EP. 75.5 — A Look Back on Grief Counseling

OFFICE-75.5-20210507-GriefReRelease-SKv01-PW.mp3

[00:00:00] ANGELA KINSEY Hey, Office Ladies family, guess what, we are done with Season Four. 

[00:00:05] JENNA FISCHER I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. We’re moving into Season Five, but we need a beat to prepare. 

[00:00:10] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, we need a week off. We got to get our notes ready. 

[00:00:14] JENNA FISCHER So we are going to rerun “Grief Counseling”. 

[00:00:18] ANGELA KINSEY You remember “Grief Counseling”, Season Three, Episode Four. 

[00:00:22] JENNA FISCHER This was a great episode. A lot happens in this episode. We have audio clips from Jen Celotta. We have an audio clip from Mindy Kaling’s book. We have a twin absorption deep dive. 

[00:00:34] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[00:00:35] JENNA FISCHER I talk about poking some melons in France and Angela gets to the bottom of who is moving that conference table in and out of the conference room. 

[00:00:44] ANGELA KINSEY I mean, it drove me crazy for years. 

[00:00:46] JENNA FISCHER You had to find out. We also have a special guest on this episode, my daughter busts in while we were in the middle of recording. 

[00:00:55] ANGELA KINSEY With an actual bird emergency. 

[00:00:57] JENNA FISCHER Yes. So, guys, we thought this is perfect. It’s Spring again. I’ve got birds in a nest again at my house. 

[00:01:06] ANGELA KINSEY I know, me too. So enjoy “Grief Counseling”. And we’re going to see you next week with Season Five. 

[00:01:13] JENNA FISCHER Season Five. 

[00:01:14] ANGELA KINSEY Holy moly. 

[00:01:19] JENNA FISCHER I’m Jenna Fischer. 

[00:01:20] ANGELA KINSEY I’m Angela Kinsey. 

[00:01:21] JENNA FISCHER We were on “The Office” together. 

[00:01:22] ANGELA KINSEY And we’re best friends. 

[00:01:23] JENNA FISCHER And now we’re doing the ultimate “Office” re-watch podcast just for you. 

[00:01:27] ANGELA KINSEY Each week we will break down an episode of “The Office” and give exclusive behind the scenes stories that only two people who were there can tell you. 

[00:01:34] JENNA FISCHER We’re the “Office Ladies”. Hi, everybody. 

[00:01:40] ANGELA KINSEY Hello, welcome to “Office Ladies”. I’m so excited about this episode. 

[00:01:45] JENNA FISCHER It’s so good, right? 

[00:01:48] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. And we, we reached out to lots of folks, so we have some fun, fun stuff. 

[00:01:53] JENNA FISCHER This is “Grief Counseling”. And guys, if we can get you depressed by the end of this podcast, we’ve done our job. 

[00:02:01] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, Michael. 

[00:02:02] JENNA FISCHER It’s Season 3, Episode 4, written by Jen Celotta and directed by Roger Nygard. 

[00:02:08] ANGELA KINSEY Jen Celotta is one of my favorite people, Jenna. 

[00:02:12] JENNA FISCHER 100 percent. 

[00:02:13] ANGELA KINSEY She is just such a delight and was so much fun on set because she would always crack up. 

[00:02:18] JENNA FISCHER Oh yeah. She was one of our worst laughters, which made her the best laughter. 

[00:02:24] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. Hey Jenna. You know what I’d love right now? 

[00:02:26] JENNA FISCHER I hope it’s a summary. 

[00:02:28] ANGELA KINSEY It’s a summary. 

[00:02:30] JENNA FISCHER Woot woot. All right. Here it is. Michael finds out that his former boss, Ed Truck, was decapitated in a self-induced drunk driving accident. Nobody seems upset, though, or certainly not upset enough, which causes Michael to question if anyone would care about his death. Of course, he doesn’t know that that’s what he’s worried about. 

[00:02:50] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, he doesn’t understand, really the depths of his sadness. 

[00:02:54] JENNA FISCHER Yes. 

[00:02:55] ANGELA KINSEY He wants everyone to love him and be sad for him if he wasn’t around. 

[00:02:58] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. Make a fuss about him. Well, first, he leads everyone in some grief counseling, but then later he forces everyone to participate in a bird funeral. Meanwhile, over in Stamford, Jim is put in charge of supervising Karen for the day, but decides to put their work on hold so they can search for her favorite bag of chips. 

[00:03:20] ANGELA KINSEY Mmhmm. 

[00:03:20] JENNA FISCHER Oh, we’re gonna have so much to say about that. 

[00:03:23] ANGELA KINSEY This is a really odd tangent, and I don’t mean to take this really weird, really fast. 

[00:03:27] JENNA FISCHER Do it. 

[00:03:29] ANGELA KINSEY Jenna, while I was re-watching this episode, I hear a commotion outside of my that’s-what-she shed. 

[00:03:34] JENNA FISCHER No. 

[00:03:35] ANGELA KINSEY And a squirrel is eating-. 

[00:03:37] JENNA FISCHER Oh. 

[00:03:38] ANGELA KINSEY A little bird. 

[00:03:39] JENNA FISCHER That’s worse than what I thought you were gonna say. 

[00:03:41] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. And so I was like, wait, what’s he eating? What’s he eating? I start filming it. I have video of me filming the squirrel. And in the background you can hear “Grief Counseling” and a bird funeral. 

[00:03:50] JENNA FISCHER Oh my god. 

[00:03:51] ANGELA KINSEY It’s like. It was so crazy. But apparently squirrels are like they’re like an opportunist. You know? If there’s a little bird’s nest, they go for a baby bird. They do it. 

[00:04:02] JENNA FISCHER Squirrels are terrible. Everyone thinks they’re so cute because of their fluffy tails, but they’re awful. Look it up, everybody. Squirrels carry more disease than rats. Look it up. 

[00:04:11] ANGELA KINSEY OK, sorry, but it just was kind of crazy that I was watching an episode that had a bird funeral and then I saw a squirrel attack a bird. It was crazy. 

[00:04:20] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:04:21] ANGELA KINSEY OK. How do we get back from that? Hit me with some Fast Facts. 

[00:04:24] JENNA FISCHER All right. Fast Fact Number One: this episode was written by Jen Celotta. We said that, and Angela reached out to Jen for this episode. 

[00:04:33] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. Jen and I traded emails and texts and she was so much fun to talk to about this episode. She was so excited to share information. And so she sent in a whole bunch of audio clips that we are going to play and she is going to come back as a full, awesome guest for maybe two episodes coming up, Jenna. 

[00:04:56] JENNA FISCHER Ooh. 

[00:04:56] ANGELA KINSEY Ooh. We’re trying to figure out scheduling and whatnot, but she is in and I cannot wait. 

[00:05:01] JENNA FISCHER Well, let’s play her “Hello” audio clip, Sam. 

[00:05:04] ANGELA KINSEY OK. 

[00:05:05] JEN CELOTTA Hey, guys, it’s Jen. I miss you. I’m loving your podcast. I am learning so much. I had no idea of the drama behind the scenes of “Booze Cruise” where you were floating away at sea, Angela, with Phyllis and Rainn and Brian. Amazing. Anyway, I’m loving it. And I’m gonna answer some “Grief Counseling” questions, so I’ll send them in separate audio files. 

[00:05:29] JENNA FISCHER Isn’t it nice to hear her voice, Ang? 

[00:05:30] ANGELA KINSEY I love her voice. I find her voice really soothing. Now, listen, we were chatting back and forth and I was listening to her voice a lot. And Jen, I think you have real good podcast voice. 

[00:05:41] JENNA FISCHER I know. Jen, are you doing voice over work? Like I’d buy anything you’re selling with your voice.  

[00:05:47] ANGELA KINSEY Or just call me and talk to me at the end of my day. Just leave me a message every day. Just kind of telling me what you did. 

[00:05:51] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:05:52] ANGELA KINSEY ‘Cause I will listen to that as I like do the dishes. 

[00:05:54] JENNA FISCHER I agree. And Angela, in one of the clips that Jen sent, she explains a little bit about the process of writing this episode for her, right? 

[00:06:02] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. It’s so, it’s so fascinating. Sam, can you play it? 

[00:06:05] JENNA FISCHER Enjoy Jen’s voice, everyone. 

[00:06:07] JEN CELOTTA One thing about this episode that really stuck with me personally was it was a thrill because it was hard to tell stories on other shows about characters going through internal things. And in this case with Michael, it was even more than that because this character was going through something internal and he was unaware of it, which made it really exciting to write. ‘Cause I love internal stories, but it also made it kind of difficult to explain at times. And I remember that I created a little chart where it said, here’s what Michael is doing and saying in the scene. And then in bold under it, I wrote what was actually happening to Michael underneath it all. And of course, Steve got it all intuitively. And he’s a genius. But it was such a treat to be able to write and tell that kind of story. And then Jenna to have you be aware of what it was that was going on with Michael, to have Pam sort of sense it and see it and fix it without it being spoken was just such a delight as a writer. 

[00:07:09] ANGELA KINSEY Isn’t that amazing? 

[00:07:11] JENNA FISCHER I love it. I love that she had like a secret notes and charts in her script about the emotional journey of characters. 

[00:07:18] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, I find all of that so interesting. Just like the writers process and what she wrote and how then it it ended up playing, you know? 

[00:07:26] JENNA FISCHER Oh my gosh, Angela, I just realized something. 

[00:07:28] ANGELA KINSEY What? 

[00:07:28] JENNA FISCHER She was tracking. 

[00:07:30] ANGELA KINSEY She was tracking. 

[00:07:31] JENNA FISCHER She was tracking Michael’s emotional journey. She tracked it. 

[00:07:34] ANGELA KINSEY All right. Well, we are going to hear more from Jen throughout the episode. So Jenna, why don’t you Fast Fact me? 

[00:07:39] JENNA FISCHER OK. I’m calling Fast Fact Number Two, “The Big Fight”. 

[00:07:43] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, you did a shoulder shimmy. 

[00:07:46] JENNA FISCHER I know. Are you intrigued? 

[00:07:48] ANGELA KINSEY I am. 

[00:07:48] JENNA FISCHER In Mindy Kaling’s book “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me”? She writes a chapter about working on “The Office” and being a writer and also being a performer. And she said in her book that she and Greg Daniels got into such a huge fight during this episode. 

[00:08:06] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[00:08:06] JENNA FISCHER That she stormed off the set. 

[00:08:08] ANGELA KINSEY She kicked his car. 

[00:08:10] JENNA FISCHER Yes. Yes. 

[00:08:13] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, that’s so good, I forgot about that. 

[00:08:15] JENNA FISCHER But rather than have me read you the passage, Angela, wouldn’t you rather hear it in Mindy’s voice? 

[00:08:21] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. 

[00:08:22] JENNA FISCHER Well, guess what? 

[00:08:23] ANGELA KINSEY What? 

[00:08:23] JENNA FISCHER There’s an audio book. 

[00:08:25] ANGELA KINSEY Oh. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Hit play, Sam, I want to hear it. 

[00:08:30] JENNA FISCHER All right. Here is the clip from the audio book of “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns”. It’s published by Penguin Random House, LLC and read by Mindy Kaling. 

