Almost starring in 'Alias', ruling the poker tables in Edinburgh, and lollipops for the
homeless - maybe there's more to the woman behind Pam from 'The Office' than you thought.
Here's the untold truth of Jenna Fischer.
Growing up in St. Louis, Jenna Fischer's idol was her mother Anne, who often acted in church plays,
while Fischer and her sister, Emily, helped her memorize her lines. Anne taught five-year-old
Fischer in an acting workshop at her school, and two important things happened. First,
while pretending a toy mailbox was a microphone made the future "Office" star realize that she
could be an actor. Secondly, she met a boy in that class named Sean Gunn.
Years later, when she ran into Gunn on a visit home after she had moved to Los Angeles,
he told her he was going out to start his own acting career. Once out there,
he helped her make a number of vital contacts. He got her into an acting
showcase that garnered the attention of the person who would become their manager,
jump-starting her career. He also introduced her to his brother James, the director who would later
become Fischer's husband. Even after they split, Fischer remained friends with the Gunn brothers.
Jenna Fischer told St. Louis arts channel HEC-TV that when she first arrived in Hollywood,
she may have had an unrealistic view of how soon she'd find success.
"I'm gonna make it in 6 months, and it was… it was NOT 6 months."
In fact, she went on to say that at that point,
she was in debt with no agent and horrible headshots. She described herself as
naive and wished she had a mentor who would have helped her navigate things.
That's why she wrote "The Actor's Life: A Survival Guide." It's not a book about learning how to act,
but a book about learning how to navigate the business of acting. Here, she points out,
for example, that only five percent of Screen Actors Guild members make over $100,000 a year.
The median is $52,000, and that's before
agent and manager fees. Even getting to the point where you have an agent is a difficult process.
Fischer also dishes out tips and advice based on her own experiences,
and talks a lot about food and taking advantage of buffets and urges actors to save food for later.
Prior to her breakthrough role in "The Office," Fischer wrote, directed, and starred in her
own film, a mockumentary called "LolliLove." Co-starring her then-husband, director James Gunn,
it depicted a rich couple attempting to improve the lives of homeless people by giving them
lollipops with uplifting messages on them. Co-starring acting friends like Judy Greer,
Linda Cardellini, and Jason Segel, it gave Fischer a leg up on the cringe comedy of mockumentaries.
Fischer earned a Screen Actors Guild Emerging Actor Award at her hometown St. Louis Film
Festival for the project, and she also received the Tromadance Kodak Independent Soul Award,
presented to deserving directors of independent films. Of the experience, Fischer told Playback:
"It was a lot of hard work. The directing was exhausting
and the writing was painful. It was very difficult to direct and star in a movie."
She added that the crew was so small on the movie that she ended up having to fill even more roles
besides acting and directing, even having to serve lunch. She summed it up by saying -
"I'm good at multitasking, but that was too much for me. I couldn't enjoy any one part
the way I would have liked. I think I'll stick to acting. That part was fantastic."
In Episode 43 of their podcast, 'Office Ladies,' Jenna Fischer brought up to her co-host
Angela Kinsey that she auditioned for the role of Sydney Bristow on the television series "Alias."
Fischer recalled that the scene she did during her audition was extremely dramatic and emotional,
but ultimately it didn't land her the role for a really disappointing reason, saying:
"The feedback that my agent got was like, 'Jenna blew us away. We absolutely loved it.
Her scene was, she just did a great job. We're gonna pass on her because
we just unfortunately don't think she's hot enough'. That was my feedback."
Happily, all of this was followed by Fischer and Kinsey discussing their
idea of doing a mom detective show where they went around and solved minor crimes. Of course,
if Fischer had gotten the "Alias" role, she never would have had a shot at being Pam Beesly.
On "The Office" star Brian Baumgartner's podcast, 'An Oral History Of 'The Office,' the former
Kevin Malone actor interviewed Jenna Fischer about her audition process. Casting director
Allison Jones told her in no uncertain terms to play the part very real, even going on to say -
"In fact, Jenna, dare to bore me."
Fischer had been a fan of the original "The Office" from England and the character of Dawn,
and she knew that her character had similar beats. At the same time,
she added her own experience as a receptionist before she got her big break in Hollywood
to create Pam's backstory in her mind, and she used that in her audition.
When series showrunner Greg Daniels interviewed her as though he was a documentarian,
he was stunned to see how realistic her performance was, especially when
he asked if she liked working as a secretary, to which she simply and wearily replied, "No."
Several seconds of silence followed, and the rest is history.
"I hope they get rid of me, 'cuz then I might actually get off my ass and do something."
When "The Office" was still in the audition process, Jenna Fischer was paired with John
Krasinski as her scene partner. They quickly developed an easy chemistry,
and Fischer was delighted when she learned both had nailed down their roles. After two seasons
where the show grew in popularity and the aching sweetness between the characters of Jim and Pam
left viewers looking for hopeful signs, things shockingly came to a head in the Season 2 finale,
perhaps the single most important episode of the entire series.
"I was just um, I'm in love with you."
"What?"
