Amy Ryan on “The Office”'s Lasting Success 11 Years After Finale: 'Humor Seems to Be Holding Up' (Exclusive)

"The fan base is getting younger and younger," Ryan, who played HR representative Holly Flax in the NBC sitcom, tells PEOPLE

Amy Ryan understands the The Office’s generational appeal.

“There's a new crop every season because the show, it's 10 years old off the air by now, but the fan base is getting younger and younger,” Ryan, 56, told PEOPLE at the 2024 Tony Awards Meet the Nominees junket earlier this month.

The younger generation’s embrace of The Office is particularly endearing to Ryan because “they seem to be turning to it for comfort.”

“Maybe it's also a time when you interacted with people without your phones and a probably younger generation is wowed by that,” the Academy Award-nominated actress speculated. “It's for good reason that the people are finding it and the humor seems to be holding up, so it's nice.”

More than a decade after the beloved program concluded its nine-season run, a spin-off set in the same universe is in the works at NBC. Domhnall Gleeson (The Revenant) and Sabrina Impacciatore (The White Lotus) are tapped as the leads for the upcoming Peacock series, which will begin production in July.

According to President of NBCUniversal Entertainment Lisa Katz, the unnamed comedy “introduces a new cast of characters in a fresh setting ripe for comedic storytelling: a daily newspaper.”

Related: Mindy Kaling Shares Her Simple but Important Advice for The Office Spinoff's New Cast: 'I Was Not Professional'

Ryan, who is nominated at the Tonys for her role in the Broadway revival of Doubt: A Parable, portrayed Holly Flax in the iconic comedy. Holly, an HR representative for Dunder Mifflin, developed a romance with regional manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell). In season 7, the couple tied the knot and moved to Colorado, where they had four children.

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In a coincidence, Ryan and Carell, 61, trod the boards on Broadway this season — him in a revival of Uncle Vayna and her in a revival of John Patrick Shanley's Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Doubt: A Parable.

Ryan joined the cast when Tyne Daly had to drop out last minute due to a health issue.

"It was a terrifying thing to do," Ryan tells PEOPLE. "It's certainly a recurring nightmare anxiety dream I've had in the past, of thinking you're on first day of rehearsals and a curtain goes up and there's a paying audience, and all your other costars are off book and you're not. So I guess I could check that nightmare off my list! Or dream come true, whichever you look at it."

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The 2024 Tony Awards will take place on Sunday, June 16 at Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater in New York City. Viewers can watch the show on CBS and Paramount+ beginning at 8 p.m. ET. Select awards will also be handed out on a pre-show that will stream on Pluto TV.

The Office is now streaming on Peacock.

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