[00:08:39] MINDY KALING I tend to fight with Greg the most. My friend and fellow office writer, Steve Hely, believes it is because I am emotional and intuitive and Greg is more cerebral and logical. Or as I like to think of it, I am a sensitive poet and Greg is a mean robot. Our fighting is legendary. One time late at night, our script coordinator Sean and our head writer Danny both brought in their dogs and upon seeing each other, they got into a violent barking fight. Paul Lieberstein glanced over and joked, “Oh, I thought that was just Greg and Mindy”. What do we fight about? I wish I could say they were big, smart philosophical issues about writing or comedy, but sometimes they’re as small as, “If we do that cold open where Kevin dumps a terrine of chili on himself, I will quit the show”. We did that cold open, by the way, and it was a hit. And I’m still working at the show. I can get a little theatrical. Which makes sense because after all, I came up through the theater, said in my snootiness Masterpiece Theater voice, I will tell you about the worst fight we ever had. In a very heated rewrite session for the Season 3 episode, “Grief Counseling”. I was arguing with Greg so much. He finally said in front of all 12 writers, “If you’re going to resist what I’m doing here, you can just go home, Mindy”. Greg never sends anyone home or even hints at it. Greg is the kind of guy who is so agreeable, I frequently find him on our studio lot, embroiled in some long, boring conversation with a random person while his lunch is getting cold in his to go container. And he’s the boss. I would never talk to anyone if I was the boss. I would only talk to my attorney and my psychic. So anyway, my very nice boss had just hugely reprimanded me. Greg suggesting I go home unless I adjusted my attitude was the harshest he’d ever been to anyone in 3 years I’d been on the show. There was silence. No one looked at me. People pretended to be absorbed in their phones. One writer didn’t even have a phone. He just pretended to be absorbed in his hand. I was so embarrassed and angry that I got up, stomped out of the room, stole a 24 pack of bottled water from the production office, kicked the bumper of Greg’s car and left the studio. 

[00:10:47] JENNA FISCHER Is that amazing? 

[00:10:48] ANGELA KINSEY It’s amazing. I love the detail that she took a 24 pack of water. 

[00:10:54] JENNA FISCHER Oh yeah. 

[00:10:54] ANGELA KINSEY She was like, oh, I’m leaving. I am leaving. 

[00:10:56] JENNA FISCHER But I’m going to be hydrated. Well listen, she goes on to say that after this she went to a nail salon to get a pedicure. And the woman asked her, “Oh, do you have the day off”? And Mindy was like, “No, my boss threw me out of work”. And the woman was like, “Oh, you got fired”. And that’s when Mindy was like, Oh, wait, wait. What am I doing here? And she drove back to work and she told everyone she’d been in the bathroom. But Angela, she did keep that water. 

[00:11:21] ANGELA KINSEY Good for you, Mindy. Her book is so fantastic. I own this book. It is hilarious. It is a great read. Mindy, thank you so much for letting us use a little excerpt from it. And you have to come on the show. And she is, guys, because I texted her and she’s coming on. Just wait.

[00:11:36] JENNA FISCHER She’s coming. We won’t say when, but it’s happening. It’s soon. You guys, if you’re looking for entertainment right now, give it a try. The audiobook is available on the Penguin House audio website and SoundCloud.com. And thank you to Penguin Random House for letting us play the clip. 

[00:11:52] ANGELA KINSEY I love knowing that this was going on in the backdrop of us filming this episode. You’re kicking a car. You’re taking water. Jen Celotta is on set, cracking up. What is happening in the writers room? 

[00:12:05] JENNA FISCHER Should we move on to Fast Fact Number Three? 

[00:12:08] ANGELA KINSEY I mean, I don’t know how you beat one and two, but go for it. 

[00:12:11] JENNA FISCHER Well, I’m not sure I will, but I got a little scoop from Kent-apedia about this episode. 

[00:12:18] ANGELA KINSEY Ooh. 

[00:12:19] JENNA FISCHER All right, on the first shoot day of this episode, Kent reminded me that we had our big Season 3 photo shoot for NBC, where we did a big cast photo shoot. We did individual photos all in character. And since there weren’t a lot of scenes happening in the break room, that’s what we use for the photo shoot. I don’t know if you remember it, Angela. 

[00:12:41] ANGELA KINSEY I do. 

[00:12:42] JENNA FISCHER They set up a desk and then they would switch out the props on the desk and we would take single photos. And I have this very stern single photo of me holding a pencil and a pad of paper with a drawing on it that I have never felt properly represents the character of Pam, because I think I look like, I think I look like a teacher who’s ready to scold you in this photo. 

[00:13:08] ANGELA KINSEY Mmhmm. 

[00:13:08] JENNA FISCHER As opposed to a woman going through a life altering journey of love and expression. 

[00:13:15] ANGELA KINSEY I have a photo of me looking very stern in a sort of a severe ponytail, and I’m holding up a card with a cat on it. 

[00:13:25] JENNA FISCHER Mmhmm. Well, then they took the desks away and they loaded the break room with paper boxes and we all posed in front of them. Do you remember that one? 

[00:13:32] ANGELA KINSEY I do, because it was actually a very small space. And when they got us all in there, they then couldn’t figure out how to get us all in the photo. 

[00:13:40] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:13:40] ANGELA KINSEY We were so jam packed. So they had tiered these boxes like a little pyramid. And guess who had to crawl up to the tippedy top and is at the very top? And really, I just look like a very tiny floating head in the way back of the photo. It’s me. 

[00:13:56] JENNA FISCHER Well, then they moved us all over to the warehouse. Do you remember this? And they made it rain paper on us. 

[00:14:02] ANGELA KINSEY They blew paper in a giant fan. 

[00:14:05] JENNA FISCHER This was a little insane because it took, I mean, I can’t even remember how many times to blow the paper. 

[00:14:12] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, I have a great photo from this day. I don’t know who took it, actually, but it’s in between, whenever they blew the paper in the air, then they’d have to stop and reset it. 

[00:14:22] JENNA FISCHER Yeah, they’d have to pick up all the paper from the ground. 

[00:14:25] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. And then someone would have to bring it back and toss it back in the air. Right? So it was like a 20 minute turnaround between these setups and in between the setups we all had to just stay there in the warehouse. We’re like on the loading dock area. 

[00:14:37] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:14:37] ANGELA KINSEY Right? 

[00:14:37] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:14:38] ANGELA KINSEY And I’m in my skirt and my blouse, my severe ponytail and I squat down lady like in a skirt. You know how you can tuck your skirt up in your leg and squat down so you’re not ruining the mystery for anyone. 

[00:14:49] JENNA FISCHER Sure. 

[00:14:50] ANGELA KINSEY I. Jenna, you said “Sure” like you weren’t sure. I squat down in my Angela Martin outfit to talk to Paul Lieberstein. So there’s this great photo of everyone sort of milling about in between this paper setup and I’m squatting down so completely out of character talking to Paul. I love it. 

[00:15:09] JENNA FISCHER Well, it was really crazy because we would have to shoot these whole episodes. But then also, like when they would be setting up a new scene, we would run off to the warehouse and take pictures with the paper coming down on us. 

[00:15:22] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, it was bizarre day. 

[00:15:24] JENNA FISCHER It was super, super bizarre. And yeah, when Kent wrote me in and reminded me of that, it all kind of came flooding back like, oh yeah, I remeber how weird that was. 

[00:15:33] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[00:15:33] JENNA FISCHER Well, listen, should we take a break and then get into this episode? 

[00:15:36] ANGELA KINSEY Let’s do it. Let’s do it. 

[00:15:38] JENNA FISCHER All right. We’ll be right back. 

[00:15:45] ANGELA KINSEY All right, so we’re back. We are in the bullpen. That’s what we would call the big main room where, you know, Michael would always come out and talk to everyone. And he is doing a bit, guys. 

[00:15:54] JENNA FISCHER Oh, he has got a bit. 

[00:15:56] ANGELA KINSEY He has stacked up some boxes of paper. Jenna, now that I remember that we were doing the photo shoot, I feel like those were the boxes that were in the break room that we took pictures on. I’m not even kidding. 

[00:16:07] JENNA FISCHER They very may well have been. 

[00:16:09] ANGELA KINSEY So Michael’s doing that classic like stairs or escalator bit, you know, where you stack up a bunch of stuff and then you slowly just kind of crouch down. And Dwight thinks it is the funniest thing he’s ever seen. 

[00:16:21] JENNA FISCHER Oh, Rainn’s reaction is like if you showed that to a five year old. 

[00:16:26] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. Yes. 

[00:16:27] JENNA FISCHER Utter glee and just this is the best joke he’s ever seen. 

[00:16:30] ANGELA KINSEY Ever seen. It is. And also, he’s laughing as if he’s never heard of it. 

[00:16:34] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. This is all new to him. 

[00:16:35] ANGELA KINSEY  He made it, he made it to be an adult man and has never seen the fake stairs bit. But, you know, I think, you know, in this episode, Pam is a little bit of the Jim. Pam has taken on the jokester role, right? 

[00:16:49] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:16:50] ANGELA KINSEY So Ryan and Kevin join in and they ask him to get little things like a pen, you know. But then Pam, showing a little bit of Pam Sass, is like, how about a cup of coffee? How about you get me a cup of coffee? And Michael’s like, eh. 

[00:17:04] JENNA FISCHER Well, I have a lot to say about this cold open, Ang. 

[00:17:07] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, I want to hear it. 

[00:17:09] JENNA FISCHER First of all. This was not the original cold open in the script. 

[00:17:13] ANGELA KINSEY Somebody has the original script. 

[00:17:16] JENNA FISCHER I’ve got a shooting draft of “Grief Counseling”. 

[00:17:20] ANGELA KINSEY Let’s hear it. 

[00:17:22] JENNA FISCHER The original cold open was in Stamford. 

[00:17:25] ANGELA KINSEY What? 

[00:17:25] JENNA FISCHER And it involved-. Yeah. And it involved a coworker of Jim wanting him to look at photos of her baby. 

[00:17:32] ANGELA KINSEY Oh. Oh, I saw this in a deleted scene. And she gets really put out with him because she shows him a picture of her husband and the baby in the bathtub. And Jim is like finds it off putting. He’s like, oh, God, they’re in the bathtub. And she’s like, oh, you know what? Come back to me when you have kids, OK? She gets really mad at them. 

[00:17:52] JENNA FISCHER Well, this was the original cold open. This cold open was added later. And we shot it at the end of the week because it was an ad. 

[00:18:01] ANGELA KINSEY And we had all those boxes. 

[00:18:02] JENNA FISCHER We had all those boxes from our photo shoot. Oh my gosh. I wonder if they were inspired. They were like, wait, I know what we can do with these boxes. 

[00:18:10] ANGELA KINSEY We have all these boxes just stacked in the middle of the soundstage. 

[00:18:14] JENNA FISCHER We got it. 

[00:18:14] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[00:18:15] JENNA FISCHER A lot of people wrote in and said, oh, my gosh, how many takes did you guys do of this cold open? Because if you notice, Steve looks like he’s like sweating when he’s brings Pam her coffee. 

[00:18:26] ANGELA KINSEY He’s sweating his butt off. 

[00:18:27] JENNA FISCHER  He is so tired. Kent told me we did 10 takes. 10 takes. 

[00:18:34] ANGELA KINSEY Oh no. 

[00:18:34] JENNA FISCHER And every time we did a take, Steve went up and down the stairs 3 times. 

[00:18:39] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, my God. Poor Steve. 

[00:18:40] JENNA FISCHER So he did that 30 times. 

[00:18:43] ANGELA KINSEY He was getting like a major like all of those like your quads, says the person that never works out. What are those called? 

