become successful what kinds of things do you splurge on?
That’s a very funny question because I just had this happen yesterday. I went into a sunglass shop in the mall, I’m always losing my sunglasses, and I saw this nice pair of sunglasses and I was wearing them and I liked them OK. They were like 100 bucks. Then the sales clerk said, “If you like those, you’re going to love these,” and then brought over these Armani sunglasses that were like 200 bucks. I was like “Ugh, 200 bucks. I can’t spend 200 bucks on sunglasses, that’s absurd.” So I bought the $100 sunglasses and I was walking around the mall and then about 10 or 15 minutes later I was like “Wait a minute. I’m a rich TV star. I should be able to buy the $200 sunglasses if I like them better.” So I trudged back to the sunglass shop and upgraded to the $200 Armani sunglasses and hopefully I just don’t lose them because they’re awesome.

(photo by Chris Haston/NBC)