Trivia / The Office USS 3 E 6 Diwali

• California Doubling: The Diwali party is supposed to be taking place at West Scranton High School, but was filmed at Grant High School in Van Nuys, which happens to be the Real Life alma mater of Melora Hardin (Jan Levinson).
• Cast the Expert: Many of the party attendees are played by the Bollywood dance troupe of choreographer Nakul Dev Mahajan. They struggled to achieve the proper Stylistic Suck of amateurs dancing at a Diwali celebration.
• Colbert Bump: Diwali itself, which isn't well-known outside the Hindu community, got some attention in mainstream American culture from this episode.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Carol Stills, who soundly rejects Michael's Fourth-Date Marriage proposal in this episode, is played by Nancy Carell- Steve Carell's real-life wife.
• Real-Life Relative: Kelly's parents were played by Mindy Kaling's actual parents, after the producers were dissatisfied with the professional actors who auditioned for the roles. The producers were impressed with their performances, especially her father, and wanted to bring them back as recurring characters, but Kaling was worried about it seeming like Nepotism and politely declined the suggestion.
• What Could Have Been: As originally scripted, instead of drinking in the office, Jim, Andy and Karen were supposed to go to a bar and get drunk, with Jim and Karen making out in the parking lot afterwards. Rashida Jones was reluctant to do the scene, fearing that it would make fans hate Karen even more as an obstacle to the Jim/Pam relationship, but it was filmed anyway. Stephen Merchant saw an early cut of the episode and advised the producers that the subplot didn't work, so they rewrote and reshot the Stamford scenes and never included the originals in the official deleted scenes of the episode.
• Write What You Know: The episode was inspired by an actual Diwali party that Mindy Kaling held for the show's cast.