EP. 56 — Fun Run Pt 1

OFFICE-056-20201028-FunRun1-SKv05.mp3

JENNA FISCHER [00:00:03] I’m Jenna Fischer.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:00:04] And I’m Angela Kinsey.

JENNA FISCHER [00:00:06] We were on “The Office” together.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:00:07] And we’re best friends.

JENNA FISCHER [00:00:08] And now we’re doing the ultimate “Office” rewatch podcast just for you.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:00:12] 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.

JENNA FISCHER [00:00:19] We’re the “Office Ladies”. It is Season 4.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:00:27] Season 4. Holy guacamole!

JENNA FISCHER [00:00:30] It’s “Fun Run”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:00:31] It’s “Fun Run: Part One”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:00:33] That’s right, because “Fun Run” was an hour long episode. So once again, we’re going to break it down into two parts. Today is “Fun Run: Part One”. Written by Greg Daniels, directed by Greg Daniels.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:00:47] So much happens in “Fun Run”, it needs to be two episodes. It really does.

JENNA FISCHER [00:00:52] Oh, for sure. For sure. Here is a summary of just Part One.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:00:57] Yeah, let’s hear it.

JENNA FISCHER [00:00:58] Ready?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:00:58] Yeah. Let’s hear it.

JENNA FISCHER [00:00:58] OK. “Michael accidentally hits Meredeth with his car and breaks her pelvis”. There’s so much there already.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:01:08] Already.

JENNA FISCHER [00:01:09] “He gets the whole gang to visit her in the hospital and later discovers she may also have rabies. Angela asked Dwight to give medicine to her cat, Sprinkles, while she visits Meredith in the hospital, but when Dwight returns, he announces that Sprinkles is dead and he put Sprinkles’ in the freezer”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:01:30] In the freezer.

JENNA FISCHER [00:01:33] Also, your television was on.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:01:35] Yeah. My television was on and Sprinkles is in the freezer.

JENNA FISCHER [00:01:39] “Meanwhile, everyone wants to know if Jim and Pam are dating. They insist they’re not. They say they’re just friends. But Kevin is not convinced”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:01:47] Kevin really has a bee in his bonnet about it.

JENNA FISCHER [00:01:51] Yeah. Why does Kevin care so much?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:01:53] I don’t know. He’s obsessed.

JENNA FISCHER [00:01:56] Because this episode begins so dramatically. We felt like we needed to speak with the woman at the center of this episode.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:02:07] Absolutely. We need to talk to Kate Flannery about getting hit by that car.

JENNA FISCHER [00:02:13] Yes. So, guys, Kate chatted with us. Sam, will you play the interview?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:02:21] Kate Flannery is here today, you guys, with her tiny teacup.

JENNA FISCHER [00:02:27] Hi, Kate, how are you?

KATE FLANNERY [00:02:29] I’m great. How are you guys doing? It’s nice to see you.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:02:31] Wait, we have to get a picture of you with that teacup. Codi, will you take a picture?

JENNA FISCHER [00:02:36] It’s not tiny. It’s a regular sized teacup. What’s tiny about that?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:02:40] I don’t believe you. It looks tiny.

KATE FLANNERY [00:02:41] It’s regular.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:02:43] Oh, my gosh. And you have a little cup and saucer. Here’s the thing-.

KATE FLANNERY [00:02:47] I do.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:02:47] Guys, Kate Flannery is one of the classiest gals. Her home is spectacular. It is decorated like it’s out of Architectural Digest. It is, every little thing is amazing. And I am not surprised at all that you look so put together and you’re having your tea in a proper cup and saucer.

KATE FLANNERY [00:03:06] Oh, my gosh. But now I have to turn my phone off because-

ANGELA KINSEY [00:03:07] Sorry. Important phone call.

KATE FLANNERY [00:03:08] Someone is calling me.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:03:09] She’s getting an important phone call.

KATE FLANNERY [00:03:11] Sorry, guys. Sorry.

JENNA FISCHER [00:03:11] Take it on air. Take it on air. Who is it?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:03:13] Yeah, who is it?

JENNA FISCHER [00:03:14] Let’s talk to them.

KATE FLANNERY [00:03:14] I think it was a potential spam so I hung up on them. I’m sorry. I can’t get locked in a timeshare just for you, for the bit. I’m sorry, you guys. I can’t. It’s so good to see you. You don’t understand, we spent every day together for nine years.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:03:28] I know. Oh my God. I know.

KATE FLANNERY [00:03:31] It was so much like a real office job in that respect. Just like-.

JENNA FISCHER [00:03:35] It really was.

KATE FLANNERY [00:03:36] Just like hours at our desks.

JENNA FISCHER [00:03:37] And the fluorescent lights.

KATE FLANNERY [00:03:39] Yes.

JENNA FISCHER [00:03:39] I mean, that has a real effect on you.

KATE FLANNERY [00:03:41] And the snacks. Come on.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:03:42] That was the best spread.

KATE FLANNERY [00:03:44] Oh, God. We had the best, best food ever.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:03:47] It’s all my dad ever talked about all the years that he visited. And I would pepper him with questions about, “So Steve Carell, lunch with us today! Wasn’t that great”? And he was like, “Did you see the steak they had? It was like, it was always about the food.

KATE FLANNERY [00:04:00] Bill Kinsey.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:04:01] Aw, Kate. It’s so good to see you.

KATE FLANNERY [00:04:04] Ang. Jenna. You guys.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:04:07] You guys.

JENNA FISCHER [00:04:08] Kate, we always like to start by asking people how they came to be on “The Office”.

KATE FLANNERY [00:04:14] I actually auditioned for the pilot for the part of Jan. Allison Jones said, “I think you’re really right for the show, but I don’t know if this is your part”. So clearly they went a different way with Melora Hardin. And lo and behold, you guys shot the pilot. I remember that summer I was doing a sketch show once a week that was timed. It was a two minute sketch show, so literally at two minutes the lights would go out. It was this live show in, in Hollywood at this theater on Melrose with the Sklar, one of the Sklar brothers, Randy, was doing a sketch right before me. He’s like, “Have you been watching that British show ‘The Office’? I’m so obsessed with it”. He was like the first person to really tell me about it. I was like, “Yeah, I’ve seen a little bit”. He goes, “You got to watch the whole thing”. So I kind of got obsessed. And then come September, late August, early September, I had an audition. I couldn’t make the first one because I was in Chicago with my aunt and then I just came, I figured the part was going to get taken. And they had another session a few days later. And I went in and I read and I remember Alison Jones said, “No makeup”. And like usually in L.A., you know, that means light, you know, mascara, some foundation.

JENNA FISCHER [00:05:17] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:05:17] It means something. It never really means no makeup. Right?

KATE FLANNERY [00:05:21] No. And they’re like literally, she literally had a box of tissues, she’s like, “No makeup”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:05:25] Wipe it off.