[00:18:49] JENNA FISCHER Your quads. 

[00:18:50] ANGELA KINSEY He was getting like-. 

[00:18:51] JENNA FISCHER It was probably some quad and glut. 

[00:18:52] ANGELA KINSEY Quad and glut. And then he had to crawl around. Any wonder. Poor guy. 

[00:18:57] JENNA FISCHER And Kent also told me that we actually did six different camera setups for the scene because they had to move the camera in different places to do the shot when he’s crawling, when he goes inside the kitchen for his talking head, which is technically part of that. So, yeah. But he, he walked up and down the stairs 30 times. 

[00:19:16] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, my gosh. Steve, your butt. 

[00:19:19] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:19:20] ANGELA KINSEY It must have been so sore. Well, I have two, two little things in this opening scene. First of all, at 51 seconds, I think Angela kind of smiles. 

[00:19:30] JENNA FISCHER Oh. 

[00:19:31] ANGELA KINSEY When Pam says get a cup of coffee, Angela kind of has a smile. Like there is a brief moment where I think she’s on your side. I just wanted that to be documented. 

[00:19:40] JENNA FISCHER Oh. 

[00:19:41] ANGELA KINSEY And then I have a great fan catch. At 1 minute, 27 seconds. Ready for this? 

[00:19:47] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:19:48] ANGELA KINSEY Kelly and Chloe Harrigan and Shannon Rojansky, they wrote in and they noticed that when Michael returns from the kitchen, when he’s crawling on the ground, that that is Jim’s coffee mug. That’s the coffee mug that Jim always uses. 

[00:20:02] JENNA FISCHER Oh, my gosh. Yes. 

[00:20:04] ANGELA KINSEY Isn’t that a great catch? And I was like, I wonder if that was a little nod to Jim so that Jim’s presence got to be in Scranton for a lil moment. 

[00:20:12] JENNA FISCHER I love that. Great catch, guys. 

[00:20:14] ANGELA KINSEY Great catch. 

[00:20:15] JENNA FISCHER All right. So then we move into Michael’s office and he’s on the phone with Jan, who informs him that they have lost Ed Truck. 

[00:20:25] ANGELA KINSEY And then Michael’s like, well, I have his number somewhere. I can find it for you. 

[00:20:29] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. And she’s like, no, Michael. Ed Truck has died. He goes out into the room. He breaks the news to everybody. Kelly rushes up, gives them a hug. 

[00:20:39] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, we have a special appearance by Kelly’s extensions and her bangs. They make a special appearance. 

[00:20:45] JENNA FISCHER Yes. They are hugging Michael. 

[00:20:46] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[00:20:46] JENNA FISCHER Giving him some comfort. And then Michael approaches Pam for a little awkward hug. 

[00:20:51] ANGELA KINSEY So awkward and lady, I have a track moment. I’m tracking it. I’m tracking it. 

[00:20:57] JENNA FISCHER What are you tracking? 

[00:20:58] ANGELA KINSEY You know, I love to track the plants at front reception. 

[00:21:03] JENNA FISCHER Are there more new plants? 

[00:21:04] ANGELA KINSEY Well, whatever happens to them? They make an appearance and then we never see them again. At 3 minutes, 29 seconds. I am pretty sure that’s a succulent. We have a succulent. 

[00:21:17] JENNA FISCHER Succulent alert. 

[00:21:19] ANGELA KINSEY Succulent alert, at front reception. We’ll probably never see it again. But when Michael hugs Pam awkwardly, you get a nice shot of that succulent. 

[00:21:29] JENNA FISCHER I’m not kidding. I really need to start a spreadsheet. 

[00:21:33] ANGELA KINSEY I know. A really complex spreadsheet. 

[00:21:35] JENNA FISCHER All the things we’re tracking. Well, next, we move over to the Stamford office and a staff meeting becomes very awkward when Josh is super sexist and condescending to Karen. 

[00:21:49] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, he, he was. He’s sort of just totally dismissed her. 

[00:21:52] JENNA FISCHER What up, Josh? 

[00:21:52] ANGELA KINSEY  I know. 

[00:21:54] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. Seriously. And then he puts Jim in charge of her for the day. 

[00:21:59] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, gross. Gross, Josh. 

[00:22:01] JENNA FISCHER Oh, my gosh. Is this just like, is, this is like a physical representation of mansplaining. I feel like. 

[00:22:08] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. You know what? Jim, why don’t you check in on that? 

[00:22:13] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. Why don’t you oversee that, Jim? 

[00:22:15] ANGELA KINSEY Why don’t you check in on that? 

[00:22:16] JENNA FISCHER And she’s like yeah. Yeah. Thanks. 

[00:22:19] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. Thanks. 

[00:22:20] JENNA FISCHER Well we had a fan catch from Brandon. He says at 3 minutes and 42 seconds when Karen is flipping through her stack of papers. I think I see a page from the script in her notes. 

[00:22:33] ANGELA KINSEY Oh. 

[00:22:34] JENNA FISCHER Brandon. 

[00:22:34] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, that’s such a good catch. 

[00:22:36] JENNA FISCHER You do. I froze it. Oh yeah. She’s got a little script page. We used to do that, remember, Ang? We used to hide script pages in our notebooks. I used to keep them in a drawer like in-between takes. I would open my drawer and I would be like, okay, wait, did I get it? Did I get it? Did I get it? Then I shut my drawer again. 

[00:22:54] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. We had scripts hidden everywhere on that set that we could just peek at between scenes to make sure we were like on our lines or if we wanted to like, prep right before. I mean, obviously, we had worked on them and we knew our lines. But when you’re doing a bunch of takes, sometimes you’re like, oh, wait, crap, what was that? And you just want to do a quick peek. 

[00:23:12] JENNA FISCHER But also, you know, they would have their writers draft and then we would read it at a table read, and then they would make a bunch of changes and they would start on Monday with what was called the shooting draft. And that’s what I have. I have a bunch of shooting drafts left over. But every single morning we would arrive to work and there would be a stack of new pages. They were rewritten scenes just for that day. 

[00:23:35] ANGELA KINSEY They would hand you the pages sometimes that morning and be like, okay. Here we go, guys. These are changes for the day. 

[00:23:40] JENNA FISCHER Yeah, so you better believe we were hiding pages in our desks and notebooks. But yes, Brandon, you saw one. 

[00:23:46] ANGELA KINSEY That, that just tickled me because that’s so true. That’s a good catch. Okay. So now at 4 minutes, 2 seconds, Karen is really disappointed, you guys, because the chips that she likes, they’re not in the vending machine. But I think Jim felt bad at the way Josh treated her. And he now wants to make amends. Right? He wants to try to help her find these potato chips. And this whole scene about Karen and her potato chips just got me thinking about Rashida’s breakfast order. 

[00:24:17] JENNA FISCHER OK. 

[00:24:17] ANGELA KINSEY Do you remember her breakfast order? 

[00:24:20] JENNA FISCHER No. 

[00:24:21] ANGELA KINSEY OK, well, we often were in hair and makeup together at the same time. And I texted her because I was like “Rashida, I totally just had this memory of your breakfast order”. Here was the great thing about our caterer, Sergio. First of all, he was amazing. But if your order became kind of popular, if other people liked it, you would get your name on the menu. 

[00:24:42] JENNA FISCHER Yes. 

[00:24:42] ANGELA KINSEY So you would, you would walk up to the truck to order breakfast in the morning, the food truck, and you could order a “Rashida, Angela size”. Because I always wanted everything half portion because it was just big. The portions were big and I’m a little person. So I’d always say, can I have half of that? So they started calling it “Angela size”. So here’s what the “Rashida” was. And Sergio I ran into Sergio a while back because I was working on a Netflix show and he was the caterer for it, for Mindy’s Show, “Never Have I Ever”. He-. 

[00:25:12] JENNA FISCHER Really? 

[00:25:13] ANGELA KINSEY Was the caterer. Yeah. Mindy hired him, which was fantastic. We had a little mini “Office” reunion. And here’s the Rashida, which you can still order from Sergio. Ready? 

[00:25:23] JENNA FISCHER Yes. 

[00:25:23] ANGELA KINSEY A corn tortilla, poached egg, black beans, avocado, turkey bacon, Cholula on the side. And I was texting with Rashida about it. She’s like, I don’t even know how I functioned after eating that. Like, why, should I just have gone and taken a nap? But that’s called the “Rashida”. And-. 

[00:25:41] JENNA FISCHER But I can get that “Angela size” if I’m not that hungry. 

[00:25:44] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, I’d like the “Rasida, Angela size”, please. 

[00:25:46] JENNA FISCHER Oh, my gosh. That brought back so many memories. Molly Neke wrote in to say, guys, you can see her favorite chips in the vending machine slot. B1. 

[00:25:56] ANGELA KINSEY Okay, so there’s a row of potato chips in the vending machine, but apparently those aren’t the ones that Karen wants. 

[00:26:04] JENNA FISCHER Yes. Karen wants salt and vinegar potato chips. I did a mini deep dive on Herr’s potato chips and Philadelphia magazine did a ranking of all the Herr’s potato chips and salt and vinegar was their number one chip. So it might make sense that it was hard to find because it’s their, it’s the number one chip. Close behind was cheddar horseradish. Pam’s favorite sour cream and onion was number 4. 

[00:26:29] ANGELA KINSEY Our favorite is their barbecue chips. I love their Herr’s barbecue chips. 

[00:26:33] JENNA FISCHER I don’t know where that is in the ranking. 

[00:26:35] ANGELA KINSEY On the ranking. OK. 

[00:26:36] JENNA FISCHER I’m sorry, I didn’t look that one up. 

[00:26:39] ANGELA KINSEY Ok. 

[00:26:39] JENNA FISCHER But I do have a script catch for you as well, we’re not done talking about this yet. In the shooting draft of the script, her favorite chips were going to be salsa verde Doritos. 

[00:26:49] ANGELA KINSEY Wow. So here we go, we’re going back to Scranton and Creed is in Michael’s office with Dwight and Michael and he tells them that Ed was decapitated. And Michael was like, what? And he goes, Yeah, he was flying down the road, he’d been drinking and I guess he ran into a semi truck, right?

[00:27:10] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:27:10] ANGELA KINSEY And was decapitated. 

[00:27:11] JENNA FISCHER Angela, we got a lot of mail about this scene with Creed. OK, there is a very, very big debate online over whether or not Creed, the character, is making it up that Ed was decapitated or if it’s the truth. 

[00:27:27] ANGELA KINSEY The truth within the show. And, you know, Creed told some crazy stories both on camera and off camera. So I can see where this sort of like controversy, if you will, around Creed’s retelling of this. Is it true? Is it not? 

[00:27:40] JENNA FISCHER Fiona, Danielle, Kelly, Danny, McKenzie, Adam and Valerie, they all said, how did Creed know the details of Ed Truck’s death if Michael was the first to know from corporate? So their theory is that Creed’s making it up because there’s no possible way for him to know more details than Michael. And then Maria pointed out that Creed lies later in another episode and says that Dwight was decapitated. That’s in the episode, “The Returns”. So she’s like, maybe Creed is just obsessed with decapitation because he’s a weird character. I don’t know. 

[00:28:17] ANGELA KINSEY Well, here’s the thing. I love that you guys were all writing back and forth about this. I think that because Creed knew Ed, he actually knew, Ed, maybe there was someone he called, but we decided, hey, let’s go to the source. Let’s ask Jen Celotta. Was this story made up by Creed, the character, or was it truth in the sort of scope of the show? Did this really happen? So here’s what Jen had to say. 

