20 Behind-the-Scenes Facts You Didn’t Know About ‘The Office’

Stanley’s favorite day of the year is a real holiday

Loyal Office fans will know, Stanley Hudson (Leslie David Baker) has a favorite day of the year — Pretzel Day. What fans may not know is that Pretzel Day is a real holiday in Pennsylvania.

In 2003, then-governor Ed Rendell made April 26 Pretzel Day.

Steve Carell almost didn’t play Michael Scott

While Carell ultimately got the role of Michael, Bob Odenkirk almost played him instead.

At the time, Carell was cast in another project titled Come to Papa. But not long after getting the green light, the show was canceled, leaving Carell’s schedule open again.

In executive producer Ben Silverman and star Brian Baumgartner’s book Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of The Office, Silverman explained the casting choice.

“We still had Bob as somebody we were in love with as a comedic performer,” he wrote, per Esquire. “But Steve, even though he’s from the Northeast, had such a Midwestern-accessible, lovable comedic energy, like the great primetime sitcom stars of the fifties and sixties.”

Rainn Wilson auditioned to play Michael Scott

According to Wilson, he auditioned to play Michael before also auditioning for the role of Dwight Shrute, for which he eventually was cast.

Recalling his audition to play Michael, Wilson said in Greene’s book that it was “the world’s lamest” work, explaining that he tried to imitate Ricky Gervais — the lead of Britain’s The Office — and did a lackluster job.

But it all worked out in the end, as Shrute went on to become a star in his own right and the character Wilson is best known for.

Phyllis Smith earned her role by accident

While Phyllis Vance, played by Phyllis Smith, came to be a beloved character on the show, it wasn’t always planned that way.

Before The Office debuted, Smith had been working on the show as a casting associate, reading lines with many of the actors during their auditions.

Throughout the process, the producers grew so fond of her performances that they created an entire role for her.

John Krasinski shot the footage in the opening credits

After learning that he had been cast as Jim Halpert, John Krasinski took a trip to Scranton, Penn., with friends.

While visiting, Krasinski shot a variety of short clips of the town which later were used as the opening credits, played along with the theme song.

From the first season to the ninth, his clips play at the beginning of every episode.

Before the show aired, cast members predicted that it would have a long run

After they were officially cast for the show, stars Carell, Krasinski, Wilson and Jenna Fischer went to lunch together.

When discussing the future of the show, per Wilson’s 2015 book The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy, they collectively predicted that since it was so strong, it had the potential of airing for eight years.

They weren’t far off! The show ended up having a nine-season run.

Mindy Kaling was known for playing tricks on costar B.J. Novak

Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak’s longtime friendship started on The Office set. In fact, the pair were romantically connected from 2004 to 2007, while they were working on the show.

Since then, Novak clarified in a 2016 conversation with The Guardian that they are now just friends. “We’re very close in sort of a natural, eternal way,” he explained.

In the same interview, Novak recalled that while he and Kaling worked on the show as writers, actors and sometimes directors, Kaling would regularly prank him.

He said, “She would make up these – just out of nowhere – purposeless lies that I believed. Like saying that Allison Jones, the casting director of The Office, was also an actress who had been the third lead in Cold Mountain. And so I just thought that.”

Rainn Wilson sent Leslie David Baker to the hospital

In “Beach Games,” the 23rd episode of The Office’s third season, it wasn’t all fun and games off-camera.

While filming, Wilson accidentally kicked sand into Baker’s eye and he ended up with a scratched cornea, as Wilson wrote in his 2015 book. Baker even had to go to the hospital to have his eye properly cleaned.

Jenna Fischer’s husband played Pam’s lactation consultant

In “The Delivery: Part 2,” which aired in The Office’s sixth season, Pam is a new mother to her and Jim’s child and is struggling to breastfeed.

In the episode, a lactation consultant named Clark helps her which leads to a hilarious sequence of a jealous Jim watching someone else touch his wife.

As it turns out, the person who played Clark was actually Fisher’s real-life husband, Lee Kirk. The couple discussed his cameo on an episode of Fisher and Angela Kinsey’s podcast, Office Ladies.

John Krasinski And B.J. Novak grew up together

While Krasinski and Novak play co-workers on The Office, the show wasn’t their first encounter. The pair actually played Little League together as children in Massachusetts and were high school classmates at Newton South.

On The Ellen Degeneres Show in 2014, Novak explained, “John Krasinski and I have known each other our whole lives in the weirdest, most coincidental way.”

The note Jim put inside Pam’s teapot was real – and written by John Krasinski

Jim and Pam shippers, this one’s for you! Remember when Jim gifted Pam a teapot filled with goodies in the second season, originally with a letter for her inside, but then got cold feet and removed the letter? Then, in the ninth and final season, Pam finally receives and reads the note?

Well, on the Office Ladies podcast, Fischer revealed that the note she read in the ninth season was actually a real letter to her from Krasinski, expressing what their time on the hit show meant to him.

On the podcast, she explained: “I’m on camera, and I open up this note that John’s written me, and I just start crying,” she said. “I just start bawling. The first take was probably not usable.”

A ton of TV and film stars have directed episodes over the years

The Office is well-known for its collaborative nature on- and off-screen, so it makes perfect sense that many famous names had a hand in directing the iconic sitcom.