KATE FLANNERY [00:05:27] Get off. Right? Anyway. And then I just remember there were a few actresses that I knew from Chicago that were there and I felt like they booked everything. I’m like, “I’m never going to get this”. But I just remember that room was Ken Kwapis and Greg and Allison Jones and I’m sure Paul Liberstein. I’m sure, you know, Mike Schur. I’m sure all the, the producers were there, the writer producers. It was like the most unique experience I think I’ve ever had in an audition. And then I, when I came out, I got home and then Allison told me to go to Gower and do it again, do it one more time and do less, less, less. Do less. And then by the time I got home from there, I found out that I got the part.

JENNA FISCHER [00:06:06] What? You booked it on the drive home.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:06:08] Girl, way to go.

KATE FLANNERY [00:06:09] Isn’t that weird? And I didn’t have a cell phone, so I didn’t know until I got home.

JENNA FISCHER [00:06:11] That’s every actor’s dream.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:06:13] You didn’t have a cell phone, so you didn’t know. Those were the days, man. Like-.

JENNA FISCHER [00:06:17] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:06:17] You know what? You couldn’t, they couldn’t get a hold of you. You found out at home.

KATE FLANNERY [00:06:22] I was playing hard to get, on the drive home.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:06:24] Wow. Well, Kate, I was so excited because when you walked on to set that day, Kate and I had been doing an improv show called “Bitch Planet”.

KATE FLANNERY [00:06:32] All chick improv.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:06:34] All chick improv. And we’d been doing that for years. And then all of a sudden, my good friend was going to be sitting, like, right behind me for years. That was just amazing.

KATE FLANNERY [00:06:45] Who knew when when four people were in our audience on a Sunday night for our show.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:06:49] At 10 o’clock.

JENNA FISCHER [00:06:51] Kate, do you remember what your audition scene was?

KATE FLANNERY [00:06:54] Yeah, it was from “The Alliance”. It was the whole reaction to the surprise party and Michael reading the birthday card and insulting Meredith like crazy.

JENNA FISCHER [00:07:06] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:07:07] Amazing.

KATE FLANNERY [00:07:08] Yeah. It was so awesome. So awesome. So awkward. So awful.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:07:12] So awful. Happy Bird-day.

KATE FLANNERY [00:07:15] Happy Bird-day.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:07:17] Well, Kate, we’ve talked a lot on this show about how once we were filming in that bullpen, we were all in the scene, and so we were all each other’s background and that’s very unique. It’s not like that on a lot of shows, right?

KATE FLANNERY [00:07:31] No. Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:07:31] So we’ve sort of talked about the things we did in the background. We talked about how Phyllis looked at gates. Remember? She looked at gates.

KATE FLANNERY [00:07:36] Oh, right. Right.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:07:37] For her house for years.

KATE FLANNERY [00:07:39] I remember they told us, they told me when I booked the job that I was supposed to bring paperwork because they really wanted us to be looking like we were working. And I loved that suggestion. I thought it was so, like it’s so method because then no one is suddenly acting like they’re working, they’re actually working and the camera catches them, which makes so much more sense. So I actually brought my taxes, like, the first season.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:08:02] I was going to see Kate, I have a memory of you opening your mail. And like having-.

KATE FLANNERY [00:08:06] Oh yeah, I did, I did. I brought a bag of stuff. And I think I also like snuck reading a book, which is kind of like a thing that people do it, in an office anyway, sometimes. You know?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:08:16] Well.

JENNA FISCHER [00:08:16] Especially Meredith. Well, I don’t know. Does Meredith read a lot?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:08:20] Maybe not.

KATE FLANNERY [00:08:21] I got into solitaire, clearly, that was like my main background choice for so much it. But that was so much because the back of my head was in so much of it that I, I, my cam, my screen was caught all the time on my computer. So I would just rather than like go to some file at the last minute, I would just dump into solitaire because I knew I could just get right back into it. And I thought it was a funny thing for Meredith to be multitasking all the time with a game. So stupid.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:08:44] Well, you became really, really good at it.

KATE FLANNERY [00:08:46] Actually, Creed and I would have many, many a competition and I whooped his ass.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:08:54] You did. I am still sort of hung up on the fact that they told you to come to set and bring paperwork.

JENNA FISCHER [00:08:59] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:08:59] Jenna, did they tell you that?

KATE FLANNERY [00:09:01] They didn’t tell you that?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:09:02] No.

JENNA FISCHER [00:09:02] You know, I don’t remember that specifically, but I did bring some. I used to write down my grocery list a lot. I was constantly, or just general To Do lists. I would do. I would journal, you know, but with a paper and pen.

KATE FLANNERY [00:09:17] Yeah. So funny. Now Jenna, you and I had a little system that we created. Do you remember? You remember this. You have to.

JENNA FISCHER [00:09:25] Of-, it’s one of my fondest memories of the show.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:09:27] What? What? What? What?

KATE FLANNERY [00:09:28] We had specific boxes of other people’s real life paperwork.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:09:35] Yes! Yes.

KATE FLANNERY [00:09:35] Phil Shea bought like medical records. It was bizarre. And these-.

JENNA FISCHER [00:09:40] Yeah.

KATE FLANNERY [00:09:40] Receipts and I had this whole system where I was, I was stapling and I had a whole like thing, certain things that would match and then I would bring them to you. And then you would approve or disapprove, sign. I just remember this whole, oh my God, it was fantastic.

JENNA FISCHER [00:09:56] It was amazing. And it was very specific. My favorite thing about it, Kate, was that we would do this in the deep, deep, deep background when no one would appreciate it. It was really just for us and we would never break character and we would argue, not with each other, but sort of like with the system.

KATE FLANNERY [00:10:17] Yes, yes.

JENNA FISCHER [00:10:18] We were always like mad at like how they had added these-, yes. These alphanumeric characters that don’t match any of the forms and are impossible to input into the computer.

KATE FLANNERY [00:10:27] Oh my gosh.

JENNA FISCHER [00:10:27] We had this whole thing we were mad at, at corporate, that we would do.

KATE FLANNERY [00:10:32] We did. Oh my gosh. This was greatest job in the world.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:10:36] This is the cutest thing that I, how was it that I was on set with you guys, all these years, I didn’t know, I, I didn’t know you guys were doing this. Do you know what Oscar Nunez would do with these health records? Oscar would find one that had something really peculiar and he’d circle it and highlight it, make it very important. And he would hand it to me in the middle of a scene with great authority. And it would say something like, “Bulbous mass on eyelid, probably stye. Recommended to drain of the pus”. And I’d be like, Oh my God, I’m reading this in the background of a scene.

KATE FLANNERY [00:11:11] We were so respectful, though, obviously we never gave away anybody’s name or medical condition on the show.

JENNA FISCHER [00:11:18] I want to say I have a memory that those forms were redacted like that the real personal info was blacked out. Did I do that to the forms? Or is that real?

KATE FLANNERY [00:11:29] I think we did it to the forms. I literally think we did, because I remember, sometimes there were a little bit. But not everything. Not everything.

JENNA FISCHER [00:11:37] Oh.

