It’s no secret that Billie Eilish is a massive fan of The Office. However, fans are just now finding out even more about how deep her loyalty to the show runs. After recently claiming she’s watched the series several times, she also learned a lot of incorrect facts — as the jokes went over her head as a child.
“Starting to watch The Office at a really young age, I almost didn’t understand any reference whatsoever,” the singer-songwriter and known super-fan of the TV series explained. “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.”
One of these references is a joke about U2 that appeared in a season four episode titled “Goodbye, Toby Part 1.” Eilish says she “blames John Krasinski,” as his character, Jim, has a conversation with his boss, Michael Scott, about making a mixtape.
“Hey, what’s the group that was from Scranton that made it big? Was that U2?” Scott asks Jim in the episode, to which he simply replies “Yes.”
“There’s no pause, there’s no laugh,” Eilish said. “Honestly, in my head, I thought Jim thought, ‘Oh, that’s a stupid question,’ because obviously, they’re the band that made it big from Scranton… I thought that was the vibe instead of no, not at all. Their whole thing is that they’re Irish!”
Eilish, who appeared on the Office Ladies podcast, only found out that Bono (and U2) was from Ireland after he sent her a card welcoming her to the country.
“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?’” she continued. “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?’”
Listen to Billie Eilish’s full appearance on the Office Ladies podcast here.