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Topics: Billie Eilish, The Office, Film and TV, Music, John Krasinski, Celebrity
Joe Harker
Topics: Billie Eilish, The Office, Film and TV, Music, John Krasinski, Celebrity
Until very recently, Billie Eilish thought U2 came from Scranton, and it's all thanks to a joke from The Office.
It turns out that Billie Eilish is an absolutely huge fan of The Office, and let's face it, why wouldn't you be?
Guesstimating that she's seen the sitcom about 30 times, the award-winning singer reckons she's seen it so many times that she can be listening to an episode on her phone and visualise exactly what's happening on the screen without looking.
However, one of the downsides of being so into a show from such a young age is that it can maybe give you some misleading ideas if you don't understand some of the jokes yet.
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Everybody's got jokes from their favourite things which flew over their heads when they were younger, but Eilish got tripped up by a bit of false trivia from one of the episodes of The Office.
The singer explained that her misunderstanding happened because she got into watching The Office from such a young age before she realised some of the references were meant to be jokes.
Speaking to Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey on the latest episode of the Office Ladies podcast, the singer explained that she learned plenty of words wrong because Steve Carrell's character got them wrong on the show.
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She said: "Starting to watch The Office at a really young age, I almost didn't understand any reference whatsoever.
"There's so many things that are said, especially by Michael, in The Office that he says wrong on purpose, were written on purpose that I didn't even know the real word."
"So I said many words wrong because I learned them from Michael Scott."
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And this ended up really tripping her up when it came to thinking where U2 were from, and it was only last summer that she finally learned the truth.
She said: "This last June we were in Ireland, I'm in my hotel and I get flowers delivered to my room and it has this little letter on it and it's this really sweet letter and it says 'from Bono'.
"And I was like, 'why would Bono, who's from Scranton, why would he send me something in Ireland? What does this have to do with him?'"
"And it was like, 'welcome to my hometown' or something like that. But U2 is from Scranton. I kept asking everyone like 'what is Bono doing sending me flowers all the way across the world? Why would he do that?' They were like, 'Billie, what are you talking about? They're Irish', I was like 'no they're not'."
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Eilish admits that of all the things The Office taught her wrong, thinking U2 came from Scranton was the 'worst one', and she lays the blame at the feet of John Krasinski, or rather his character Jim Halpert.
There's a bit in the season four episode 'Goodbye, Toby Part 1' where Michael (Steve Carrell) is putting a mixtape together and asks Jim if U2 was the band from Scranton that made it big, with Jim flatly telling his boss 'yes'.
A grown up audience member who knows U2 are from Ireland would get the joke and understand Jim is making fun of Michael without his boss realising it for the umpteenth time, but a young child watching the show wouldn't pick up on that stuff.
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With 'no pause' and 'no laugh' to go along with the like, a young Eilish just took it as the truth that U2 were from Scranton, but at least she knows now that they aren't.