KATE FLANNERY [00:11:38] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:11:38] I do remember addresses being blacked out. But anyway, guys, it was sort of creepy to know that you could buy old medical records in those days. I’m sure now they’re all computerized. And also the dates were from like three decades ago. It was like.

KATE FLANNERY [00:11:51] Right. It was a lot of stuff from the 80s.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:11:54] You know, 1960s, 70s, 80s.

KATE FLANNERY [00:11:55] Yeah, the 80s was a big. Yeah, yeah, it’s so bizarre.

JENNA FISCHER [00:11:56] I love, I love how we’re trying to reassure people when the truth is we clearly had the things we shouldn’t have had.

KATE FLANNERY [00:12:04] Oh my God.

JENNA FISCHER [00:12:04] But you know what? Let’s keep, let’s keep trying to justify why it was OK.

KATE FLANNERY [00:12:09] Well.

JENNA FISCHER [00:12:10] It’s fine. It’s fine.

KATE FLANNERY [00:12:12] What happened at Dunder Mifflin, stayed at Dunder Mifflin. We did not share any-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:12:15] That’s right.

KATE FLANNERY [00:12:16] Sensitive material. But I will say, what I loved about that and the, the realness of the paperwork, it kept, it just kept everything. It was like a little focus for the lens.

JENNA FISCHER [00:12:26] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:12:26] One of my favorite things was they had stacks and stacks of some type of timecode documentation from these offices. And they were on really thin, like like almost like the pages of a Bible thin. You know?

KATE FLANNERY [00:12:39] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:12:40] And then they had all the little carbon slides in them and I would sometimes smell the carbon slides.

JENNA FISCHER [00:12:50] What?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:12:51] ‘Cause I liked the smell. It’s like the smell of like a Sharpie. I liked the smell.

KATE FLANNERY [00:12:53] This is the E! True Hollywood story right now. Angela’s getting high-.

JENNA FISCHER [00:12:56] Yeah. What is happening right now?

KATE FLANNERY [00:12:57] In the corner.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:12:57] Angela was sniffing the carbon in the background. Sometimes.

JENNA FISCHER [00:13:01] This is how you got into character. I don’t know.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:13:04] Yeah.

KATE FLANNERY [00:13:04] Well, you know, it’s funny because Ken Kwapis would do that thing, you know, like the general tone at the beginning, like when he would come. And this was all part of it, just like actually, you know, filming us working. Just working and being like, you know, who are you working? It’s funny, people have asked me, like, how did you stay in character? Whatever. I feel like those were our desks. So the crew really wasn’t allowed to sit at our desks. So it was, it was, it really did feel like an office job in that respect. Like you would literally walk in to set and just go right to your desk.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:13:36] Yeah.

KATE FLANNERY [00:13:36] It was kind of like focusing and specific and really wonderful. And it kept all of us in the game.

JENNA FISCHER [00:13:43] And likewise-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:13:43] We did.

JENNA FISCHER [00:13:44] You know what? I wouldn’t sit at anybody else’s desk.

KATE FLANNERY [00:13:48] No.

JENNA FISCHER [00:13:48] Like, I would never just go sit down and Phyllis’ chair.

KATE FLANNERY [00:13:51] No.

JENNA FISCHER [00:13:51] Right? That was like her space.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:13:55] Sometimes Rainn would sit at my desk to talk Fantasy Football with Brian.

KATE FLANNERY [00:13:59] Right.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:13:59] And I would have to come kick him out of my seat.

KATE FLANNERY [00:14:03] But I just, I always, I just had such respect for the process. Like, I just feel like the focus was always in the right place for our show.

JENNA FISCHER [00:14:10] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:14:11] Yeah.

KATE FLANNERY [00:14:11] And I feel like, I didn’t always have a lot of lines, obviously, but I felt like there was something that I felt like I was kind of holding the space for the reality that we were in. And that was very important to me. I was always very conscious of that.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:14:24] Well, we are super excited to talk to you about this amazing stunt that you did in this episode.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:14:30] I mean, holy cow, Kate.

JENNA FISCHER [00:14:32] You get hit by a car.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:14:35] You get hit by a car.

JENNA FISCHER [00:14:38] What was your first thought when you read this episode?

KATE FLANNERY [00:14:41] OK, I literally said, “Does she live”? I literally said, “Does Meredith live”? I said it right away. And then, like, I’ve been reading later that, like, there’s been articles saying that one of the writers decided that, you know, they wanted to pitch that Meredith didn’t live and then they thought that was too dark. Greg thought it was too dark for Michael to have killed one of the employees of Dunder Mifflin.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:15:01] Oh my God. Yeah. How do you come back from that?

KATE FLANNERY [00:15:02] Yeah, I’m not sure. I’m not sure. But I was like, but I remember, like, I was so conscious of it because I was like, I know this isn’t a soap opera, like this could be it. But the first time we shot it, literally, they played it almost like Meredith was a speed bump that he just like went over. Because-.

JENNA FISCHER [00:15:17] Like you were laying on the ground and he rolled over you? OK.

KATE FLANNERY [00:15:21] I was underneath the wheel, literally. We finished shooting the episode. And then I think two weeks later, Dave Rogers, our Emmy winning editor, had an idea for an insert shot that he thought was so much more interesting than what we had shot, which was Meredith hitting the glass. And he asked our UPM, Kent Zbornak, to try it out and show it to me, like “Kent did it. Do you think you do it”? I mean, he obviously did not know me because I would have said yes any-, I totally would have said yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:15:49] I was going to say, you would say yes.

KATE FLANNERY [00:15:51] I would have. But Season 1, I remember, Greg, there was a shot of Dwight and Michael dressed like Crocket and Tubbs from “Miami Vice”, from the Halloween Party, do you remember that?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:16:01] Yes, yes.

JENNA FISCHER [00:16:03] Yeah.

KATE FLANNERY [00:16:03] And they had me dress up like Madonna and I remember it was like, it was like maybe my second week there. And I was like, oh, “OK, I’ll be Madonna, whatever”. And like, they really went for it. I mean, I was, I was like 1987 Madonna. I was wearing like a bustier. It was nuts. I was just in the background and I thought, there was something about that. It was like my responsibility to do whatever as full out as possible. I don’t know, I was like kind of up for anything. Because I remember Greg saying, “Is it OK if you do this”? And I was like, “Sure, like, of course”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:16:30] So that, that started the whole Meredith saga being full Madonna, started it all.

KATE FLANNERY [00:16:35] Sort of. Right? But I actually felt like it was so much fun to do the physical comedy because I have such a good time do-, I mean, I’ve always had a good time doing that my, my whole career. But like, this was so up another level, for sure. So literally when we went to shoot it, we had to shoot it again and Steve wasn’t available. So Dan Beals, who was our PA, who was so young at the time, he had Steve’s jacket on and shirt. So it was his hand that they would cut from. And it was, it’s such a quick swipe like, you know.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:17:09] So wait, Dan was driving?

KATE FLANNERY [00:17:12] Well, he was just in the car. Car was stationary. I started in the center of the hood. I had to roll up to the glass and then roll off the car onto a giant mat. And-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:17:22] So you sort of had to like with force roll into that windshield on your own. You sort of slammed your body into the windshield and then slowly rolled off of it onto a mat in the parking lot.