Director Ken Kwapis noted that they only used a single camera to record the scene
with their first kiss and kept it away from the actors, giving the real sense of
eavesdropping for the viewers. In the "Office Ladies" podcast episode discussing the show,
Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski revealed that they were kept away from each other for an
hour before the scene to add to its nervous intensity. Fischer said -
"We never rehearsed it on stage together. And I remember they brought me to set.
All the lights were dim, there was no one around, it was super eerie."
Their sixth season wedding episode was also a monumental event, even being shot on location
in Niagara Falls. Balancing an episode where the premise wasn't necessarily funny with the cringe
humor associated with the show was a difficult task. At one point, writer Greg Daniels was
pushing for Pam's ex-fiancé Roy to show up on a horse and object to the wedding. Later,
when Pam would flatly turn him down, he was going to leave the horse there. Even later,
Dwight would ride on the horse, and it would accidentally go over the edge of the falls.
This bizarre idea got a cold reception, with Daniels recalling -
"The entire staff and actors were yelling at me: 'Don't ruin Jim and Pam's wedding with a horse!'"
Instead, they substituted the Dunder-Mifflin employees recreating the viral video of a family
doing a dance to Chris Brown's "Forever." The genius of the episode was that Jim and
Pam had anticipated their friends interfering with their wedding with these kinds of antics,
so their actual ceremony was on a water-swept boat moments before.
Fischer's known for her side-eye exasperation and fairly conservative
wardrobe from "The Office." Certain films, however, have seen her playing against type.
In the 2007 figure-skating spoof "Blades Of Glory," Fischer plays Katie Van Waldenberg,
the younger sister of the sinister skating siblings played by Amy Poehler and Will Arnett.
There's a scene where she's sent to seduce Will Ferrell's character in
order to break up his skating duo, but they can't quite go through with it.
"I — I didn't sleep with Katie!"
"I know!"
"We didn't even get to second base! Well — maybe I did."
She later reflected on the part, saying -
"I definitely challenged myself in ways in this movie that I think will be a
stepping stone for me trying to spread my wings."
In 2007's "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," Fischer plays Darlene Madison,
one of Dewey's backup singers, who eventually tempts him into cheating
on his wife. Fischer said playing Darlene was liberating, noting -
"It got kind of cool to just flaunt it and not care, and be in the spotlight."
Jenna Fischer actually wasn't supposed to appear in then-husband James Gunn's first film,
2006's 'Slither.' Gunn had cast a male actor to play the role of police dispatcher Shelby,
but he begged off at the last moment. Gunn then gender-swapped the role and gave it to Fischer,
adding a few more scenes as she became one of many victims of an alien hive-mind.
By the time the movie debuted, Fischer had suddenly become famous thanks to the success
of Season 2 of "The Office," and she wound up doing a lot of publicity for "Slither."
After she and Gunn divorced, Fischer met screenwriter Lee Kirk in 2008, and he pitched her
an idea that became the film "The Giant Mechanical Man," a quirky love story that they developed
together. This was her first producing credit, and she also starred in the movie. As they nurtured
the product through the national financial collapse in 2008, they fell in love, got married,
and had a child. After years of delays, the actual shoot was just 19 days. Fischer joked about her
marriage after the movie was completed, saying: "I don't know what we're going to talk about
anymore because for the last four years we've been talking about 'The Giant Mechanical Man.'"
Fischer started her career on the stage, and she's had a number of opportunities to get back
to her roots. While "The Office" was starting to wind down, she worked with her husband Lee
Kirk in a 2010 revival of his absurdist play, "Sad Happy Sucker." Workshopped three years earlier,
Fischer put on her producer hat as Kirk directed it at the Lyric Hyperion Theater.
As "The Office" was airing its final episode in May of 2013,
Fischer debuted in the off-Broadway production "Reasons to Be Happy," written by Neil LaBute.
LaBute personally offered her the role and also directed the play, which ran for a month.
As a result, Fischer wasn't able to watch the finale of "The Office" with her old
castmates, but former co-star BJ Novak was in New York and came out to support her.
In 2016, Fischer co-starred in Steve Martin's play "Meteor Shower," about a couple attending
a meteor shower viewing party at another couple's house. It set a box office record at San Diego's
Old Globe Theater, making nearly $1 million over its six-week run. Fischer played Corky,
who has the cracks in her marriage undermined and exposed by the other party guests.
Playing poker has become one of Jenna Fischer's many hobbies.
When she and Lee Kirk went on their honeymoon to Scotland in 2010,
they tried to beat their jetlag by staying up just late enough to wake up bright and
early the next day. In an effort to stay awake, they wandered around Edinburgh and happened upon
a pub holding a poker tournament. They both entered and Kirk did well, finishing fifth.
However, they didn't leave just yet because Fischer
was doing even better. As she told Hemispheres:
"Somehow, through a combination of weariness, adrenaline, caffeine, and a little alcohol,
I was playing the best poker of my life. My instincts were heightened;
I seemed to have a perfect read on every player at the table, my stack growing with
every hand. I felt like I was floating in some kind of European poker heaven."
