‘The Office’ Creator Greg Daniels Explains Why He Revisited Oscar in ‘The Paper’ (Exclusive)

Greg Daniels is explaining why Oscar Nuñez‘s character in The Office had a story worth revisiting beyond the walls of Dunder Mifflin.

Daniels, who adapted the U.S. version of the five-time-Emmy-winning NBC sitcom, is teaming back up with Nuñez for The Paper — a spinoff of the beloved series that follows a dying Midwestern newspaper’s staff and their attempts to revive it. 

While Nuñez portrayed accountant Oscar Martinez as part of The Office‘s ensemble cast from 2005 to the show’s conclusion in 2013, he later worked with Daniels briefly on the two-season sci-fi sitcom People of Earth as well. And as Daniels now tells PEOPLE, he understood “the value” of Nuñez being in a project as a “complete comedy dynamo.”

“And of all of the different characters from The Office, I feel like his character didn’t have as much arc to it,” Daniels says of Nuñez’s character.

Daniels, who spoke with PEOPLE alongside The Paper co-creator Michael Koman, describes Nuñez’s character as “a dignified person pretty much throughout,” although he “got in a little bit of a messy triangle” with Angela Martin in season 9. Even then, Daniels says, “He learned his lesson over the course of the thing.”

“So I didn’t feel bad about involving him because most of the other characters, I feel like they had a really good ending at the finale and I didn’t want to open that up and risk messing up the original show,” he explains.

“I think he had that ability to have more juice and more stories about him that you were curious about without harming things,” he adds.

And while Nuñez is the sole Office returnee starring in Peacock’s The Paper, joining a cast consisting of Sabrina Impacciatore and Domhnall Gleeson, he isn’t the only familiar face to have stepped on set.

Impacciatore previously shared with Entertainment Weekly that both Steve Carell and John Krasinski surprised the cast during their first day of filming.

Speaking with PEOPLE, The Paper stars Gbemisola Ikumelo and Alex Edelman revealed, however, that they both missed the special visitors.

“You know what, I got a text from Autumn who was doing our makeup and it was just like, ‘Can you tell Greg that [B.J. Novak] is still here waiting to talk to him?’ I thought it was a joke,” Ikumelo said. “I didn’t pass that message on to Greg because I thought she was joking.”

“And then someone went, ‘Oh my God, did you see Steve?’ And I went, ‘Wait, he was actually here?’ So I did not meet him.”

Edelman added that he’s “still dying to meet” both Krasinski and Carell.

“Well, you will, you will,” Nuñez told his costars.

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The Paper, which also stars Melvin Gregg, Ramona Young and Tim Key, premieres on Peacock on Thursday, Sept. 4.