KATE FLANNERY [00:17:32] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:17:32] Wow.

KATE FLANNERY [00:17:33] And I remember after, like the fourth take or fifth take, Greg took me aside and we went to the back where the warehouse entrance is, in that alley, where we shot, like where the bird, you know, where they had the bird funeral, you know.

JENNA FISCHER [00:17:44] Yeah, yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:17:44] Yeah, yeah.

KATE FLANNERY [00:17:46] He’s like, “OK, come with me and do some jumping jacks”. He was like doing jumping jacks with me, just to get me really loose. I love Greg so much. I mean, he’s-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:17:52] That’s so Greg, by the way.

KATE FLANNERY [00:17:54] He’s the great, like the greatest. It’s funny, I just recently saw, Dave Rodgers sent me an outtake, another take that they didn’t use. And I actually did an extra spin in there, which I actually thought was a little funnier. But I’m just so used to watching the one thing, I think it just caught me by surprise.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:18:09] So wait, there is a take of you out in the universe where you roll, you flip forward twice into the windshield.

KATE FLANNERY [00:18:16] No, once in the windshield, but then I flip twice off the car.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:18:19] Oh.

KATE FLANNERY [00:18:19] So it’s like ba ba ba ba. Like it’s insane. It’s insane.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:18:22] Well, guys, at 53 seconds, you can see Kate’s face up against the windshield.

KATE FLANNERY [00:18:29] And I’m telling you after we shot that I remember they were using it in the promos for the episode because it was the first episode of Season 4, “Fun Run”. I remember Joaquin Phoenix canceled at the last minute for “The Tonight Show”, so they asked me basically because of the promo, it was so much fun, like they actually wanted me on “The Tonight Show”. So that was the first time I did that. That was so awesome.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:18:50] Well, Kate, Kate, you’re just like a rock star. I mean, I have to ask you, though, if you’re rolling with force into a windshield over and over and rolling off, were you sore? Did you, like?

KATE FLANNERY [00:19:02] We had to match what we shot before because they weren’t sure about the before, if they were going to see us before. So I had to match the clothes and I was wearing short sleeves and like a denim jumper.

JENNA FISCHER [00:19:14] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:19:14] Yeah.

KATE FLANNERY [00:19:15] Like a kindergarten teacher. And I remember the Emmys were like the next week and I was so bruised. I had to use like body makeup.

JENNA FISCHER [00:19:21] Yeah, because I think if they knew they were going to do the stunt that way, they probably would have padded you up.

KATE FLANNERY [00:19:26] Totally.

JENNA FISCHER [00:19:26] And dressed you accordingly. Right?

KATE FLANNERY [00:19:27] Yeah. Yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [00:19:29] Oh, my gosh. That’s crazy. Well, Kate, you did so many stunts on the show. Was this your favorite? Do you even have a favorite?

KATE FLANNERY [00:19:35] I think so. This was my favorite. I also loved being-, this is so weird. I was on top of the men’s room stall when Dwight comes, where, I was planking. Meredith is planking.

JENNA FISCHER [00:19:45] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:19:46] Yes.

KATE FLANNERY [00:19:46] Dwight comes in with a fire extinguisher and just blows her off into the stall.

JENNA FISCHER [00:19:52] Yes.

KATE FLANNERY [00:19:54] We used the real men’s room, where, Video Village, where the guests were. That, those two bathrooms.

JENNA FISCHER [00:19:59] Yes. Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:19:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

KATE FLANNERY [00:20:00] And they put like this weird flimflam mattress on top and I was like, fingers crossed. I don’t go the other way because there was nothing on the other side. Because I had to balance.

JENNA FISCHER [00:20:11] Oh no!

ANGELA KINSEY [00:20:12] Kate.

KATE FLANNERY [00:20:12] That was so crazy. But yeah. And it was really the men’s room. I’m like, OK, this hopefully I don’t land too hard because then I’m going to hit the toilet. It’s so bizarre. But it was really fun.

JENNA FISCHER [00:20:21] I want to give some props to your athleticism. I know that Angela has often-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:20:26] OK, here we go.

JENNA FISCHER [00:20:28] Chided me for my athleticism.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:20:29] Here we go. Here we go.

JENNA FISCHER [00:20:31] No, no, it’s OK. I’m not going back to that.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:20:34] Really?

JENNA FISCHER [00:20:34] Anymore than I just did. But Kate.

KATE FLANNERY [00:20:38] Too late.

JENNA FISCHER [00:20:39] You are amazingly athletic. I mean, in doing all these stunts, that doesn’t surprise me. I mean, we know that you were on “Dancing with the Stars” and you were amazing, but you also did your lounge show “The Lampshades” for years and years and years. And I remember coming to see you in that. And you do this deep squat over and over again.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:20:58] Repeatedly. Repeatedly.

JENNA FISCHER [00:21:00] And you kick your leg up and I was like, oh my gosh, I feel like they got so lucky with you as Meredith because you were qualified for these stunts.

KATE FLANNERY [00:21:12] That’s so sweet. I feel like for me too, it was empowering. Like I did not do the stunt with my hair on fire. I did do all the stuff in the parking lot of “Moroccan Christmas”. I just didn’t do the hair on fire.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:21:23] And the bat. You did the bat. That was crazy and you really sold.

KATE FLANNERY [00:21:26] It was so crazy. And then I didn’t actually shave my head. I had a bald cap for that. So I feel like those are the two, like, like, I’m like, OK. But.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:21:32] Um, I think, I think it’s OK that you let your hair be. You know what I’m saying?

KATE FLANNERY [00:21:36] I know, I think Greg was disappointed, though. It was like the first time I was like, “Nope, not doing that”. Like.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:21:43] Well, can we talk a little bit about the moment in this episode where we’re all in the hospital, we’ve all come to see you. I, my memory of this was it was so hard to get through those scenes without laughing. In fact, you see us break.

KATE FLANNERY [00:21:55] Totally.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:21:55] I fully break in the episode.

KATE FLANNERY [00:21:57] That was during “Fun Run”. Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:21:59] What are your memories of shooting in the hospital?

KATE FLANNERY [00:22:02] I remember there was one scene where Dwight talks about the fact that if they pulled the plug, you know, basically the energy, like that they-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:22:10] They’re wasting money, keeping you going. I loved it when you were like, “Do not pull the plug, don’t pull any plugs”.

KATE FLANNERY [00:22:19] Oh my God, it’s so good. And I remember the take when Steve just, as an apology, he’s trying to get an apology out of me. And I won’t apologize. I won’t apologize. And so he just decides to climb into the bed with me. And I feel like I had a slight delayed reaction. But I’m like, “Ahhh”! I just started screaming because I’m like.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:22:35] Well, we were also surprised because he improvised that. And you even see all of us, we sort of like freeze. And then we’re like, “Michael, stop”!

JENNA FISCHER [00:22:42] Yes, yes. It really took us by surprise.

