Steve Carrell's sudden departure from The Office is finally revealed

Source: NBC / Getty

For years now we have wondered what exactly happened to The Office. Why did it unravel the way it did? Why did Steve Carrell leave fans high and dry without so much as an explanation as to why he wanted off Dunder-Mifflin island?

Well, it appears that we now have an answer to our pained question.

According to DailyMail, there is a new book entitled The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s which explains some of the machinations of the show and also addresses Steve’s sudden departure. The show’s boom operator and sound engineer Brian Wittle was interviewed for the book and here’s what he had to say:

‘I sat with [Carell] one time and he told me the story. He was doing a radio interview and he haphazardly mentioned, almost unconsciously, that it might be his last season.

‘He didn’t plan on saying it out loud and he hadn’t decided anything. Then what he said was the people connected to the show had no reaction to it.

‘He didn’t plan on saying it out loud and he hadn’t decided anything. Then what he said was the people connected to the show had no reaction to it.

‘When the news broke that he was considering it, the people that are in charge of keeping him there didn’t make a big effort to do so until afterward.’

For those of you screaming “hearsay!”, peep what the show’s hairstylist Kim Ferry had to say:

‘The deadline came for when they were supposed to give him an offer and it passed and they didn’t make him an offer.’

And because we know how much you all love cynicism, here is a third party to confirm what the other two said, Casting director Allison Jones:

‘As I recall, he was going to do another season and then NBC, for whatever reason, wouldn’t make a deal with him…

‘Somebody didn’t pay him enough. It was absolutely asinine. I don’t know what else to say about that. Just asinine.’

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, The Office lost their biggest star because the suits at the network were too dumb to pay that man his money.