[00:28:42] JEN CELOTTA Did Ed Truck really get decapitated? Sadly for Ed Truck, he did really get decapitated. It sounds like a Creed story, but it actually was a true story in the world of our show. There’s no Ed Truck, and he didn’t really lose his head. However, in the world of “The Office”, he did get de-, decapitated for real. We was, I think it was Greg that came up with the decapitation. I can’t quite remember and Greg can’t remember. But I remember spending a lot of time talking about the way Michael’s former boss would die and how it had to be something very sudden and jarring so that it could be a shock to Michael Scott’s system. That he could just freak out one day because he’s just living his life and going into the office and then all of a sudden he could be dead. So that, I think that is where the decapitation came from. Unfortunately, I also can’t remember who came up with his cap was detated from his head. I feel like it wasn’t me because I would have been really proud of it. If it was me, and I’d remember that. But, but yeah, the decapitation was real for Ed Truck. Sorry, Ed Truck. 

[00:29:47] JENNA FISCHER There you have it. 

[00:29:48] ANGELA KINSEY Ed Truck really got to decapitated. Creed actually got some facts that Michael didn’t know. This is-. 

[00:29:54] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:29:55] ANGELA KINSEY This is the, like slippery slope with Creed. And let me tell you, this is true in real life and as his character, he’ll say something and you’re like, that’s not true. And then it’s 100 percent true. And then he’ll say something else and it’s total B.S. So.

[00:30:08] JENNA FISCHER Yes. Yes. 

[00:30:09] ANGELA KINSEY Welcome to the world of Creed. 

[00:30:11] JENNA FISCHER That is true. Well, after this, Michael decides to break the news to the whole office. I love the little couplet. I just loved it. I watched it over and over of Michael being like, I don’t know how to tell you this. And then Dwight is like, Ed Truck was decapitated. 

[00:30:26] ANGELA KINSEY And he goes what? 

[00:30:27] JENNA FISCHER And Michael’s like what are you doing? And he said, you didn’t know how to say it. 

[00:30:29] ANGELA KINSEY You said you didn’t know how to say it. Dwight is so literal. Right? 

[00:30:32] JENNA FISCHER So literal. Yeah. 

[00:30:33] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, my God. It made me laugh so hard too. 

[00:30:37] JENNA FISCHER Well, lady, I want to talk about something in the scene because at 5 minutes, 38 seconds. I wrote down Angela’s face. 

[00:30:44] ANGELA KINSEY What’d I do? 

[00:30:44] JENNA FISCHER I feel like in this moment you have what I would consider to be a quintessential Angela reaction. You made so many sour faces on our show and they are so funny to me because I never see you make these faces in real life. They are so not your personality, but they have been turned into memes. You are known for this just disapproving look. But it’s like, it’s just funny to me because in real life, you are nothing like this. 

[00:31:16] ANGELA KINSEY You know, people write in and say, oh, you have resting bitch face. You’ve heard that expression, right? 

[00:31:21] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:31:21] ANGELA KINSEY RBF. But now they’re just calling it “Resting Angela Martin” face. It’s like resting Angela face. 

[00:31:27] JENNA FISCHER I know. 

[00:31:28] ANGELA KINSEY But this is cracking me up right now, like in a whole different way, because I am doing this show called “Be Our Chef”. You know, I’m hosting this family cooking competition. 

[00:31:36] JENNA FISCHER Lady, you know, I know this. We watch it. We watch it religiously. My kids love this show. You guys, it’s a cooking show. It’s on Disney. Plus, you have to watch it. It’s families cooking and competing. And Angela’s the host. And it is just the sweetest, most uplifting, most just pure fun. 

[00:31:57] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, that is so sweet. Here’s the thing my family’s doing. So you’re saying that you froze on my face making the sour face? 

[00:32:03] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:32:03] ANGELA KINSEY My family keeps doing, like, freezing the screen when I’m making the weirdest faces, I guess in “Be Our Chef”, I have learned that I talk really animated and I move my hands around and it’s like, I’m Jim Carey. My kids think I look crazy. Most of the time on “Be Our Chef”. And their favorite thing now is to screen grab it and text me. 

[00:32:25] JENNA FISCHER I’m loving it. And Angela, I have to say this last Friday when it came on, I was like, guys, guys, we’re going to watch “Be Our Chef”. And Angela’s on. And my daughter goes, “You really love Angela”. 

[00:32:36] ANGELA KINSEY Aw. 

[00:32:37] JENNA FISCHER She is your best friend. And I said, She is my best friend. 

[00:32:40] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, that is so sweet. 

[00:32:42] JENNA FISCHER I know. I know. 

[00:32:44] ANGELA KINSEY That is so sweet. OK. So, yes, I make weird faces everybody. I make weird faces. While we’re talking about my weird faces, Jenna, in the scene where Dwight asked Angela to put his head on ice. Right? 

[00:32:54] JENNA FISCHER Oh yes. 

[00:32:55] ANGELA KINSEY Okay. This is around 5 minutes, 44 seconds, right at the top of the scene, I’m getting something out of the vending machine. Did you notice my jacket? 

[00:33:06] JENNA FISCHER Yeah, lady, I have the same time code. 5 minutes, 44 seconds, I wrote “Angela Wardrobe. What’s up”? 

[00:33:14] ANGELA KINSEY I know. 

[00:33:14] JENNA FISCHER What is up? With you’re very odd, short sleeved jacket. What is this item? 

[00:33:20] ANGELA KINSEY It is a short, it’s a, it’s a-. 

[00:33:22] JENNA FISCHER Can it be purchased? Or was this made for you? 

[00:33:25] ANGELA KINSEY No, I think someone purchased it or found it in a warehouse like NBC. But it is a short sleeve, pin striped, kind of like a dress jacket. And I jokingly called it to wardrobe my Janet Jackson jacket because do you remember, I loved Janet Jackson. And do you remember “Rhythm Nation”? 

[00:33:44] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:33:44] ANGELA KINSEY Her album, “Rhythm Nation”? OK, watch the music video of the song, “All right”. She is wearing this pin striped jacket, of course, mine was short sleeve. Hers was like regular. But we jokingly called this to the wardrobe department. My Janet Jackson jacket. I don’t know. It was so weird. It was weird. It was. It was like short sleeved, but it was a jacket. 

[00:34:08] JENNA FISCHER I’m sorry to whoever designed it. But it’s like your short sleeve blouse is peeking out underneath your short sleeved jacket. It’s an odd design. 

[00:34:17] ANGELA KINSEY It’s a total mess. It’s a total mess, but it makes it makes me laugh to look back on it. 

[00:34:22] JENNA FISCHER I a little bit. Reminds me of something that you might see on “Project Runway” when they had to, like, make a jacket out of another jacket. Like they had to reimagine the jacket. 

[00:34:33] ANGELA KINSEY Reimagine the jacket, and they just made it a short sleeve jacket. And they were voted off. 

[00:34:38] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. Pretty much. All right, guys. So then we have a pretty adorable Dwight talking head where he says that he wants to be frozen when he dies, even if they have to do it in pieces, even if he is decapitated. He wants to be frozen because he will wake up stronger than ever and he will have been able to use that time to figure out how he died and how he could have better defended himself now. 

[00:35:03] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, yeah. He’s though it through. He’s thought it through. But Angela-. 

[00:35:06] JENNA FISCHER I love these talking heads. 

[00:35:08] ANGELA KINSEY Angela does not want to participate in this. 

[00:35:10] JENNA FISCHER No. 

[00:35:10] ANGELA KINSEY She doesn’t want to. 

[00:35:13] JENNA FISCHER No. So now Michael is on the phone with Jan and he really doesn’t understand why they have a day honoring Martin Luther King when he didn’t even work at Dunder Mifflin. 

[00:35:23] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, but Ed Truck, Ed Truck sat at his same desk and has died. And Jan’s like, okay, listen, do you want to just give everyone the day off? And he’s like, you don’t get these people. They wouldn’t want that. 

[00:35:36] JENNA FISCHER No, they don’t want to go home. What they want is a robot statue of Ed truck. 

[00:35:42] ANGELA KINSEY The eyes light up. 

[00:35:43] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:35:44] ANGELA KINSEY That’s what they want. 

[00:35:45] JENNA FISCHER Well, we had a fan question here from Sierra. When Michael is on the phone with Jan and has an article with a picture of himself and Ed on the desk in front of him. He slowly drags the corner of an envelope down to cover Ed’s head. You know, because he had been decapitated. Was that scripted? Yes. That action was scripted. It was in the script. And then, of course, you see, they made, the camera made sure to capture it. 

[00:36:11] ANGELA KINSEY So smart, so smart, so thought out. Well, I really thought Dwight’s drawing of the robot with the six foot extension cord to the wall so it couldn’t attack him. I thought that was fantastic. And so-. 

[00:36:23] JENNA FISCHER Smart. 

[00:36:23] ANGELA KINSEY I wanted to know who drew it. But we probably don’t know, do we? 

[00:36:26] JENNA FISCHER We don’t know. We had fan questions about that too, Ang, and I tried to find out, but I couldn’t get the answer for you. I’m sorry. 

[00:36:33] ANGELA KINSEY That’s alright. 

[00:36:33] JENNA FISCHER I don’t think it was Rainn. 

[00:36:34] ANGELA KINSEY Phil Shea drew it in the back, just quickly on a notepad. 

[00:36:37] JENNA FISCHER I’m sure. But I feel, I feel like I can say with 99 percent certainty it was not Rainn. 

[00:36:45] ANGELA KINSEY I feel like Rainn might have doodled on it during the scene. But the original drawing was not Rainn. 

[00:36:50] JENNA FISCHER Yes. 

[00:36:51] ANGELA KINSEY OK. Now we have to go back over to Stamford. I actually texted Ed Helms. I said, Ed, you just made me do the snort laugh so hard because here we are, Jim and Karen are still trying to find these chips. They’re having a hard time, but Jim’s like, we’re not gonna quit. And she’s like, I’m not a quitter. And then Andy’s like, what? What’s the game? What do we playing? I’m in. And then they tell him. We can’t find the chips. And he’s like, did you check the vending machine? They’re like, oh, no. Actually, we check the fax machine and you see how pissed off Andy gets at them because he knows, he knows they’re being smartasses. And he just looks at them so seriously and goes, “Did you check your butt”? 

[00:37:34] JENNA FISCHER Yes, that made me laugh out loud. 

[00:37:36] ANGELA KINSEY It made me laugh so hard. I, like, watched it twice back-to-back ’cause I was like, oh my God. And then I texted Ed and I said, Ed, you are so funny in this scene. I texted him the line and he was like, we were like trading texts about it, just cracking up. 

[00:37:49] JENNA FISCHER Well that line is in the script. I went and looked. I had to know. But I don’t know if you noticed in this scene. 7 minutes, 35 seconds. The “Smile” Post-it is gone from Jim’s computer. 

[00:38:02] ANGELA KINSEY You’ve been tracking that Post-It, lady. 

[00:38:04] JENNA FISCHER I’ve been tracking it. 

[00:38:05] ANGELA KINSEY Gone. 

[00:38:06] JENNA FISCHER And I don’t know if you notice. I mean, he’s acting more like Jim now, right? Like he’s got a little thing. He’s dazzling a lady with his charm. He took, he’s getting more comfortable. 