KATE FLANNERY [00:22:47] Totally, totally.

JENNA FISCHER [00:22:49] Well, Kate, another question we like to ask our guests is if they took anything with them when the show wrapped.

KATE FLANNERY [00:22:56] How dare you? I am not a thief.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:22:59] Oh, you have it. You have it.

JENNA FISCHER [00:22:59] What do you have?

KATE FLANNERY [00:23:01] Well, first of all, I have Meredith’s purse. I always wore it, like, you know, like across-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:23:06] Side saddle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [00:23:09] Yeah. You satcheled it.

KATE FLANNERY [00:23:10] And I left everything in it that was still in there. So this is why I still had “The Marriage Union of Pamela Morgan Beesly and James Duncan Halpert”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:23:20] Aw.

JENNA FISCHER [00:23:20] Is that our wedding?

KATE FLANNERY [00:23:21] Yes, it’s the program. So this is what I did.

JENNA FISCHER [00:23:24] It’s our wedding program.

KATE FLANNERY [00:23:24] The wedding party. And the wedding party. Yes. This is what I showed on “Some Good News” with John Krasinski when we, when we did our our wedding guest.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:23:32] Oh my gosh.

KATE FLANNERY [00:23:33] Isn’t that crazy?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:23:34] That is so, that you would just tucked it in your purse and you still have it.

KATE FLANNERY [00:23:38] I did.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:23:38] We would do that though. We would get prop purses and like if we had props, we would just put them in our purse.

KATE FLANNERY [00:23:44] Totally.

JENNA FISCHER [00:23:44] Yeah.

KATE FLANNERY [00:23:44] And I have, I have, oh my gosh, what else do I have in here? I think I have-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:23:47] Do you have some old sides? I would always put my sides in my purse.

KATE FLANNERY [00:23:49] I do have sides, but I also have I’ve Sweeney Todd from when Andy was performing in that theater.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:23:55] Wow.

KATE FLANNERY [00:23:55] And I have a Church of Angels, Cecilia Marie Halpert, when she got christened. Cece’s christening.

JENNA FISCHER [00:24:04] Oh, my gosh. Kate, these are amazing.

KATE FLANNERY [00:24:08] I know.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:24:08] Well, Kate, fans love Meredith. And, you know, we’re going to be hitting you up. We’ve got a few more episodes to cover before we’re done here. Before we say goodbye, is there anything we can share with everyone, like where to find you, what you’re up to?

KATE FLANNERY [00:24:23] Yes, I, well, on Instagram at TheRealKateFlannery, on Twitter, at KateFlannery. I go to a little Ramen place once a week in K-Town.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:24:32] Don’t say that.

KATE FLANNERY [00:24:35] But I’m actually doing some charity work for Philabundance, which is the biggest Food Bank in Philadelphia. That’s my hometown. I’m working with WMMR, which is their, the big radio station, they always have the “Big Morning Show with Preston and Steve”. And I’ve been doing their show for years and it’s literally like five minutes from my dad’s house, like I will roll out of bed, and if I’m in town, I just and I occasionally sometimes let a four letter word slip. So they literally have a button on their panel that says, “The Flannery Button” because there’s a four second, you know, five second rule, like, oh my God. Those FCCs. Gosh, it’s crazy. But anyway, I love these guys so much and they’re making such a difference. Philabundance is, they’re doing a huge push. They always do it right before Thanksgiving. But this year is even bigger because of the pandemic and because so many families are in need and there’s so many businesses that are not happening and that we have to wait until we can all be together again and we will be together again. But in the meantime, you know, you guys can go to Philabundance.org. And I’m going to be doing some, a little bit of press for them and I’ll be, you know.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:25:39] Kate, that is so great. And we should have mentioned that you were from Pennsylvania.

KATE FLANNERY [00:25:44] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:25:44] And that your family, your dad had a bar in Philly.

KATE FLANNERY [00:25:48] He did.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:25:48] What was the name of the bar?

KATE FLANNERY [00:25:50] Flannery’s Tavern. He was up all night trying to figure out a name. No, I’m just kidding. My grandfather came up with the name.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:25:56] Well, Kate, we love that you are giving back to Philly like that, and we’ll definitely, you know, we’ll put in our socials where people can find that.

KATE FLANNERY [00:26:04] That would be awesome. Thank you so much, you guys. I love you. So good to see you.

JENNA FISCHER [00:26:08] Love you too, Kate.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:26:08] Love you too. Thank you so much.

JENNA FISCHER [00:26:09] This was amazing. You have to come back.

KATE FLANNERY [00:26:12] I would love to.

JENNA FISCHER [00:26:16] Oh, we are back. Angela, that was so great talking with Kate. She looks beautiful, stunning. We have been talking to a lot of people through Zoom for our podcast. And most people show up like a hot mess.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:26:32] Not Kate Flannery.

JENNA FISCHER [00:26:34] No.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:26:35] She looked amazing. And Kate, that was so fun. And we can’t thank you enough and we have a lot to cover. We better get into it.

JENNA FISCHER [00:26:42] Yes. Let’s break down this episode, lady.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:26:45] First of all, Jenna, I would like to share with you what you were doing this week that we filmed this. Are you ready?

JENNA FISCHER [00:26:53] OK.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:26:53] Someone went digging into old e-mails.

JENNA FISCHER [00:26:58] Oh, I’m kind of scared.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:27:01] Don’t be scared. Although I could burn it to the ground, but so could you.

JENNA FISCHER [00:27:04] Oh, dear.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:27:06] OK, on July 31, 2007, the whole cast got an email from Kent Zbornak that said, “Hey all, for this Friday, August 3rd. Here’s our schedule for the day. 8:45 a.m. check in with the NBC Universal Studios Harassment Seminar. This will be located on Stage 3. 9:00 a.m. Harassment Seminar, Mandatory Attendance, 10:00 a.m. Costume Fittings, Wardrobe Trailer, 11:00 a.m. Table Read Episode ‘Fun Run’, in the writers’ trailer. Noon, Cast Physicals”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:27:47] Is that the end of the email?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:27:50] “Please call if you have any questions, Kent”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:27:52] Oh, that’s it?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:27:54] That’s it. I thought it was, first of all, I thought this was an interesting perspective that you saw what a day would be like as we prep an episode.

JENNA FISCHER [00:28:02] It is. You’re, you’re build up to like, would you like to know what you were doing? I guess I just wasn’t expecting the answer to be, you attended a Harassment Seminar and got a physical. I mean, I just thought like-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:28:16] No.

JENNA FISCHER [00:28:16] What was I doing? I can’t wait to find out. I mean, I have to say I wouldn’t pick this day to redo if a genie in a bottle ever gave me a wish.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:28:27] OK, OK. Well, I just thought this was a very interesting perspective. A, it shows what we had to do to start a new season and also, B, we filmed “Fun Run”, Part One and Part Two in August. OK, this part of the episode we’re inside. But folks, we’re going to be running outside. It’s August. I just think, I just think it’s interesting perspective, Jenna.

