Almost starring an 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, jumpstarting her career. He also introduced her to his brother
James, the director who would later become Fisher's husband. Even after they split
Fisher remained friends with the Gunn brothers. Jenna Fisher told St. Louis art 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 six months. And it was, it was not six 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 5% 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. Fisher 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, Fisher 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 Fisher a leg up on the cringe comedy of mockumentaries
Fisher earned a Screen Actors Guild Emerging Actor Award at her hometown St. Louis Film Festival for
the project, and she also received the Troma Dance Kodak Independent Soul Award, presented
to deserving directors of independent films. Of the experience, Fisher 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 Fisher brought up to her co-host Angela
Kinsey that she auditioned for the role of Sydney Bristow on the television series Alias
Fisher 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 Fisher and Kinsey discussing their idea of doing
a mom detective show, where they went around and solved minor crimes
Of course, if Fisher had gotten the alias role, she never would have had a shot at being
Pam Beasley On The Office star Brian Baumgardner podcast An Oral History of the Office the former Kevin Malone actor interviewed Jenna Fisher about her audition process
Casting director Alison 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. Fisher had been a fan of the original The Office from England and
the character of Don, 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, because 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 two finale, perhaps the single most
important episode of the entire series. I was just, um, I'm in love with you
What? Director Ken Quaffis 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. Fisher'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, Fisher plays Katie Van Waldenburg, 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
Hey, 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, In 2007's Walk Hard, The Dewey Cox Story, Fisher plays Darlene Madison
one of Dewey's backup singers, who eventually tempts him into cheating on his wife. Fisher said
playing Darlene was liberating, noting, Jenna Fisher actually wasn supposed to appear in then James Gunn first film 2006 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 Fisher, adding a few more scenes as she became one
of many victims of an alien hive mind. By the time the movie debuted, Fisher had suddenly
become famous thanks to the success of season two of The Office, and she wound up doing a
lot of publicity for Slither. After She and Gunn divorced, Fisher 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. Fisher 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.'" Fisher started her career on the stage, and she's had a number of opportunities to give
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
Fisher 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, Fisher 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, Fisher 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, Fisher 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. Fisher played Corky, who has the cracks in her marriage undermined and exposed
by the other party guests. Playing poker has become one of Jenna Fisher's many hobbies
When she and Lee Kirk went on their honeymoon to Scotland in 2010, they tried to beat their
jet lag 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 Fisher 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.
Fisher 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 Fisher 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 Fisher and Applegate, get to play as well
Speaking about Applegate to Collider, Fisher 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 Fisher 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, Fisher's career slowed, and after having a second child in
2014, she was limited to guest-starring jobs. However, she landed the part of Andy 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 I said I said it bad news isn it And they said yeah And I said we didn get picked up And they were like no it worse The show in fact did get picked up for more episodes However after showing the episodes
to focus groups, they decided that Fisher 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 is 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
Fisher was replaced by Liza Snyder, but she went on to have a solid two-year run on splitting up
together. It only lasted 10 episodes, but Jenna Fisher 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. Fisher 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. Fisher 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 Fisher in a gritty action drama
but she had a memorable role in Clint Eastwood's 2018 action thriller The 1517 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
Fisher played a mother to one of the men, appearing in dramatizations of their childhood
Fisher 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 Fisher 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 shiitake 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 Fisher and Kinsey becoming friends. Fisher 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 Carell saw them, and Fisher 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." Thank you