Rainn Wilson (left) as Dwight Schrute and James Spader as Robert California in The Office. The new season kicks off Thursday, Sept. 22 on NBC and Global.

James Spader’s character on The Office is terrifying.

The denizens of Dunder Mifflin are intimidated by Robert California (great name). And who wouldn’t be?

“I think he’s misinterpreted a lot,” Spader said.

Well, there’s plenty of terror and intimidation and misinterpretation as the eighth season of The Office begins Thursday, Sept. 22 on NBC and Global.

The first episode of the new campaign is called The List. Sounds ominous.

When Robert California stops by for the first time as CEO of Sabre - Dunder Mifflin’s parent company - he accidentally leaves behind a mysterious list of the employees’ names, divided down the middle.

As you would expect from this paranoid crew, everyone frantically tries to figure out what the list means.

Robert California first appeared in the seventh-season finale, where he interviewed to replace Michael Scott (Steve Carell) as manager of Dunder Mifflin. Instead, Robert has secured a much higher position, replacing Jo (Kathy Bates) as CEO.

Therefore, it also will be revealed in The List who the new manager of Dunder Mifflin is. But you know, the buzz over who that will be has dissipated completely - looking back, we really don’t think this was handled particularly well from an “ongoing interest” perspective.

Anyway, none of that has anything to do with Spader’s character in particular, who is quite hilarious in his own right. Spader’s ongoing involvement with The Office was not initially part of any grand plan, though.

“I had met (co-executive producers) Greg Daniels and Paul Lieberstein (who also plays Toby) six months earlier, just to talk about long-range in terms of television,” said Spader, whose TV resume includes a long, award-winning run as Alan Shore on Boston Legal and The Practice.

“They just seemed like people who would be great fun to work with at some point. Then all of a sudden, out of the blue, they sent over (a script for) an episode. We hadn’t even really talked about The Office when we chatted. But they called up and said, ‘We’ve written a role that we’d love you to do in the (seventh-season) finale, we’re having a bunch of different people come in.’

“It was so funny, I thought it would be great fun. They said, ‘No obligation, just for the fun of it, come and do it.’ ”

Spader thought of it as a one-off. But then he started getting more phone calls from the makers of The Office when they began to edit the episode, telling him how well it was turning out.

“Then it aired, and they called back and said, ‘We want to have the character back so badly, can we at least start talking about that?’ ” Spader recalled. “And we did. And now here we are.

“So it all happened rather sporadically, you know, very spontaneously.”

Post-Carell, it’s an open debate as to how much life The Office has left. Perhaps the perfect point to end this beloved series would have been with that funny and touching episode when Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) got married in Niagara Falls.

Anyway, for now, The Office is looking ahead with James Spader. Consider it a version of (Robert) California dreamin’.

bill.harris@sunmedia.ca