JENNA FISCHER [00:28:52] I love it. It’s great. I just thought you were going to let me in on something more exciting. That’s all. Then my cast physical. I don’t know. And my wardrobe fitting.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:29:06] Well, I was very excited. Clearly, I was very excited to find this email from Kent.

JENNA FISCHER [00:29:10] Well, I’m glad you saved it, because that’s a keeper.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:29:14] Oh, shut up.

JENNA FISCHER [00:29:15] You’re gonna want to-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:29:16] You shut it.

JENNA FISCHER [00:29:16] You should scrapbook that.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:29:18] You shut it. What would Dwight say? “Zip your lid”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:29:22] I probably deleted that email because I like to keep a tidy inbox. I love that you saved it. I think. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to segueway into the episode.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:29:34] How about we get into this episode. All right, we start off with Michael eating some cereal.

JENNA FISCHER [00:29:40] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:29:40] And at 9 seconds, my background folks, you can see that red pot basket thing that fell out of Jan’s box as she was leaving corporate.

JENNA FISCHER [00:29:52] No! You’re kidding me.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:29:53] It’s sitting right there.

JENNA FISCHER [00:29:56] Oh, my gosh, I love that so much.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:29:58] Yeah, she’s put her things around the condo.

JENNA FISCHER [00:30:02] Well, we had a big fan catch at this moment from Hannah A., Robert F., Christine J., Adrian Gibbs, Chelsea Warren and many others who wrote in to say that Michael is eating cereal from Wegmans. And Wegmans is a local East Coast grocery store, they wanted to know whose idea was it to feature these Wegmans’ products? That would be Phil Shea.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:30:30] Yeah, I was going to say, had to be Phil Shea, he was so great about doing that kind of research.

JENNA FISCHER [00:30:35] But how in the world did Phil Shea get Wegmans’ Raisin Bran and Wegmanns’ soy milk, I have no idea. I’m impressed.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:30:44] Listen, Phil Shea is the guy that knows a guy. He’s got a guy. Phil Shea’s got a guy.

JENNA FISCHER [00:30:51] He’s got a guy on the ground.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:30:53] In Scranton.

JENNA FISCHER [00:30:54] Going to the Wegmans in Scranton, which, by the way, I looked it up, is open 7 days a week from 6:00 a.m. to midnight and is located at 1315 Cold Spring Road.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:31:03] There you go, folks.

JENNA FISCHER [00:31:05] If you want to eat the Raisin Bran that Michael is eating, that’s where you can get it.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:31:09] Add it to your Dunder Mifflin Scranton tour.

JENNA FISCHER [00:31:12] Exactly. Well, then Michael enters the bedroom to reveal that Jan is still sleeping. “She’s probably going to sleep for another few hours”, he says.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:31:23] You can really see what she’s doing to the condo in this. I mean, she has set up a vanity. There’s a giant mirror, there’s a clothes rack. I see two tall, enormous like candle things. There’s a pink chair. But guess what there’s not?

JENNA FISCHER [00:31:40] Well, Michael’s little bed that he sleeps on during “Dinner Party” at the end of the bed.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:31:46] The bench at the foot of the bed that he says he sleeps on is not there yet.

JENNA FISCHER [00:31:53] Yes. I noticed that as well.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:31:54] Well, maybe I’ll email you about it someday.

JENNA FISCHER [00:31:57] Maybe Kent sent us an email about it.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:31:58] You can delete it because you like, you like a tidy box.

JENNA FISCHER [00:32:02] Oh, my gosh, you’re so mad at me about this email thing. But I want, like when you listen back. When you listen back, Angela, I want you to hear, like, the anticipation that you built.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:32:15] I’m sorry.

JENNA FISCHER [00:32:16] This is, I’m going to do it for you. “I have an email that I found that is going to tell you what you were doing this week. Mmhmm. I have it. I’m going to tell you”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:32:29] I found it int-.

JENNA FISCHER [00:32:29] And then you were like, “I could burn you to the ground with some of my emails”. And I’m like, what is she going to say?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:32:35] I said, I, you said, wait. Hold up.

JENNA FISCHER [00:32:36] Then, like you were like, 8:45a.m., check in for Sexual Harassment Seminar. And I was like, wait, what?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:32:44] Hold up.

JENNA FISCHER [00:32:44] That’s where this is going.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:32:46] Hold up. You said, “Ooh, should I be scared”? And I said, “No”. I mean I have the ones that can burn it down, so do you, but not this one.

JENNA FISCHER [00:32:55] Clearly not this one. Clearly not this one. This week you complied with your job and its requirements.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:33:05] Well, your new nickname is Tidy Box. So enjoy that.

JENNA FISCHER [00:33:11] You know, box is another word for vagina. Right?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:33:13] I know. It’s the double entendre. Is that how you say that? Oh, good Lord. Tidy Box. OK.

JENNA FISCHER [00:33:23] We. What’s happened to us?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:33:27] Well, we’ve been friends a long time. That’s what’s happened.

JENNA FISCHER [00:33:30] All right.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:33:31] I love it. Well, Michael’s in his car now. He’s excited, you guys. He is a talking head. He thinks it’s going to be a good year. Jan is home. Jim is back. Ryan is at corporate. Andy and Dwight are rockin’ the sales team. He feels blessed.

JENNA FISCHER [00:33:46] He does. He also is not paying attention.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:33:50] And then, bam!

JENNA FISCHER [00:33:52] When he hits Meredith with his car. And we talked about this with Kate. What an amazing and exciting way to start the season. I have to say.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:34:03] I was surprised even when I rewatched it, I was like, “Oh, God”!

JENNA FISCHER [00:34:07] Well, remember in her interview when Kate said that her first thought was, oh, my gosh, does Meredith live? And she heard that maybe there were some writers who had pitched that they kill Meredith.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:34:20] Do you know who they were?

JENNA FISCHER [00:34:21] I got to the bottom of it.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:34:23] Oh, no. This is probably a better email.

JENNA FISCHER [00:34:26] I was e-mailing with Greg Daniels and Justin Spitzer, and they told me that yes. They spent one evening pitching on this idea that maybe Meredith died, but it’s more than that. It’s not just that Meredith died.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:34:43] What?

JENNA FISCHER [00:34:44] Greg told me that, first of all, the idea was that they would shoot this as a spy shot so they would not have a camera inside the car with Michael. It would just be a spy shot of him arriving at work for the day with the talking head as a voiceover.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:35:03] OK.

JENNA FISCHER [00:35:04] He said that the pitch was that Michael would accidentally hit Meredith with this car and then thinking that no one could see him, he didn’t want to leave any witnesses, and so in one pitch, he backed over her to make sure she was dead.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:35:21] Oh, good Lord.

JENNA FISCHER [00:35:23] And then, Justin told me that there was a pitch that Michael would go into his trunk and get one of those antitheft devices called the club and then club her to death and then hide her body.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:35:35] Were they on drugs? Were they on drugs? I mean, seriously, that is the end of the show. You, there’s no coming back. What were they thinking?