Fischer won it all, and the couple then went back to their hotel and
collapsed. She's even brought her skills to the show "Celebrity Poker Showdown."
When Jenna Fischer starred in the 2011 movie 'Hall Pass,' she made an instant connection
with her co-star Christina Applegate. The movie is about two married men, who get a "hall pass"
from their wives for a week, meaning they can do anything they want, including seeing other people.
Of course, that means their wives, played by Fischer and Applegate, get to play as well.
Speaking about Applegate to Collider, Fischer said -
"What happened immediately is that Christina and I clicked, like two peas in a pod.
We just had the best time. Every time we were on set together, we hung out the whole time."
While Fischer praised the overall chemistry of the ensemble,
she also felt like Applegate was her teammate in a competition, saying:
"When it was finally time to do our scenes with the four of us together, we really
did have a boys against the girls chemistry going. We were a force to be reckoned with."
After 'The Office' ended in 2013,
Fischer's career slowed, and after having a second child in 2014,
she was limited to guest-starring jobs. However, she landed the part of Andi Burns,
the wife of Matt LeBlanc, on his show "Man with a Plan." She was hoping the CBS show
would be her next long-running role. On the day the show was announced, she got a phone call.
"And I said, I said — 'It's bad news, isn't it,' and they said, 'Yeah,'
And I said, 'We didn't get picked up,' and they were like, 'No, it's worse.'"
The show in fact did get picked up for more episodes - however after showing the
episodes to focus groups, they decided that Fischer wasn't right for the part
and fired her. Watching it later, she realized the focus groups that said
they didn't believe Pam and Joey as a couple actually might have been right, admitting:
"We kind of seemed like two people doing good performances and they were both quite good
shows, but they weren't the same show."
LeBlanc's show lasted four seasons before being canceled in 2020. Fischer was replaced by Liza
Snyder, but she went on to have a solid two-year run on "Splitting Up Together."
It only lasted ten episodes, but Jenna Fischer had a compelling role in the
2015 NBC science-fiction/comedy series "You, Me and the Apocalypse." The show centers around an
ensemble cast reacting to the knowledge that an asteroid will be hitting Earth in about a month,
causing the end of the world. Fischer plays Rhonda, a seemingly mild-mannered librarian who's
in prison. She was sent there for hacking into the NSA, but she only did it to protect her son.
A hacker springs her from prison, and she becomes the sidekick to a
white nationalist played by Megan Mullally. Fischer took the role after taking time off
following the birth of her daughter. Of the show's bizarre premise, she told The Los Angeles Times -
"I get to do stunts and be in shootouts. I take someone hostage at one point.
I never get asked to do stuff like that because no one wants to see Pam doing that! So it was fun."
After her role as Pam, it can be hard to picture Jenna Fischer in a gritty action-drama,
but she had a memorable role in Clint Eastwood's 2018 action thriller "The 15:17 To Paris." A
dramatization of real-life events, the movie depicts the events surrounding an incident
when three Americans disarmed and detained an armed terrorist on a train in France.
Fischer played a mother to one of the men, appearing in dramatizations of their childhood.
Fischer has entered the part of her career where she's playing these older maternal roles,
but playing it seriously was something new for her. Of Eastwood, she said:
"Every story you have heard about working for Clint Eastwood is absolutely true.
He's prepared. He's efficient. He's inspirational. He gives great acting notes. It's crazy that his
crew has been working with him so long they have a shorthand so the day goes by very quickly."
Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey may have been adversaries on "The Office,"
but in real life, they became immediate best friends.
Both kept detailed journals and memos of their "Office" experience.
As they were looking through boxes of memorabilia, Kinsey told Vulture -
"I said to her I really wanted to rewatch the show fully. I hadn't done that since we made the show,
and neither did Jenna, so we collectively had this 'Why don't we do this?' moment.
Why not? It's the anniversary, so let's reminisce and share the memories with the fans."
And thus, "Office Ladies" was born. Their natural chattiness translated perfectly
over to the podcast format. While they do go through a detailed exploration of each episode,
their frequent tangents and debates set it apart from similar "Office"-related media.
"I was driving yesterday and I was chewing a piece of gum and I was popping my gum
and I bit the SHITAKE out of my tongue — it's so bad, look at it!"
It only makes sense that the success of the "Office Ladies" podcast
led to a book. Titled "The Office BFFs: Tales From 'The Office' From Two Best Friends Who
Were There," the book covers a lot of the same ground as the podcast. What the book really
brings is some of the things alluded to on the podcast, like both stars' detailed journaling,
as well as scores of photos recording their experiences while working. 'The Office' was
famous for making its background actors stay for every scene, because they were pretending
to film a real office. This resulted in background actors needing to find ways to amuse themselves,
and it's one of the things that led to Fischer and Kinsey becoming friends.
Fischer said the bonding began after the "Basketball" episode from the first season,
when they sat on a bench next to each other for two days. They got giddy at the end, skipping
across the parking lot arm-in-arm. Star Steve Carrell saw them and Fischer remembered he said -
"'No matter what happens, this is what you'll take with you. This.'
And he pointed at the two of us. He was so right."
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