Rainn Wilson, actor: “Despite making a lot of money on a great series, I often wanted more”

Rainn Wilson (Seattle, 58 years old) played the ambitious and lacking empathy paper salesman and beet farmer Dwight Schrute in the American version of

The Office

during the eight years that the series lasted, from 2005 to 2013. In fact, he is the only one of the cast who appears and has dialogue in its 188 chapters.

Dwight is a flamboyant guy who doesn't like to smile because “showing your teeth is a sign of submission in primates,” and he owns many exotic pets, including a piranha – although he flushes it down the toilet –, frogs, a wolf – this one is escapes him―, a raccoon and an opossum.

Rainn, on the other hand, is very smiling, as he demonstrates throughout the entire interview with EL PAÍS, but if there is anything similar to the character with whom he earned a place in the hearts of thousands of viewers, it is in his taste for unusual pets.

“We have two Vietnamese pigs, a female peacock, two rescued pit bulls, two guinea pigs, a donkey and a zebra – a hybrid animal, the result of crossing a zebra and a donkey, which in this case is called Derek

–

.

And my wife has two horses,” he says via video call from his ranch in California, where he lives with his wife and his son (and all this curious fauna).

Rainn Wilson doesn't like to use the word "happy" to refer to his state of mind, he prefers to say that he feels "eudaimonic."

“The Greeks used the word eudemonia, which describes human flourishing and a much better goal than happiness.

I feel flourishing.

“I try to connect with nature, with my family, with God, with my sense of purpose, with art and, in that sense, I am thriving,” she says.

But it was not always like this.

Despite having success, a wonderful family, a nice house and people tattooing his face - Dwight's - on their feet - literally - the actor has dealt with depression several times, as explained in the introduction by

Rainn Wilson and the geography of happiness

, the documentary series produced by AMC Networks that premieres this Wednesday, March 6 on the television channel ¡BUENVIAJE!

(available with Movistar Plus+).

In it, he delves into five countries (Iceland, Bulgaria, Ghana, Thailand and the United States), seeking to understand and become infected with the happiest societies on the planet.

“Everywhere I went there were families, groups, tribes and people coming together to love and connect, and it was really enlightening how universal that is,” he says.

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Throughout the five chapters, Wilson dives naked into a magma caldera - with his The

Meg

co-star Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, who, like him, has a terrible fate in the film - or fights a

12-year-old

kickboxer

in the ring of a Thai gym, among other feats.

But he also opens up about an unhappy childhood and difficult adolescence.

He reveals, for example, that his mother abandoned him when he was two years old, and that he had many shortcomings as a child.

“I think everyone suffered some kind of childhood trauma and the important thing is to accept it, learn from it, heal it and not be a victim of it,” he now considers.

He also comments that spending his weekends playing

Dungeons and Dragons

and playing the bassoon—he wanted the saxophone, but they dissuaded him—made him feel like “a weirdo” in his youth.

“It has been a long road, spanning many decades, towards self-discovery,” he acknowledges.

Rainn Wilson in the last chapter of 'Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Happiness', in Los Angeles, where he currently resides.PEACOCK (PEACOCK)

However, it was precisely playing one of the strangest creatures in

The Office

(now available on Prime Video, Netflix and Movistar Plus+) that made him reach his peak popularity a decade ago.

And that wasn't enough for him either.

“There were times on

The Office

when I felt miserable.

I wish I had enjoyed it more.

Even though I was making a lot of money on a big show, having a lot of opportunities and great friends, I often felt like I just wanted more.

It is that eternal human hunger of never being satisfied with what you have,” confesses the Emmy nominee and winner of two Screen Actors Guild Awards for that role.

He wanted to make the leap to the big screen, to be a movie star.

He appeared in films such as

Juno

,

Sahara

,

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

or

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

.

But for most viewers he is still Dwight.

“He Not only did he make people laugh, which was our goal, but he brought healing, connection and deep meaning to many.

And that's what really surprised me: how important the series is, the role it has played in people's lives," admits Wilson, who in January shared on Instagram a photo of a message on a napkin that had been left for him by a stewardess during a flight.

“

The Office

helped me get through some of the darkest days of my life.

“I can’t thank you enough for that,” he would say.

From left to right: actors BJ Novak, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, Rainn Wilson and Steve Carell, in the series 'The Office'.Paul Drinkwater (BWP/Cordon Press)

Beyond his predilection for exotic animals - when he was little he lived in Nicaragua and had a parrot and a sloth - Wilson considers that this character who still stars in some of the most famous memes on social networks has little to do with him.

“I'm quite a geek, like Dwight.

I can be obsessive, like Dwight.

And I may be socially awkward, like Dwight, but that’s where I would draw the line,” he says, laughing (not like Dwight).

Next April, Steve Carell, who plays his boss, Michael Scott, in the comedy, debuts on Broadway and Wilson doesn't plan to miss it.

“I'm going to go see his work in New York.

I also talked to Jenna [Fischer, who plays Pam] the other day, and I text everyone all the time.

They are a dear family,” he clarifies about the colleagues with whom he shared an office to which, he says, he would not want to return: “I did it for a decade.

Now I am trying to develop other projects.”

Among these new projects is his participation in the series

Kitchen with chemistry

(Apple TV), starring Brie Larson;

her role in the film

Ezra

, starring Robert De Niro, which opens at the end of May in the United States;

or her work on the film

Code 3

, for which they are still looking for a distributor.

He also just published a book:

Soul Boom: Why We Need a

Spiritual Revolution

.

“

Spirituality connects us with the mystery of being a human being.

The mystery of nature, the search for the transcendent.

It gives us community and a greater, higher love.

And I think this is one of the things that humanity needs most right now,” argues Wilson, responding to the title of the work.

The actor was raised in the Baha'i faith - which believes in the equality of humanity and blessings through one God - as demonstrated by the tattoo of a nine-pointed star that he sports on his left wrist, a symbol of this religion.

As a young adult, after becoming “intimately familiar” with drugs and alcohol and struggling with the big questions, he returned to the fold, as he explains in another book, his autobiography

The Bassoon King

, published in 2015.

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Before turning to acting, Rainn Wilson was an insurance salesman, dog walker, and cookie baker.

He later became fiction's most obnoxiously beloved paper salesman and beet farmer.

The fact is that now he is happy or, rather, eudaimonic.

“I have found purpose and satisfaction in connection.

That's what I found.

So I'm very good,” he reaffirms, smiling, calm.