JENNA FISCHER [00:35:45] That’s what Greg said. Greg said, of course, we could never do this, but it was a pitch that was discussed for some time. And he said there were a few writers who were fighting for it. They were fighting for Michael to accidentally and then purposely do Meredith in.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:36:06] I need names.

JENNA FISCHER [00:36:07] He wouldn’t give me the names.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:36:08] I need names because I need to do a mental check on them. Holy cow.

JENNA FISCHER [00:36:16] So, yeah, I, that’s what I found out. There was a moment where they were pitching that maybe Meredith doesn’t make it.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:36:26] How?

JENNA FISCHER [00:36:27] Craziness.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:36:27] Craziness. Also, I definitely don’t want to know any of their late night pictches on Angela. OK, thanks. OK. All right. Well, let’s get into this episode. There’s a lot to discuss. We start out with Jim and Pam talking to the IT guy because Pam crashed the computers looking for some celebrity sex tape.

JENNA FISCHER [00:36:53] Yeah, we got a lot of mail about this.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:36:56] I did a little bit of a mini deep dive.

JENNA FISCHER [00:36:59] Well, let’s see. Lydia Lind, Meegan Harrison, Mary Newberry and Chris Rhoa, all wrote in to say, “It seems out of character for Pam to purchase a celebrity sex tape. Did your script say who’s celebrity sex tape Pam clicked on, or did you ever come up with your own idea of who it might be”?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:37:20] OK, Jenna. I think I know what the writers were hinting at here because I Googled, by the way, be careful Googling this. I Googled “Celebrity Sex Tape 2007”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:37:33] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:37:34] And the first thing that comes up is Kim Kardashian and her boyfriend were vacationing and made a video and that got leaked and it was released March of 2007. And there was a ton of, like, chatter. You know, just everyone was talking about it. Right? And I think when the writers thought of this story idea, that’s what they were thinking of. I don’t have, I don’t have proof of that, but this was written around June of 2007. And that had happened in March.

JENNA FISCHER [00:38:03] Yes. So it was in the zeitgeist. But I don’t think Pam would click on that, like, is she-?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:38:09] I don’t think Pam would click on it.

JENNA FISCHER [00:38:10] Is she kidding here? Maybe she’s just trying to be coy or-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:38:15] I don’t know.

JENNA FISCHER [00:38:16] Flirty or something. It definitely shocked me when she said it. And-.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:38:20] Also she’s at work. She’s at front reception. She’s going to watch this and shut down the whole computer grid. I don’t know. It was a little bit of a stretch for me when I watched it too.

JENNA FISCHER [00:38:30] I agree.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:38:31] OK, well, now Jim has a talking head. He talks about how he broke up with Karen. And it was really awkward because she came back and she said she wasn’t going anywhere. And you can see Karen is letting him have it there in the kitchen. And as they’re going at it, Phyllis and Angela, shoot Pam, a very judgy look.

JENNA FISCHER [00:38:53] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:38:54] 2 minutes, 10 seconds, judgy Phyllis and Angela. Oh, my gosh. Phyllis Angela Combo Sass. Combo Sass.

JENNA FISCHER [00:39:02] That’s a lot of sass.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:39:03] And, but he said, you know, Karen said she wasn’t going anywhere, but then the next day her desk was cleared off and he’s single and looking.

JENNA FISCHER [00:39:12] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:39:12] He wrapped that up quickly.

JENNA FISCHER [00:39:15] You know, this was a highly anticipated episode because we had this big cliffhanger from the last season of Jim asking Pam on a date. And here now, Jim saying he’s single, Pam has the talking head where she says, oh yeah, we went to dinner a few times. We, we talked through his breakup, but we’re just good friends. And it’s, it’s really nice to be friends again.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:39:37] Well, I’m with Kevin. I’m with Kevin. “Are you kidding me”?

JENNA FISCHER [00:39:43] Yeah, Kevin’s not having it.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:39:45] This was also a fun talking head for Kevin and Oscar because it starts with Kevin and then reveals Oscar when, when Kevin’s like, “Right”? And he’s like, “Well, there’s no evidence of intimacy and, you know, but they are both in very good moods”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:40:00] We had a couple of fan questions about this plot point.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:40:04] OK.

JENNA FISCHER [00:40:04] Julia Johnson and Madeline Nelson noticed, “Pam has a big change to her hair and wardrobe. Is it because she’s dating Jim now? And was there a lot of discussion about these changes”? Oh, yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:40:18] Well, her hair is very different.

JENNA FISCHER [00:40:20] Yes. No more clipped back hair.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:40:24] Crunchie hair.

JENNA FISCHER [00:40:25] Yes. This change was a huge discussion. Pam is also not wearing her traditional button down shirt and her little cardigan. She’s wearing this cutesy little sweater with a little, kind of bow that ties on the side.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:40:39] A very, very flirtatious shade of beige.

JENNA FISCHER [00:40:44] Yes, I noticed that too. I was like, well, we didn’t, we didn’t go too far.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:40:50] Yeah. Get me the cutest beige sweater you can find.

JENNA FISCHER [00:40:55] Well, it was a big discussion. We couldn’t have this giant transformation. Greg did not want that moment from those movies where the sort of nerdy girl with the glasses falls in love and then after she falls in love, she’s got a gorgeous blowout and doesn’t need her glasses anymore. You know, that whole story that we saw a million times growing up.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:41:14] Mmhmm. It was called “Kelly Kapoor”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:41:17] It was called “Kelly Kapoor”. Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:41:19] You can only do that with one character. So we met our limit.

JENNA FISCHER [00:41:22] But we did imagine that this new relationship would possibly affect Pam and how she looked and her desire to make an effort that maybe she didn’t have a desire to make before. I get this. I mean, don’t you remember, Angela, in your young love phases with someone new that you’re dating, you give a little extra zhuzh, right?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:41:51] Yeah, of course.

JENNA FISCHER [00:41:53] We had a big fan catch regarding Pam’s wardrobe. This came from Meegan Robinson, Steph Baldwin, Laura Roldan, Haley McMurtry and Kelly Anne Mim, they all noticed that Pam’s necklace changes in this episode. You know what it is now?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:42:12] What?

JENNA FISCHER [00:42:13] She’s a butterfly.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:42:15] Fly butterfly. You’re not that worm anymore.

JENNA FISCHER [00:42:21] No.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:42:23] Fly.

JENNA FISCHER [00:42:22] I think you mean caterpillar.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:42:23] Caterpillar. Squishy thing, you’re not, that’s great, you’re beautiful, flying in the wind.

JENNA FISCHER [00:42:33] Yes, she has metamorphosis into a beautiful butterfly.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:42:40] That’s right, no longer the unicorn, now the butterfly. Jim and Pam at 3 minutes are discussing their separate weekend plans in front of Kevin. It’s making him crazy, right? Because he’s not buying it.