[00:38:20] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, he’s more comfortable. And he has an adventure within work. Right? That’s kind of like this is a boring job to Jim. So he always has to find a distraction to get them through the day. 

[00:38:29] JENNA FISCHER Jim’s the guy who makes work more fun. 

[00:38:31] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[00:38:32] JENNA FISCHER Right? With his little things like this that he does. So he’s, he’s back to his old ways. 

[00:38:38] ANGELA KINSEY Back at the Scranton branch, Michael is just obsessed now. He just can’t stop thinking about Ed Truck. And he’s really starting to internalize it about himself. Right? Like, what if I are gone? No one cares here. No one cares. And he decides that they probably need some grief counseling. 

[00:38:55] JENNA FISCHER Mmhmm. 

[00:38:55] ANGELA KINSEY They’re in denial. 

[00:38:57] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. Yeah. He he wants us to know the stages of grief. And he feels like it’s his job to take us through them. He doesn’t know if he can get us all the way to acceptance, but if he can get us depressed, he will have done his job. 

[00:39:13] ANGELA KINSEY Such a great line. 

[00:39:15] JENNA FISCHER It’s such a good line. 

[00:39:16] ANGELA KINSEY I have a really great little tidbit right here. 

[00:39:18] JENNA FISCHER What is it? 

[00:39:19] ANGELA KINSEY OK. So. In the deleted scenes, Toby is actually a trained grief counselor. 

[00:39:27] JENNA FISCHER OK. 

[00:39:28] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. And so, you know, Dwight’s like Toby should probably lead us through this. He’s a trained grief counselor. And Toby starts to walk them through the steps. They’re in the conference room. And Michael’s like, oh, you’re ruining everything. It’s going to take me for ever to undo what you’ve done. And of course, Toby was being perfectly normal and appropriate. Right? 

[00:39:49] JENNA FISCHER Yes. 

[00:39:50] ANGELA KINSEY Michael’s like, you’re ruining it. And this whole scene is in the conference room taking place around the conference table. Everyone’s sitting there. And Michael’s like, that’s it. I’m gonna have to fix everything. You’ve ruined, Toby. Ryan, Dwight, take the conference table out. We’re gonna take a five minute break while they reset. And we’re coming back in here. And I’m going to lead you in grief counseling. And I about fell out of my chair because in my knowledge, that is the first time we have ever referenced the dang conference table. 

[00:40:23] JENNA FISCHER Oh, my gosh. Now we know who’s always moving it. It’s Dwight and Ryan. 

[00:40:27] ANGELA KINSEY Dwight and Ryan. Where they put it? I don’t know. But-. 

[00:40:30] JENNA FISCHER We don’t know. 

[00:40:31] ANGELA KINSEY It was the first time I ever heard Michael say, OK. Let’s get the conference table out of here. 

[00:40:36] JENNA FISCHER Yes. Acknowledging that the conference table can be removed and replaced. 

[00:40:41] ANGELA KINSEY On a whim. 

[00:40:43] JENNA FISCHER How do they get it out of the doorway? 

[00:40:45] ANGELA KINSEY I don’t know. They probably have to take it apart. But Michael’s like, we’re gonna take five to ten minute break and when we get back in here, we’re gonna get down to it. And then the next scene is them with the little ball that they’re about to toss around. But that’s a deleted scene that sets it up. 

[00:40:59] JENNA FISCHER I love that. I love that. Well, listen, why don’t we take a break and then when we come back, we will meet Michael in the conference room for some some of his grief counseling. 

[00:41:08] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah and maybe-. 

[00:41:10] JENNA FISCHER Sound good?

[00:41:10] ANGELA KINSEY Maybe Roy will stop by. Who knows? 

[00:41:13] JENNA FISCHER He might because Pam might need a little break as well. All right. We’ll be right back. And we’re back. Here we are. Angela, what did you do during the break? 

[00:41:30] ANGELA KINSEY I went and got an ice tea, Jenna, and I said hi to my husband. And I walked up, I guess, behind him kind of quietly, and I scared the crap out of him. 

[00:41:41] JENNA FISCHER Oh boy. 

[00:41:41] ANGELA KINSEY Tat’s what I did on my break.  I was like, hey. He was like, ah! Why does it get me so tickled? I feel like I don’t know why spooking him makes me laugh so hard. 

[00:41:52] JENNA FISCHER I got a cup of coffee and then I put the sheets from the washer into the dryer and I’m all excited that I’m podcasting and doing the laundry at the same time because, you know, I love a good multitasking. 

[00:42:05] ANGELA KINSEY Oh yeah. Oh, I have laundry going, lady. I started in the morning. Oh, it’s going. 

[00:42:09] JENNA FISCHER OK. 

[00:42:10] ANGELA KINSEY It’s also I find that when I do laundry I can’t podcast in my closet because you can hear the dryer. 

[00:42:16] JENNA FISCHER Sure. 

[00:42:16] ANGELA KINSEY So on the days I do laundry I podcast in my shed. 

[00:42:19] JENNA FISCHER There you go. 

[00:42:20] ANGELA KINSEY There you go. Making it work. Podcasting from home. 

[00:42:24] JENNA FISCHER I’m in my pajamas. I never said that at the beginning. 

[00:42:27] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, I noticed, I didn’t. say anything, but I noticed. 

[00:42:32] JENNA FISCHER I did my hair though. I don’t know what that says about me. 

[00:42:37] ANGELA KINSEY I love it. 

[00:42:37] JENNA FISCHER When my hair is done, I feel good even if I’m still in my pajamas. 

[00:42:40] ANGELA KINSEY There you go. 

[00:42:42] JENNA FISCHER All right, guys, we are back in the conference room. And Michael is going to lead us in some grief exercises. It involves taking a ball. 

[00:42:52] ANGELA KINSEY Mmhmm. 

[00:42:52] JENNA FISCHER And when you have the ball, you can talk about a moment of grief in your life. Michael goes first. 

[00:42:58] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[00:42:59] JENNA FISCHER Of course. Michael goes first and he talks about Ed Truck. Angela, when he says his feelings about Ed Truck. It’s so good. He goes on and on. I asked Sam to pull a clip so that we could all listen to it together. 

[00:43:15] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, God, I’m so happy about this, because I wrote in my journal that in this scene, this particular like moment, we could not get through. 

[00:43:25] JENNA FISCHER And lady, it’s not in the script. This was, I think, an improvisation by Steve. 

[00:43:31] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, my God. OK, well, there’s one line I’m not going to say it yet. Let’s listen to it. There’s one line that I wrote in my journal. We all disintegrated. 

[00:43:39] JENNA’S KID Mom. 

[00:43:39] JENNA FISCHER Oh, my God. Wait. Hold on. What is it, baby? 

[00:43:41] JENNA’S KID Sunny got a bird. 

[00:43:43] JENNA FISCHER Oh, ****. OK. Hold. 

[00:43:44] ANGELA KINSEY OK. 

[00:43:44] JENNA FISCHER I’ll be right back. 

[00:43:45] ANGELA KINSEY OK. 

[00:43:46] JENNA FISCHER He got one of the doves here. 

[00:43:48] JENNA’S KID Yeah. 

[00:43:48] JENNA FISCHER And what’s happening? 

[00:43:50] ANGELA KINSEY Got a bird. Sunny is their cat. So here’s the thing. This, this podcast started with me telling about a squirrel that ate a bird. And now their cat just got a bird. I’m telling you, this is the bird funeral podcast. 

[00:44:10] JENNA FISCHER OK. OK. I’m so sorry, I’m back. 

[00:44:13] ANGELA KINSEY What happened? What happened? 

[00:44:14] JENNA FISCHER You guys, we got a grocery delivery and Sunny shot out the door and I guess caught a bird, right? This is so insane that we’re doing this episode right now. And Angela, you had a squirrel eatting your bird when you were prepping. 

[00:44:29] ANGELA KINSEY I had a squirrel eating a bird. Now your cat has like attacked a bird. 

[00:44:35] JENNA FISCHER OK. But listen, it’s good news. I have good news. We caught Sunny. We wrestled him to the ground. We got the bird out of his mouth. And it’s a pretty big bird. And he was unharmed. 

[00:44:49] ANGELA KINSEY Oh. 

[00:44:49] JENNA FISCHER The bird was unharmed. 

[00:44:49] ANGELA KINSEY You saved the bird. 

[00:44:52] JENNA FISCHER The bird’s ok. Michael would be so happy. 

[00:44:55] ANGELA KINSEY What’s going to happen next week for “The Initiation”? 

[00:44:57] JENNA FISCHER I don’t know. I don’t know. 

[00:44:59] ANGELA KINSEY I don’t want to be initiated, Jenna. 

[00:45:01] JENNA FISCHER No. No, please. 

[00:45:02] ANGELA KINSEY I don’t want it. Don’t bring that over here. 

[00:45:04] JENNA FISCHER I don’t want any of that. 

[00:45:04] ANGELA KINSEY OK, all right. Well that was crazy. And-. 

[00:45:07] JENNA FISCHER So sorry. 

[00:45:08] ANGELA KINSEY I can’t, I can’t believe this is all happening in “Grief Counseling”, but let’s-. OK, where were we? 

[00:45:13] JENNA FISCHER All right. Let’s play this clip of Michael talking about his grief of Ed truck. 

[00:45:19] MICHAEL SCOTT I lost Ed Truck and it feels like somebody took my heart and dropped it into a bucket of boiling tears. And at the same time, somebody else is hitting my soul in the crotch with a frozen sledgehammer. And then a third guy walks in and starts punching me in the greif bone. And I’m crying and nobody can hear me because I am terribly, terribly, terribly alone. 

[00:45:53] JENNA FISCHER Angela, can I guess the line that we couldn’t get through? 

[00:45:57] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[00:45:59] JENNA FISCHER Is it frozen sledgehammer? 

[00:46:01] ANGELA KINSEY I put, I put every one of us broke when he said that his soul was getting hit in the crotch with a frozen sledge hammer. 

[00:46:09] JENNA FISCHER Yes, yes, yes. 

[00:46:12] ANGELA KINSEY That’s what I wrote my journal. I said we could not keep it together. 

[00:46:16] JENNA FISCHER OK, I said, that’s not in the script. I don’t know if he was handed that rewrite on the day, but it feels like that’s a Steve. That’s a Steve improv. That feel like Steve to me. 

[00:46:27] ANGELA KINSEY Oh man, man, man, that got us good though. Oh, man. 

[00:46:30] JENNA FISCHER That is so good. Well, then Roy walks in. There’s a problem with Pam’s car. Can she come down to the parking lot and take a look at it? 

[00:46:39] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, yeah. So there is an extended scene of this in the deleted scenes. So if you thought it was awkward enough, their conversation by the car, there’s, it’s extended and even more awkward. Jenna, here’s my question for you. How did Roy know that she was stuck in the conference room? How? How did he know there was grief counseling? How? 

[00:47:00] JENNA FISCHER Oh. OK, I think you’re implying that she called Roy and told him about it. 

[00:47:08] ANGELA KINSEY I’m just saying, how did he know? How did he know? 

[00:47:11] JENNA FISCHER OK, I have a take on it. I think Michael called Darryl down in the warehouse and said, bring everyone up for some grief counseling. And Darryl was like, no. 

[00:47:20] ANGELA KINSEY No. Well, that, that would explain it. Yes, that would explain it. 