Episodes of the show were directed by Jon Favreau, Bryan Cranston, J.J. Abrams, Jason Reitman and Lee Eisenberg, as well as by cast members like Krasinski, Baumgartner, Ed Helms, Kaling, Wilson and Carell.

Paul Lieberstein, who plays Toby, hated being on-screen

Paul Lieberstein never set out to be on-screen during The Office, but creator Greg Daniels wanted almost all of the writers to also take part in the acting.

“So there’s this like kind of a very traditional thing that writers and actors are separated on a TV show … and they’re kind of asked not to talk,” Lieberstein said on Office Ladies. “[Daniels] at this point was questioning a lot of those rules. ‘Why was this happening and does this really make a better TV show?’ ”

Thanks to this rebel spirit, Lieberstein became the show’s love-to-hate character, Toby Flenderson.

Angela Kinsey was pregnant during season 4 – but her character wasn’t

While Kinsey’s character – also named Angela – eventually did get pregnant on The Office, it wasn’t in the script when the actress was actually expecting during the taping of the show’s fourth season.

That said, her office cubicle walls, desk and even boxes were used to hide her visible pregnancy.

John Krasinski and Rainn Wilson got the giggles during Kelly’s birthday party scene

On Office Ladies, Fischer and Kinsey broke down the behind-the-scenes drama of “Lecture Circuit: Part 1,” an episode in season 5. Per the podcast, Kaling, Wilson and Krasinski were laughing so hard they couldn’t make it through their scene.

In the two-part episode, Jim and Dwight take over as heads of the office Party Planning Committee, but they forget Kelly’s birthday.

Kinsey recalled, “They barely got through this scene … I don’t know how they got a useful take, and then they continue breaking throughout the whole rest of the script.”

When the hosts played audio of the bloopers, Fischer explained, “I can tell from listening to John laugh that he’s crying and he’s bent over.”

When The Office started, Mindy Kaling was the only female writer

When she joined The Office, Kaling was the only woman on the writing staff, per NBC, and she also wrote the most episodes out of anyone on the team.

Like Kaling, Novak and Lieberstein also wrote for the show while playing side characters.

Steve Carell and other workers on The Office supported the writers’ strike of 2007

During the 2007 writer’s strike, members of The Office cast and crew found ways of supporting their writers. As reported by The Washington Post, “Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson called in sick the first day of the strike, allowing for only two new scenes to be shot without writers on set.” Carell cited “enlarged balls” as the reason for his absence.

Daniels, who was serving as showrunner at the time, told The Hollywood Reporter, “I was the first writer to picket because I had to get to our set at 4 a.m. to try to prevent the Teamster caterers from crossing the line.”

Michael Schur, a writer on the show, said, “Steve Carell decided that if The Office couldn’t be produced with the writer-producers on set then he wasn’t going to make the show. So even though the ‘Dinner Party’ episode was done and ready to be filmed, he just didn’t show up, and everything came to a grinding halt.”

The strike ended in February 2008, when a new agreement was reached.

Parks and Recreation was almost an Office spinoff

While Parks and Recreation went on to become a popular show of its own, Daniels and Lieberstein originally envisioned a potential connection between the Indiana-based comedy and The Office.

As a spinoff, Parks and Recreation could have started when a copier breaks on The Office and after being refurbished, it is dropped off in Pawnee at Leslie’s office.

The idea was reportedly considered by producers, but in the end, the show came to exist within its own universe.

The Office showrunners wanted to divorce Jim and Pam

According to The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, Krasinski advocated for Jim and Pam’s divorce. Given their place as one of television’s most beloved couples, this revelation came as a shock to many fans of the show.

Per Greene, Krasinski thought the divorce would be a “realistic” storyline. “My whole pitch to Greg was that we’ve done so much with Jim and Pam, and now, after marriage and kids, there was a bit of a lull there, I think, for them about what they wanted to do,” Krasinski said. “For me it was, ‘Can you have this perfect relationship go through a split and keep it the same?’ which of course you can’t.”

According to Brent Forrester, a writer on The Office, the divorce would have taken place in the final season of the show. “Greg really wanted to do something extremely risky and high-stakes, which was the documentary airs and we see what effect it has had on these characters,” he said. “And there was going to be a reunion episode where you see that Jim and Pam have split up by this time, and they will have their reunion in the reunion episode.”

Luckily for Jim and Pam stans, none of this ended up going down. When the show brought on Brian (Chris Diamantopoulos), who was set to be a new love interest for Pam, viewers reacted poorly. Writer Owen Ellickson said, “People just absolutely did not like that.” According to Ellickson, “Greg absolutely turned on a dime after that and we pivoted away, I think pretty skillfully given how quickly we had to do that.”

In the end, even Krasinski changed his mind, realizing how important it was to fans that the couple stay together.

According to The Office cast, Creed Bratton is most like his character

In a 2009 video shared by The Hollywood Reporter, a reporter asked The Office cast which actor most resembled their character in the show.

In the video, Fisher, Helms and Smith all said that Creed Bratton was most like his character, with whom he shares a name.

In response, Bratton told THR, “I don’t think ‘til the rest of life goes on here on this planet there will ever be anyone as creepy as Creed.” He went on to clarify, “The character. Not myself, of course. Actually, I’m kind of a nice guy.”