Pity the cast of The Office. It's hard enough to keep a straight face for the cameras as Steve Carell dweebs around the NBC sitcom as Michael Scott, the paper company boss a couple staples short of a full stapler. And sometimes Carell can't resist goading them to lose it in the middle of a take. "I find it reeeeeally fun to try and make John Krasinksi laugh," Carell says of Jim Halpert's alter ego, phoning in during a break from filming season four at a studio in Van Nuys. "He tries so desperately to hold on, and when I see him going, it's like an animal smelling blood. I have to try to finish him off." Carell's trick is simple: "Usually I pretend to cry, or vomit. And if I can do both simultaneously, then so much the better."

What Carell can do simultaneously—and this is what sets him apart from comics-turned-caricatures like Adam Sandler, Vince Vaughn, or Jim Carrey—is make you laugh, cringe, cry, and just want to jump out of the window from exquisite discomfort. And not only as Dunder Mifflin's ignoramus-in-chief, which won him a Golden Globe and two Emmy nominations, but also in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Little Miss Sunshine, and the sidekick cameos along the way. Carell is both agog and grateful for his gangbusting success and, to hear him tell it, The Office has been comic relief not only to a nation of fidgety cubicle monkeys but also to Carell himself. Just imagine being able to indulge your worst self on a daily basis! "To be given license to be completely inappropriate and get away with it is cathartic," says Carell. "It's something that few people experience. I get all of that behavior out of my system so I can go about my life and not let it bleed into personal relationships. If we all had that outlet, we'd probably be much healthier." And how does he self-lobotomize again and again throughout the day? "There really is no going into character," he says, not missing a beat. "It's who I am. Honestly, I don't even understand your question."

This is how conversation with the 45-year-old Carell tends to proceed: Ask too earnest a question and he'll gently joke his way around it—and without veering into smartass territory. What's it like to work with his wife, Nancy Walls, aka Michael's real estate agent, Carol? "It is a beautiful symphony." Does he ever get accosted on the street? "It's like when I was on The Daily Show: The only people who recognized any of us were people who worked at Starbucks." Carell is more straight-faced, though, about The Office, which long ago eclipsed its British forebear and somehow manages to get even better with age. Office 4.0 is an ambitious slate of 20 new episodes, including a few that Carell will write and a few more, he hopes, that he'll direct. "I was a little worried that after 53 episodes, or whatever, there would be some sort of writers' block, but it's just the opposite," he says, promising more intramural heavy petting this time around. "Jim and Pam continue on as they had begun last season. But in terms of some of the other relationships—it was surprising to me—there are some immediate roman-tic twists."