Steve Carell on his 'Office' exit: 'Surprised how bittersweet it was'

Steve Carell had a long time to adjust to the idea of leaving "The Office" -- but that doesn't mean it wasn't hard to say goodbye.

"I'd been preparing myself, because I've known for about a year that I was going to be leaving this season," Carell told Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show Monday (May 2) in his first TV interview since his "Office" farewell. "I thought I was emotionally prepared, but I was really surprised at how bittersweet it was."

He compares the feeling of leaving the show to graduating from high school. "They're my friends," he says of his castmates, "so that was the difficult part of it. ... I felt like I was a senior and everyone else was a junior."

Click on the video above for more from Carell, including how easily he's adapted to having time off since filming his last episode.