Green Day’s lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, is just like us. He loves The Office.
On the latest episode of Stitcher’s Office Ladies podcast, former co-stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey chatted all about the Season 6 episode, “Secret Santa,” which features the popular Green Day song, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” Since Fischer is close personal friends with Armstrong, she reached out to him to chat about the episode. On the podcast he read the “Secret Santa” episode summary for Office Ladies listeners, and later shared how he felt watching Dwight and Andy sing Green Day karaoke.
“Hello, Office Ladies listeners. This is Billie Joe Armstrong. Here’s your summary for ‘Secret Santa,'” he began. “It’s Christmas time at Dunder Mifflin. Jim and Dwight are in charge of this year’s Christmas party, and they’re doing a pretty good job. Jim tells Phyllis she can play Santa, something she’s wanted to do for years. This naturally causes Michael to spiral. Meanwhile, Oscar has a crush on a new warehouse worker, and Pam plays matchmaker. Andy has Erin in the Secret Santa gift exchange, but so far it’s not going well. She’s mostly just been attacked by birds. There is some potentially devastating news from corporate hanging over everyone’s heads, but in the end, it’s a great party with karaoke, a marching band, and even a little snow.”
Armstrong then closed the summary by singing, (!!!) “I’ll walk a lonely road. We all walk a lonely road.” Swoon!
Later in the episode when Fischer and Kinsey got to Dwight and Andy’s big karaoke scene, they heard from Armstrong again.
“Dwight is singing ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ by Green Day,” Fischer explains. “Andy joins in with some perfect harmony. ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ is from Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot. So something that I know, because I’m friends with Billie Joe Armstrong. I cannot say it enough.”
“I’m just so tickled every time I can say that. Billy had seen The Office, but he recently in 2019 did a big rewatch of the whole series,” she continued. “And I asked him, ‘When you did your rewatch, did you remember that you had given us permission to use this song?'”
“I was binge-watching The Office for the first time, and I was watching that episode and then all of a sudden the song came on and I was completely taken by surprise,” Armstrong admitted. “And like, I think my face started to get red and Andy…he started singing harmonies, which was almost like — we do have a musical for American Idiot, and he sang the same exact harmony that’s in the musical. So it was, it was good.”
“I just love it that he was surprised by his own song during that rewatch,” Fischer said. Kinsey agreed, then explained there was a musical interlude to the karaoke that Ed Helms and Rainn Wilson had to vamp during.
“It’s so funny. It’s in the extended producer’s cut,” she said.
“I mean, I know they already produced the musical version of American Idiot, but I’m saying, if you bring it back to the stage, you might want to add this ‘riddit dit dit do.’ You might want to because it’s pretty great,” Fischer mused.
“We’ve all been there. We’ve all picked a song for karaoke and then there’s a big musical interlude and you’re like, “What do I do?'” Kinsey said. “I’m just kinda bobbing my head. I mean, Ed crushed it.”
Be sure to check out the full podcast episode to hear more behind-the-scenes stories about filming the episode, “Secret Santa.”
You can stream episodes of The Office on Peacock and follow along with the podcast every week on Earwolf, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.