[00:47:25] JENNA FISCHER We had a fan question from Alexia Porter. Was there ever talk of putting Pam and Roy back together or was it all just a setup to mess with our feelings? Well, there was talk in the writers room that maybe Roy could win Pam back. Remember, David Denman was made a series regular for Season 3. 

[00:47:45] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[00:47:46] JENNA FISCHER So he’s going to be making a lot of appearances this Season. I can tell you guys nothing was decided at this point about what would happen with Jim and Pam, what would happen with Pam and Roy. They were feeling it out week to week. I totally remember that. I also remember it was constantly said that maybe maybe in the series of “The Office”, Jim and Pam would not end up together in the end, but would instead lead one another to their actual true loves. There was, it had not been decided right now that Jim and Pam were one another’s true loves. 

[00:48:22] ANGELA KINSEY When you just said that I got angry. I was like, no, Jim and Pam end up together. No. 

[00:48:31] JENNA FISCHER Well, I think maybe that’s why the writing of their characters felt so authentic, because the writers were figuring out their relationship at the same time that Jim and Pam were. 

[00:48:41] ANGELA KINSEY Yes, a, were, as an audience, we feel that like what will happen, we don’t know. These are two people on journeys trying to find themselves and hopefully that leads them back to each other. 

[00:48:52] JENNA FISCHER Mmhmm. Exactly. 

[00:48:53] ANGELA KINSEY All right. So while Pam and Roy are out in the parking lot, I’m sure Pam was really hoping that she’s going to come back to the conference room and the grief counseling is almost over. But no, they waited for her because they’re a family. 

[00:49:07] JENNA FISCHER I love that detail. They waited for her. 

[00:49:09] ANGELA KINSEY Yes, there is a great scene on the DVD. It’s a deleted scene. And Michael is trying to get everyone to loosen up. Right? For the grief counseling. He’s like, hey, guys, take your jackets off. Loosen your ties. Take off your shoes. Ladies, let your hair down. And Angela goes, I don’t think Kevin should take off his shoes. And-. 

[00:49:30] JENNA FISCHER Oh. 

[00:49:30] ANGELA KINSEY And Kevin gets really annoyed. And then he has a talking head that he says. All right, listen. I have hyperhidrosis. OK? So we find out that he has this disease that makes your feet sweat really, really badly. So I guess he’s been taking his shoes off over in accounting. I love this little tidbit. I’m sad it didn’t make it in. 

[00:49:56] JENNA FISCHER Well, this explains why when Pam walks into the room, Kevins feet are up on her chair and his shoes are off. 

[00:50:03] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. People wrote in and asked about that. It’s because in the deleted scene, Michael is getting everyone to loosen up. And we find out that Kevin has, how do you say it? Hyperhidrosis. 

[00:50:14] JENNA FISCHER Angela, I love that. That’s a good catch. That’s a good catch. Good tip. Tidbit. 

[00:50:19] ANGELA KINSEY Tidbit. It’s Kinsey tidbit. 

[00:50:21] JENNA FISCHER All right. So when Pam does finally get back, they begin again. And Dwight is the first one to share. 

[00:50:29] ANGELA KINSEY Oooh. 

[00:50:29] JENNA FISCHER Oh, this is one of my favorite things. And Dwight shares that he was supposed to have a twin, but he absorbed the twin in utero. All right. We had a fan question from Arah Tajolly. Did Rainn Wilson make the hole absorbing twin thing up or was it scripted? Well, first of all, I will tell you, it is not in the script, but I don’t know if Rainn made it up. But in the script, Dwight was supposed to say this. He was supposed to say, “In the blizzard of ’97, 12 Schrutes died in the basement of our house. They drank beer cider that had already turned. President McKinley declared it a national emergency”. Now, my favorite thing about that is that clearly it’s not 1997. It’s like 1897. 

[00:51:20] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:51:22] JENNA FISCHER I guess. But that was originally Dwight’s grief share. 

[00:51:27] ANGELA KINSEY So here’s the thing. I reached out to Jen Celotta about this, and this is maybe one of my favorite text threads of all time. This is what tickled me so much, is that Jen Celotta, Jenna, she’s one of our people. She’s a deep diver. 

[00:51:41] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:51:41] ANGELA KINSEY She is a deep-. The minute I asked her, she went on a deep dive for the whole afternoon, ready? 

[00:51:47] JENNA FISCHER Yes. 

[00:51:47] ANGELA KINSEY So I say, “OK, Jen, Dwight’s speech about absorbing his twin is not in the script. Was that an improv? Did you tell him on the day”? She goes, “Oh, my God. I don’t remember. Oh, my God. I love that speech. And sadly, it wasn’t mine. I’m gonna start texting people. Please hold”. 

[00:52:06] JENNA FISCHER I love this so much. 

[00:52:06] ANGELA KINSEY This all happened throughout the day. She said, I texted Rainn. Rainn actually thinks it was an alt pitched from Paul. Jen said, here’s a side note. I had a friend that reabsorbed his twin, but I definitely didn’t come up with “the strength of a baby”. She said, “I’m going to check with Paul where that part came from. Please hold. She text Paul. “Paul says he thinks it was Justin Spitzer. Hold one second. Now, texting Justin”. 

[00:52:33] JENNA FISCHER Justin was another one of our writers. 

[00:52:35] ANGELA KINSEY This is what Justin texted Jen back. “I still remember that because it was early Season 3. And I was so nervous about proving myself. I guess yes, I came up with it. But the thing that really sold it to me was the last line about him having the strength of a grown man plus a baby. And that was something that Paul Lieberstein added after. So I think he deserves a fair amount of credit as well”. So-.

[00:53:03] JENNA FISCHER I’m giving that a slow clap. 

[00:53:05] ANGELA KINSEY A slow clap. 

[00:53:05] JENNA FISCHER Into a big clap. 

[00:53:07] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. 

[00:53:07] JENNA FISCHER Wow. 

[00:53:09] ANGELA KINSEY It was a two hander that Paul and Justin pitched. 

[00:53:12] JENNA FISCHER I love that we got to the bottom of that mystery because it is one of my all time favorite Dwight-isms. Also, guys, Justin Spitzer is the creator of the show “Superstore”. 

[00:53:24] ANGELA KINSEY Justin is so talented. He’s so talent. 

[00:53:27] JENNA FISCHER I love him. 

[00:53:28] ANGELA KINSEY Love him. Anyway. 

[00:53:30] JENNA FISCHER I think the only place to go from here is back to our grief circle. And we need to hear from some others. 

[00:53:37] ANGELA KINSEY OK. So we’re back into the grief counseling scene. And Stanley has just refused. He is not going to participate. 

[00:53:43] JENNA FISCHER No. 

[00:53:43] ANGELA KINSEY He chunks that ball back at Michael. Hey. 

[00:53:48] JENNA FISCHER I heard that. 

[00:53:48] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, you heard that. But Pam agrees to participate and she’s going to share a story about her family. But it’s clearly just the synopsis for the movie “Million Dollar Baby”. 

[00:53:59] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[00:54:00] ANGELA KINSEY I mean, again, Pam is now the Jim. She’s the jokester. 

[00:54:03] JENNA FISCHER Yes. And then Ryan joins in and he shares a story that is very clearly “The Lion King”. 

[00:54:10] ANGELA KINSEY I mean, he says the word Mufasa. I mean, come on. But then Kevin catches on and he’s tickled. He wants to participate. He wants to play the game. But he goes too broad, too, on the nose. And he basically breaks down “Weekend at Bernie’s”. And Michael’s like, “What? Hold up. That’s a movie”. And he gets really ticked off. 

[00:54:25] JENNA FISCHER Ok, so there was a lot of curiosity about these movie plots in the the conference room. We got a fan question from Tristen, who wants to know, “When everyone is in the conference room for Michael’s counseling session. Did the cast improvised the movie plots that were mentioned or were they scripted? “

[00:54:41] ANGELA KINSEY Jenna, to my knowledge, they were all scripted. That’s how I remember it. 

[00:54:45] JENNA FISCHER Yes, I looked these up in the shooting draft and Pam’s “Million Dollar Baby” story and Kevin’s “Weekend at Bernie’s” story are both in the script. However, Ryan’s fake movie story is different. Yes, in the script he talks about “Thelma and Louise”. 

[00:55:04] ANGELA KINSEY Well. 

[00:55:04] JENNA FISCHER This is what he says. He says, “My mom’s sister, Thelma, died last year. She was with her friend named Lou- C. A cop was trying to pull them over. And I guess the brakes must have not been working because they ended up driving over a cliff and it was a total shock to everyone”. 

[00:55:24] ANGELA KINSEY OK, well, we wanted to get to the bottom of this, so we reached out to the source, the writer of this episode, Jen Celotta. And this is what she had to say. 

[00:55:35] JEN CELOTTA For the movies in the grief counseling session. I was really excited. It was really fun to think about. I went off on script and needed to find a way that everybody would sit there with Michael Scott and not share their own personal stories of huge loss. I mean, because it just didn’t seem like they would do that. So I thought they should share movie plotlines, as if they were their own lives. And I came up with “Million Dollar Baby” for you, Jenna, for Pam, and then also for Kevin, “Weekend at Bernie’s” and for Ryan, I had a different one. I think B.J. came up with “The Lion King”. I don’t quite remember, but I think it was B.J. and I love that one. The one I had I actually found my first draft of the script. I had Ryan, I’ll read you the line. It’s not as good as “The Lion King” one, but I have Ryan say, “This is almost too horrible to talk about. But I had a cousin who was a big city lawyer and he was visiting an Amish town not far from here, and he was smothered to death in their grain silo”. And then I had Michael say, “Ooh, that must have made you really sad. Did it”? And Ryan says, “Yes”. So I think that was “Witness”. So I had Ryan’s from “Witness”. I wish I could remember some of the other ones because I feel like we had other ones that we pitched on. But those were the ones from my first draft. And then, of course, “The Lion King” “Circle of Life” was fantastic. And Ryan saying, “It’ll take about an hour and a half to tell it” was like such a great line. 

[00:57:04] ANGELA KINSEY That is amazing. By the way, my college roommate and I used to watch “Witness” and we would say to each other all the time, “Be careful out among them, English”. Thank you. That is my movie quote from “Witness”, but isn’t that wild, Jenna? That Ryan’s, Ryan’s movie went through 3 versions. It was “Witness” and then it was, I guess, “Thelma and Louise”, according to your script. But “The Lion King” is what made it in the show. 

[00:57:29] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. Clearly, they had a lot of alts for these movie plots, but all of them were scripted, guys. All of them written by our awesome writers. We did not improvise that stuff. 

[00:57:43] ANGELA KINSEY Love that. Love that little tidbit, Jen Celotta. 

[00:57:43] JENNA FISCHER So, guys, Michael gets pretty upset that people are not taking this seriously. You know, he says the guy who used to do his job and sit at his desk has died and no one cares. 

[00:57:56] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[00:57:58] JENNA FISCHER And Toby tries to talk him down and tries to explain that this is just life and that this morning he saw a bird fly into the window downstairs and die. Michael freaks out. 

[00:58:11] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, my gosh. Toby, Toby, what are you thinking? He totally attaches to that. Now, Michael’s grief for Ed is somehow wrapped into this bird. It’s gonna be a whole thing. 

[00:58:22] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. He runs downstairs. He freaks out. He wants to see if the bird is alive. I had a fan catch here from Kendra. At 14 minutes, 33 seconds when Michael runs through the front door to get the bird. He runs past the security desk. And the security guard is not Hank. 

