After working his way up from secondary warehouse worker to a more prominent role on The Office, Craig Robinson has become one of the funniest guys in film with roles in Pineapple Express, Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Hot Tub Time Machine. And with the final episode of The Office airing next week, Robinson puts one part of his career behind him while another one begins. In the Tyler Perry-produced Peeples, Robinson has his first big-screen starring role as an aspiring musician named Wade, who finds out the hard way that his girlfriend (Kerry Washington) has yet to tell her parents about Wade. Co-starring David Alan Grier, Diahann Carroll and Tyler James Williams, Peeples provides plenty of comedic talent for Robinson to play off of. As the movie hits theaters, Robinson talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about The Office, his first starring role and his burgeoning musical career.

Now that The Office is wrapping up after nine years, how does it feel to see that coming to an end?

It got put into perspective for me [recently]. I was at Jazz Fest and some girls were like, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I’ve been watching you from high school through college.” I was like, “Wow! That’s right. Somebody started high school and finished college watching The Office.” It’s an amazing and huge part of my life. It launched my career and opened unknown doors that I couldn’t have opened without it. I made some great friends and some great memories. I’m not sad about it because it’s like closing a chapter. I just shot a new sitcom and turned it in to NBC to see if they pick it up. I will miss a lot of things about The Office, but we had time to deal with it and be ready to move on. It’s taking us out very classy, too. The final episode is everything you expect from The Office: a lot of humor, a lot of heart, a lot of awkwardness. So I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.

How did you get this role in Peeples and how did you initially get your role in The Office?

With The Office I was called in to audition and I read one of those talking heads. It was actually one for Jim. I’m a huge fan of deadpan. That’s always been my thing, so The Office really just made sense. You got one paragraph to read and you just had to go with it. When I walked in, Greg Daniels was at the head of the room with about nine or ten other people. He said he had seen a video I did with Jerry Minor called “Somebody’s Fucking My Lady” and he was like, “It doesn’t get any funnier than that.” It was weird to hear that because now you’re thinking, “Oh, my God. This is mine to lose” as opposed to, “Let me go get it.”

Peeples was brought to me to meet with the director, Tina Gordon Chism. She’ll tell you that I fell asleep in the meeting, I say it was just a little catnap. We met again and she was so passionate and so cool. She’s a great person, and smart, and she painted a picture of what this movie was going to be. Then she said, “You get to kiss Kerry Washington,” and I was like, “Where do I sign?” Kerry is brilliant and naturally funny. This is not just my first leading role, it’s also Kerry’s first foray into comedy and Tina’s first time directing. We all, collectively, pushed this boulder of Peeples up a mountain and Kerry is so talented. She’s like this ultimate woman: she can act, she can sing, she can dance, she speaks different languages, she’s political. I can’t say enough good things about her.

With this being a first for so many people, do you think it made everyone work a little harder on the film?

I think it put everybody on the same page. David said it best when he said he wanted to be there for Tina because she was getting a thousand calls a day. Whatever we needed, we were there for each other. It was definitely an ensemble effort. If David Alan Grier throws out a line, you’re going to go, “Yeah. Let’s try that.” There was a lot of that and Tina was open for playing and we got some fun stuff out of that. For example, in the grocery store scene where I make all those references to old black people, I don’t even remember if there were references to start with. So once we started going with that we just listed them all until it overlapped into the next scene.

He’s amazing. He was the father of the set, he owns every room he goes in and he was hysterical on cue. It’s one of the most amazing things you could witness and he’s one of the funniest dude on the planet. I was pushing for him to be the office manager when Steve Carell was leaving [The Office] because once we shot Peeples, I was like, “This would be amazing.” He’s absolutely great. He’s a great person and it’s hard to out silly me. I think he out sillies me.

Based on this film, or perhaps from personal experience, what advice would you give guys who are meeting their girlfriend’s parents for the first time?

Don’t show up unannounced and have a wallet that doesn’t fall out your pocket. Be yourself. I think that’s the tone of this whole movie. I like how Wade was true to himself no matter what, then he kept finding out all these secrets about everybody else. So be yourself and maybe tuck your shirt in and clean up before you go meet your (hopefully) wife’s parents.

Have you had any memorable fan moments?

When The Office first started I went to a Comic-Con in San Diego. But I didn’t go for The Office, I went for a movie I was in called Dragon Wars, which none of you know. Dragon Wars was directed by this Korean director named Shim Hyung-rae and he barely spoke English. So we had all these souvenir books with pictures of the cast and pictures of the big snakes from the movie. I was walking with these books and I wanted to put them down somewhere. They were nice, but I didn’t want to walk around Comic-Con with them. Then this girl walked up and you would have thought I was Michael Jackson or something. We took a picture, it was real sweet, then I handed her one of the books and said, “Here, take this.” She broke down and started crying, she was so overwhelmed. I was like, “That must be what Michael Jackson feels like.” It tripped me out. But nothing like that has happened since then.

Do you anticipate anything else like that now that you’re starring in your own film?

Anticipate? No. I don’t know. I always take things a little bit at a time. When I started out L.A., I had to figure out how to get auditions. So I was in that lane, then I got the auditions and scooted over to callbacks, then to getting the part. So just a little bit at a time.

It seems like a lot of these scenes would be hard to shoot because you’d be laughing so much. What were some of the more difficult scenes to shoot?

For me it was the Timex scene. I could not stop laughing. The ridiculousness of them showing me their watches, I got into a little bit of trouble about that. I’ll bet it was seven takes.

What do you do to not laugh at moments like that?

That’s when it’s best to avoid eye contact. Maybe look just above the eyebrows or something like that. You want to stay in character, but you also don’t want to laugh. It’s like being in church and laughing; as soon as somebody else laughs your like, “Augh!” I haven’t mastered that yet. My best thing is to just look at somebody’s forehead instead of directly in the eye.

In addition to your comedic acting, your musical talents were also employed in Peeples. How involved were in that process of this movie?

My brother has a song in the movie, but the guy who wrote all the music is Stephen Bray. He wrote “Turn You On,” “Speak It (Don’t Leak It!)” and all that stuff. I just pretty much sang and they were nice enough to put one of my brother’s songs in the movie. It’s in the club scene, underneath, so you’ve got to be paying attention.

A lot of your roles have to do with music and you have a musical background. Do you actively pursue musical roles in films?

It’s just the opposite. Music is my partner, really. In my comedy act I use music and play keyboard and have a band and all that. But several roles, such as Hot Tub Time Machine, the producers came to see me perform and said, “Well, he’s a musician.” With Peeples, Tina was like, “We’re going to make him a musician. He uses music through therapy to help the kids and stuff.” So it’s kind of my partner.

Do you find that to be an asset?

Yeah. I wouldn’t be where I am without having that ability. It’s definitely an asset. One of the first times I ever did comedy without my keyboard, there was this competition. Three people in the audience had rubber chickens and if you got all three rubber chickens you had to get off stage. I got two and was like, “OK, goodnight!” My thought was, “I’m not getting a third one.” The next week I came back with my keyboard and I spun a web or something, I had them hypnotized.”

Will you be putting an album out anytime soon?

I don’t know when that album’s coming out, man. I’m definitely leaning towards that. But I’m tired of hearing myself say, “One of these days I’m going to put an album out.”

www.peeplesmovie.com