[00:58:41] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, good catch. 

[00:58:43] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. Different security guard. 

[00:58:48] ANGELA KINSEY Hank took a personal day, you guys. 

[00:58:50] JENNA FISCHER I guess so. Well, Michael attempts to resuscitate the bird in the kitchen. Angela, you’re not pleased. 

[00:58:53] ANGELA KINSEY So Michael is determined to save this bird. He brings it into the kitchen. Angela Martin is not pleased. She’s like, no, that shouldn’t be in here. Get it out. 

[00:59:04] JENNA FISCHER Well, she is not pleased. And Angela, she’s not wrong. 

[00:59:05] ANGELA KINSEY Thank you. Thank you, Jenna. 

[00:59:10] JENNA FISCHER You’re welcome. You’re welcome. We had a fan question from Ellie Freedlander. She wants to know, was that a real dead bird? No. 

[00:59:20] ANGELA KINSEY No, no,. 

[00:59:22] JENNA FISCHER No, Ellie. It was a fake bird. I reached out to Phil. He told me that he found 3 dead fake bird options and presented them to Jen, Roger, our director, and Greg, they chose the one that you see in the show. And Angela, I have to say, when he texted me back that he presented the 3 dead birds, I imagined in my head that they were on a silver tray because remember, Phil would always present you your props on a silver tray. 

[00:59:50] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. Yes. 

[00:59:52] JENNA FISCHER And I was just imagining it. I wrote him back and I said, “Phil, were they on a silver tray”? And he said, “You know me too well”. 

[01:00:00] ANGELA KINSEY These are the moments in our show where I’m like, Hey, babe, how was your day? What do you do today? Well, I had to find 3 fake dead birds. 

[01:00:09] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[01:00:10] ANGELA KINSEY I scoured. 

[01:00:11] JENNA FISCHER Or like, like when Greg goes home and his wife Susanne is like, “Hey, hon, how’d it go shooting today”? He’s like, “Great. I picked a dead bird”. 

[01:00:19] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[01:00:20] JENNA FISCHER I picked the yellow one. 

[01:00:21] ANGELA KINSEY I made my dead bird selection. 

[01:00:23] JENNA FISCHER Yes, exactly. Well, Michael then tells the staff. “Attention, attention. We are holding a funeral for this bird at 4 p.m. in the parking lot. Be there”. It’s on. 

[01:00:35] ANGELA KINSEY Jenna, now, I think it’s time to check back in on Jim and Karen. 

[01:00:39] JENNA FISCHER Oh, yes. Have they found the chips? What’s the status?

[01:00:40] ANGELA KINSEY Where are they? Where are they in their search for this very hard to find potato chip bag? 

[01:00:48] JENNA FISCHER That’s actually in the vending machine. But that’s ok.

[01:00:49] ANGELA KINSEY That might be in the vending machine. 

[01:00:54] JENNA FISCHER That is in the vending machine, but go ahead. 

[01:00:55] ANGELA KINSEY That, according to a fan catch, is B1 in the vending machine. 

[01:00:59] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. It’s right there waiting for them. 

[01:01:02] ANGELA KINSEY Well, Karen kind of impresses Jim because she decides to call Montreal, the Montreal factory to see if they have them. And she speaks French. Mai oui. Mai oui. A lot of people wrote in about this. Brianna Bullard and many, many others want to know, does Rashida Jones actually know French? So I texted Rashida since we’re already texting about her breakfast order. She’s probably like Angela, what’s happening? This is what she said. She goes, no. At this time I didn’t know French. I worked really hard on that line. But a few years later, I ended up going to France to do a French immersion school in the south of France. Maybe this scene was the beginning and it got me inspired. 

[01:01:51] JENNA FISCHER Wow, that’s crazy. She did not speak French, but now she does. 

[01:01:56] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. I was like, I want to go to a French immersion class in the south of France. That sounds amazing. 

[01:02:02] JENNA FISCHER Same. Same. I took French in high school. 

[01:02:06] ANGELA KINSEY You did? 

[01:02:06] JENNA FISCHER Oh, I have a story about that, actually. 

[01:02:09] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah? 

[01:02:09] JENNA FISCHER Can I tell this real quickly? 

[01:02:11] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[01:02:11] JENNA FISCHER I took French in high school from Sister Landry. I went to a Catholic school. Sister Landry was my French teacher. And I dreamed I told you guys this before. I dreamed from the time I was a little girl that I would one day go to Paris. And then in my 30s, that finally happened, of course, at this point. I was now very far from my French training. I couldn’t really speak French. But Lee and I, we went to a little farmers’ market. And I guess in France, you don’t touch the fruit. 

[01:02:39] ANGELA KINSEY Uh oh. 

[01:02:39] JENNA FISCHER Okay? You don’t select your own produce. You point to it or you trust the person selling the produce to select the best pieces for you. I didn’t know this. Okay?

[01:02:52] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, my gosh. I would have been, I pick up things. I thump them, I smell them. 

[01:02:58] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. No, lady. Don’t do it. If you go to a farmer’s market in France, here’s my hot tip for you. 

[01:03:02] ANGELA KINSEY Don’t thump the melon. 

[01:03:02] JENNA FISCHER Do not touch that fruit. 

[01:03:03] ANGELA KINSEY Don’t thump the melon. 

[01:03:05] JENNA FISCHER Don’t thump the melon in France. OK? 

[01:03:07] ANGELA KINSEY Ok. 

[01:03:07] JENNA FISCHER Now all through this trip, we’ve been going to restaurants and we’d been going to tourist places and I was just fumbling with my French. I couldn’t get anything out. I could read the menus, but I couldn’t order anything. I was, I thought I was going to really help us, but I couldn’t help us. But here we are. We’re at this little market. I have done the faux pas. I believe that’s French. The faux pas of touching the fruit. And this woman turns to her coworker and goes off on me. She in French is calling me like kind of like-. 

[01:03:45] ANGELA KINSEY You’re a piece of trash. 

[01:03:43] JENNA FISCHER A dumb American.  Yeah. Basically, whatever it was, just these Americans come here and they touch our fruit. She was like going on and on, OK. In French. I. I was this mixture of just like embarrassed but also felt like I’m sorry. How was I supposed to know that? I’m a nice person. I, my gosh. 

[01:04:08] ANGELA KINSEY I’m not a bad person. I’m sorry. I picked up that banana. 

[01:04:14] JENNA FISCHER And Angela, this fluent French spilled out of my mouth at this woman and in French, I suddenly had the command to say, I’m so sorry. But in the United States, we pick our own fruit. I didn’t know about your custom. I apologize, but you don’t need to say nasty things about me. And the look on her face was like, “Oh”! ‘Cause she certainly didn’t think that the fruit touching American could speak French or understand French. And by the way, I didn’t know that I had such a command of the language until I was insulted in a farmer’s market in Paris. 

[01:04:48] ANGELA KINSEY And then your superpower came out. 

[01:04:50] JENNA FISCHER Yes. 

[01:04:50] ANGELA KINSEY You know how like some some superheroes, their power doesn’t come through until they’re in crisis? 

[01:04:56] JENNA FISCHER I was like a mom lifting a car off her baby. 

[01:04:59] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. Exactly. 

[01:05:00] JENNA FISCHER All right. So now we’re back at Dunder Mifflin and Kelly is crying by the copier in the annex. 

[01:05:06] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[01:05:06] JENNA FISCHER She is in tears. Michael thinks he’s finally made a breakthrough. Until she reveals that she’s really crying about her plans with Ryan. I have a question about the scene. 

[01:05:20] ANGELA KINSEY Ok. 

[01:05:30] JENNA FISCHER What is up with this second copier in the annex? Is it always there? 

[01:05:25] ANGELA KINSEY I have never seen it before. 

[01:05:27] JENNA FISCHER What is happening? 

[01:05:28] ANGELA KINSEY I think they just rolled it in from the bullpen for the scene. 

[01:05:32] JENNA FISCHER I feel like they did. And they did it because in the background, in the break room, Dwight is in there. You can see him over Kelly’s shoulder trying to shove this bird into an empty soda can. I feel like that’s why they had to put the copier there to combine these two moments to have a reason for Michael to be back there. 

[01:05:49] ANGELA KINSEY Right. And for him to see over his shoulder and all of that. Exactly. That copier did not live there in that hallway. They just shoved it there. 

[01:05:56] JENNA FISCHER Thank you. 

[01:05:56] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[01:05:56] JENNA FISCHER  I did not think so. I feel like I will track this. It’s going to be a soft track. But I am going to look for this copier more. 

[01:06:04] ANGELA KINSEY I think it should be a very soft track because I, I would be bold enough to say I think it might be the only time it’s in the annex. I know that’s-. 

[01:06:12] JENNA FISCHER I think so. 

[01:06:12] ANGELA KINSEY That’s setting myself up for some fan mail of like Angela actually in Season 8. But I’m just saying, I don’t, I don’t think that copier visits the annex very often. 

[01:06:22] JENNA FISCHER Guys, if you’re watching another episode and you see that copier, write to us, you can go to our website, OfficeLadies.com and submit questions or comments or write to us at OfficeLadies@Earwolf.com. 

[01:06:35] ANGELA KINSEY Ok. Here we go. 

[01:06:35] JENNA FISCHER We want to know. We want to know. All right. But this leads us into one of my favorite, Dwight talking heads, where he explains he’s justifying why is he shoving this bird into a can. And it’s because he grew up on a farm. 

[01:06:48] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[01:06:49] JENNA FISCHER And guys, they reburied his grandfather in an old oil drum. OK, hold on. 

[01:06:56] ANGELA KINSEY I mean, the same, the same grandfather that it was buried in the suit that he wore. Like what’s happening? How many times is this guy been brought up out of the ground? 

[01:07:04] JENNA FISCHER This is one of my favorite things about our show. Teresa S also loves it. She wrote in to say, “In ‘Casino Night’, Dwight says that his grandfather was buried in the tuxedo he’s wearing”. 

[01:07:14] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[01:07:16] JENNA FISCHER “And in ‘Grief Counseling’, he said his grandfather was reburied in an oil drum. Reburied”? She wrote. Reburied? 

[01:07:23] ANGELA KINSEY What happened? 

[01:07:24] JENNA FISCHER What is the story behind Dwight’s grandfather? Was he exhumed for some reason? And did Dwight take the tuxedo off his dead grandfather before reburying him? 

[01:07:33] ANGELA KINSEY And then fold him up. 

[01:07:35] JENNA FISCHER It sounds like it. 

[01:07:35] ANGELA KINSEY Then he folded them up and tried to shove him in a drum. 

[01:07:38] JENNA FISCHER Teresa, that’s exactly what it sounds like. This is some of my favorite writing on our show. In that moment in “Casino Night” when Dwight just says he’s wearing a tuxedo, my grandfather was buried in it. That’s it. We say no more about it. And then 3 episodes later, he’s like, when my grandfather was reburied. And it’s like slowly it’s all coming together, sort of, sort of not completely. It’s one of my favorite bits of how our show is written. 

[01:08:04] ANGELA KINSEY So now we’re at reception. Right? And Pam has prepared this really beautiful box for the bird funeral. I mean, it is amazing, the attention to detail. She asked Dwight if he would perhaps want to play a song. She’s like, do you have your recorder? He’s like, always. Always has-. 

[01:08:20] JENNA FISCHER Always. 

[01:08:20] ANGELA KINSEY Always. And. And, you know, Pam has this really sweet talking head where she’s like, well, you know what? I didn’t anticipate I’d be throwing a bird funeral today, but you never know working here. 

[01:08:31] JENNA FISCHER That’s right. We had a fan question from Andrew S, “Did Jenna make the box for the bird funeral herself or was that a Phil Shea creation? Either way, how was it constructed”? Well, guys, I did not make it. Phil Shea made it. He said he actually made a few options and presented them again to Jen and Roger and Greg. They picked the one that they liked. And then Phil had to make multiples of it because, you know, it gets set on fire. 

[01:08:57] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. 

[01:08:57] JENNA FISCHER So he had to make a whole bunch of those. I looked it up in the script and it was described in the script. So here’s what Phil had to go off of. It said, “It is a hollowed out tissue box with tissue padding in the center for the bird to lie on. And the outside is decorated in tissue paper and has a tiny little toothpick cross”. My favorite part are the-. 

[01:09:18] ANGELA KINSEY The handles. 

[01:09:19] JENNA FISCHER The handles made out of the pencils. So that was a Phil addition. That was just Phil. 

[01:09:27] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. Yeah. He needed to make sure that tiny bird casket had little bars for his, the pallbearers. 

[01:09:35] JENNA FISCHER That’s right. 

[01:09:36] ANGELA KINSEY The tiny pallbearers. 

[01:09:38] JENNA FISCHER Yes. We are going to wrap things up in Stamford now, guys, Jim found the chips. He left them on her desk. He’s quite pleased with himself. 

[01:09:47] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, I really wanted my mom to record a sting that said “Flirty Jim”. But we, we couldn’t, we couldn’t get it together. 

[01:09:55] JENNA FISCHER Aw, well these scenes drove people crazy. I went back and looked at some of the comments from when this aired. 

[01:10:02] ANGELA KINSEY Oh. 

[01:10:03] JENNA FISCHER Here is what they said. D Temp said, “I feel kind of weird about Jim and Karen”, but Hartmann said, “The Karen thing. Why oh, why am I liking it? But I am”. 

[01:10:15] ANGELA KINSEY Whoah. I remember people freaking out about it. 

[01:10:20] JENNA FISCHER Well, Kealy said, “Jim and Karen have great chemistry” and Mandy said, “OK, I’m sorry, I can’t believe there are actually people out there who are OK with Jim hooking up with Karen”. 

[01:10:31] ANGELA KINSEY That’s what I remember. 

[01:10:33] JENNA FISCHER But Kim E said this. “Jim likes to buy chips for all his ladies”. And I’m with you, Kim. As Pam, I’m like, oh, is this what you do? You just find all the girls their favorite chips. 

[01:10:49] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, that’s his game. 

[01:10:52] JENNA FISCHER Are we saying that right? 

[01:10:53] ANGELA KINSEY Oh. 

[01:10:54] JENNA FISCHER Is that your game? 

[01:10:54] ANGELA KINSEY You and I? I’m 100 percent doubt we are. 

[01:10:57] JENNA FISCHER I’m sure we are-, oh Sam’s giving us an ok. 

[01:10:59] ANGELA KINSEY Sam gave us an ok. That’s his game. 

[01:11:01] JENNA FISCHER All right. Should we go to this bird funeral, Angela? 

[01:11:04] ANGELA KINSEY I can’t wait. Please take me there. 

[01:11:07] JENNA FISCHER Well, we’re out in the driveway, really, next to the warehouse. 

[01:11:12] ANGELA KINSEY This was an actual parking lot that we used, and it was right next to the warehouse. And that’s where we filmed this. 

[01:11:20] JENNA FISCHER Michael is very moved by Pam’s beautiful coffin. It starts with Pam saying a few words about the bird. But we we slowly realized that Pam is speaking about the bird, but she’s speaking to Michael. 

[01:11:32] ANGELA KINSEY About his feelings about death and loss. 

[01:11:35] JENNA FISCHER And about his aloneness. She talks a lot about how just because the bird was alone doesn’t mean he was unloved, that he was very loved and respected by the other birds. 

[01:11:49] ANGELA KINSEY And then she sings a song. I was very surprised by this for Pam. She really put herself out there. She sings “On the Wings of Love”. She’s accompanied by Dwight on the recorder. Michael is very moved. He’s holding hands. He’s swaying. He’s tearing up. 

[01:12:07] JENNA FISCHER We got a lot of questions about this scene. Richard H really covers them all, he says, “Did Rainn already know how to play the recorder? Did Jenna sing the entire song or did the singing end where the scene was cut”? He also wanted to know, did we rehearse our duet? Here’s what I can tell you. Yes. Rainn knew how to play the recorder. Remember, he played it in “Take Your Daughter to Work Day”. 

[01:12:33] ANGELA KINSEY Mmhmm, he’s actually very good. 

[01:12:33] JENNA FISCHER But listen to all of the instruments that Rainn can play in real life, Angela. He can play the recorder, piano, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, guitar, drums, xylophone, bells and a little tuba and baritone. 

[01:12:49] ANGELA KINSEY What are you, a one man band, Rainn? 

[01:12:453] JENNA FISCHER He kind of is. 

[01:12:53] ANGELA KINSEY I knew you could play the bassoon because your book, “The Bassoon King”, is great. So I knew that. But I didn’t know you were a walking one man show. 

[01:13:01] JENNA FISCHER Suffice it to say, Rainn knew his stuff and we did rehearse, but just a little bit right before the scene. Rainn and I practice separately. I had listened to the song over and over again to memorize the words. I had to sing the first verse through the chorus. That’s what I had to do over and over again. I was so nervous. 

[01:13:23] ANGELA KINSEY Well, I thought you did fantastic. 

[01:13:25] JENNA FISCHER Thank you. 

[01:13:26] ANGELA KINSEY I have a fan question from the scene, Jenna. 

[01:13:29] JENNA FISCHER OK. 

[01:13:30] ANGELA KINSEY So Chelsea wrote in and said, “Was Angelas ‘amen’ improvised”? A lot of people wrote in about this because it was so quick after-. 

[01:13:39] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[01:13:39] ANGELA KINSEY Pam was done talking. People want to know if I improvised that. No, that was scripted. And folks wanted to know why did Angela do it? And I said, I think personally, the direction that, you know, they gave me was that Angela had had enough of this chirade, this bird funeral. Pam had gone on and on. Enough amen. I want, I’m done. And-. 

[01:14:02] JENNA FISCHER That’s how you finish it. 

[01:14:04] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. Amen.

[01:14:04] JENNA FISCHER Amen. Then I’m finished. 

[01:14:06] ANGELA KINSEY Amen, stop talking. 

[01:14:07] JENNA FISCHER Yes, exactly. Speaking of a script, I have a script catch. 

[01:14:11] ANGELA KINSEY OK. 

[01:14:12] JENNA FISCHER So, you know, in the scene, we set the box on fire, in the shooting draft of the script, we buried the bird. There was a scene where Michael and Dwight are digging a hole outside and then we all gather around this hole. And it got changed to fire. But I don’t know why. I think maybe, Angela, there was really no grass in this area that we shot. 

[01:14:34] ANGELA KINSEY No. We had no grass. There was a hedge with maybe like, I don’t know, 3 feet of dirt. Like. 

[01:14:40] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. 

[01:14:41] ANGELA KINSEY There was, I mean, not even. There is a deleted scene where Michael and Dwight are trying to dig a hole there. And then the business on the other side yells at them and they run away. 

[01:14:51] JENNA FISCHER Oh, OK. Well, there you go. Well, we had another fan question about this fire then, Clara Johnson wants to know, did you actually set the bird on fire? Yes. 

[01:15:03] ANGELA KINSEY Real fire. Fake bird. 

[01:15:05] JENNA FISCHER Kent told me they had to hire a special effects guy to oversee the fire and the extinguishing, and they had to get a special permit to be allowed to set the fire. And he said, we did 3 takes. 3 takes of the fire. And Phil told me, though, that the special effects guys were worried that the fake dead bird might give off toxic fumes when it burned. So we, they actually took it out of the box and just put a wad of toilet paper in there. 

[01:15:31] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, not toilet paper. 

[01:15:34] JENNA FISCHER I know. 

[01:15:34] ANGELA KINSEY Too soon, too soon, Angela, too soon. 

[01:15:40] JENNA FISCHER And then finally, we had a fan catch from Peter Kay. He said, “I noticed the box was burned in some shredded paper. Could this be further evidence that Pam does use the shredder”? 

[01:15:52] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, look at that. 

[01:15:54] JENNA FISCHER Nice one, Peter. 

[01:15:55] ANGELA KINSEY It would appear so. Well, you know, Jen actually left us a really great message about the scene. And she was talking about the fact that we never got to shoot outside. And when we did, everyone would get really excited. And she explains a little bit about that. So, Sam, can you play that? 

[01:16:15] JEN CELOTTA One thing that I remember from the “Grief Counseling” episode is that when I went to the sound mix, they were showing us the playback of the episode. And it was still a little bit unusual when the characters went outside. It was still a little bit of a treat. So we get to this bird funeral scene and our characters are outside. And I just remember hearing a kind of an enormous amount of birds. And I think that it was because we were outside, it was because we had a bird funeral. It was so exciting for the amazing sound people who do a fantastic job to put a lot of bird noises in, because for the longest time when we’re inside the office, they’re just putting dot matrix printer sounds and just faxes, an old fashioned office noises. So it must have been such a treat and a field day to be able to go outside and hear birds and especially on theme with the funeral. So I remember, a slight exaggeration, but it sounded a little bit like Alfred Hitchcock, “The Birds”, when they first, when I first heard the playback for the bird funeral. But they quickly made a wonderful adjustment and it was the right amount of outside birds. 

[01:17:37] ANGELA KINSEY I love that. I love that our sound mixers got so excited, they put like hundreds of birds and they’re like, Okay, guys, they’re not this many birds outside. Let’s, let’s dial it back. 

[01:17:48] JENNA FISCHER Yes, yes. Oh, what good insight from Jen this week. 

[01:17:53] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. Thank you so much, Jen Celotta, for sending in those clips and for texting me. You are amazing. We so appreciate it. And thank you, Rashida, for letting me bug you about all kinds of random things yesterday. 

[01:18:06] JENNA FISCHER And also Phil Shea and Kent Zbornak. Thank you guys for helping us make this podcast so great. 

[01:18:12] ANGELA KINSEY And thanks so much to Mindy Kaling for letting us take a clip from your book, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns”. It’s hilarious. We love you, Mindy. 

[01:18:21] JENNA FISCHER So there you have it, guys. That’s the “Grief Counseling” episode. Did we do it? Are we leaving you depressed? I hope not. 

[01:18:28] ANGELA KINSEY I hope not. And hopefully next week we won’t have any more dead birds to tell you about in our lives. Stay safe out there flying friends. 

[01:18:36] JENNA FISCHER Stay safe out there, everyone. We love ya. Thank you for listening to “Office Ladies”. “Office Ladies” is produced by Earwolf, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. Our show is executive produced by Codi Fischer, our producer is Cassi Jerkins, our sound engineer is Sam Kieffer, and our associate producer is Aynsley Bubbico.

[01:18:30] ANGELA KINSEY And our theme song is “Rubber Tree” by Creed Bratton. 

[01:18:54] JENNA FISCHER For ad free versions for “Office Ladies”, go to StitcherPremium.com. For a free one month trial of Stitcher Premium use code “Office”.