JENNA FISCHER [00:42:53] Yep. Yep.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:42:53] Pam says, you know, maybe she’ll go to the flea market at the Drive-In. Guys, I’ll look this up. There is a flea market at an old Drive-In. And it was actually the Reader’s Choice Award for Best Flea Market. It’s located at the famous Circle Drive-In in the Circle Flea Fair. It’s the largest flea market and farmer’s market in northeastern Pennsylvania. So that is 100 percent believable that Pam would be going.

JENNA FISCHER [00:43:20] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:43:21] And Jim says he’s going to go mountain biking at Montage Mountain. Well, I looked that up.

JENNA FISCHER [00:43:26] And?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:43:27] And correct me if I’m wrong, folks in Pennsylvania, but Montage Mountain has, you know, ski runs, but you can’t mountain bike on it unless there’s some trails I don’t know about. I actually found an online petition from April of 2019 of folks wanting to mountain bike on Montage Mountain, but you can’t. And there’s an online petition because people want to.

JENNA FISCHER [00:43:52] Wow.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:43:53] Sorry, sorry, had to do a local deep dive.

JENNA FISCHER [00:43:56] Well, you know what? Perhaps that’s the evidence that Jim and Pam are not actually having separate plans that weekend.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:44:06] Hmm, because he would know.

JENNA FISCHER [00:44:09] If Kevin knew that there was no mountain biking on Montage Mountain, he would know.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:44:14] Kevin doesn’t know that because he’s not athletic.

JENNA FISCHER [00:44:17] He doesn’t know. No.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:44:17] But Jim knows that.

JENNA FISCHER [00:44:19] That’s right.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:44:19] Jim got it wrong.

JENNA FISCHER [00:44:22] Well, now Michael arrives and he breaks the news that Meredith has been hit by a car.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:44:31] Yeah, yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [00:44:35] You know, luckily, he was there.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:44:37] Yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [00:44:38] And he drove her to the hospital, he said, “The doctors did the best they could. They did everything they could to save her life”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:44:47] Mmhmm.

JENNA FISCHER [00:44:48] “And she’s going to be OK”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:44:50] Yeah, and Stanley’s like, “Why the hell would you say it like that? Who talks like that”?

JENNA FISCHER [00:44:57] It’s so good. I love that line from Stanley so much. Leslie is so good in that delivery.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:45:05] He’s so good. And I loved it when Andy’s like, “Well, who hit her”? And then Michael was like, “Kind of a good news, bad news there. I was able to be on the scene so quickly because I was in the car that hit her”. And Jim’s like, “Oh, no”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:45:21] Yeah, Jim’s like, “Who was driving the car”? And that’s when Pam is like, “Oh, Michael”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:45:30] “Oh, Michael”. At 4 minutes, 4 seconds, there’s a reaction shot of everyone. And the accountants are all sort of standing together. Guys, the return of the floofy blouse.

JENNA FISCHER [00:45:42] Ooh, is it a flooffy blouse in an accountant stack?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:45:47] It’s a floofy blouse in an accountant clump. This is more of a clump than a stack.

JENNA FISCHER [00:45:51] All right.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:45:52] But Jenna, you can also see that over the summer, I got bangs.

JENNA FISCHER [00:45:56] Oh.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:45:56] Yes. And, and Kim Ferry had to try to style my hair, but I think I have sort of stylish bangs.

JENNA FISCHER [00:46:04] Oh.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:46:04] Yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [00:46:05] Well, there you go.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:46:05] I know.

JENNA FISCHER [00:46:07] Well, now we are moving into Michael’s office. Dwight is trying to make Michael feel better by explaining, “It’s going to be fine. I mean, it’s only Meredith”. But Michael is upset because he thinks everyone thinks he might be a murderer. Or they were looking at him like he was a murderer.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:46:24] Can you imagine if some of the writers had had their way?

JENNA FISCHER [00:46:28] I know. No kidding.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:46:30] Gosh. Well, now Pam is going to go around the office, she thinks everyone should visit Meredith and she’s collecting money so they can buy her flowers.

JENNA FISCHER [00:46:41] Yes, but Angela says she can’t go because Sprinkles is sick.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:46:45] Mmhmm.

JENNA FISCHER [00:46:45] And Angela needs to go home at lunch to give Sprinkles some medicine and eat lunch with her cat.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:46:51] Yeah. And you guys there are wonderful deleted talking heads from this episode. So many characters have great talking heads. But this is a talking head that would have happened right before Pam walked over to Angela. And I have to read it to you because it’s so funny to me. Angela has the talking head that says, “I’ve had Sprinkles for six years. I adopted her when I graduated from accounting school. I knew the kind of life I wanted, one with the companionship and unpredictable good times only a cat offers”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:47:24] Hmm.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:47:26] “The unpredictable good times a cat offers”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:47:30] You know, cats really do offer unpredictable good times.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:47:34] Creed Bratton has texted me this sentence, “An unpredictable good time only a cat offers”. Creed texted me that the other day.

JENNA FISCHER [00:47:44] I love that.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:47:45] So yes. So Angela has that talking head and, that you didn’t get to see and it really sort of builds up like this is like more than a cat to her. I mean, we already know that.

JENNA FISCHER [00:47:56] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:47:56] But when Pam suggests that Angela like should go and that she’s like ditching on her Party Planning Committee duties, Angela’s ticked.

JENNA FISCHER [00:48:08] Sam, can I get a Pam Sass?

STING [00:48:10] Pam Sass.

JENNA FISCHER [00:48:11] Yeah. We had some people write in, Paige Banker, Lauren Korwin, they just wrote in all caps, “MAJOR PAM SASS at 5 minutes, 35 seconds”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:48:23] Yeah, I agree, you guys.

JENNA FISCHER [00:48:27] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:48:27] Pam says, “Can’t your other cats keep her company”? And Angela’s like, “There’s bad blood. Jealousies, clicks”. What’s happening at this woman’s house?

JENNA FISCHER [00:48:41] I have to tell you something about this scene. This was what I thought you were going to tell me when you said that I had written you an email about this episode.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:48:52] Why?

JENNA FISCHER [00:48:52] And about what I was doing this week.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:48:54] Why?

JENNA FISCHER [00:48:56] Lady, I was really, really hungover when we shot this scene, like, super hungover. And if you look at me in this scene compared to every other scene, you can see it on my face. I am like, I am gray. I’m kind of green.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:49:18] Why?

JENNA FISCHER [00:49:19] My eyes are puffy. I will never forget it. So the night before this shoot, I went to a Mexican restaurant and I was with a friend who ordered a margarita.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:49:32] OK.

JENNA FISCHER [00:49:34] I had never really had a margarita before.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:49:37] Oh, no way.

JENNA FISCHER [00:49:39] Yes. Yes, it’s true. I, we’ve talked about this. I did not have a lot of experience with drinking. I just, you know, I had a cosmopolitan I had to research drinking in order to play drunk Pam. So I took a sip of it.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:49:54] Yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [00:49:55] And I was like, “This is delicious. I love this drink”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:50:02] Uh oh.

JENNA FISCHER [00:50:03] And then I had three.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:50:04] Three?

JENNA FISCHER [00:50:05] Three over the course of this dinner.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:50:12] Jenna.

JENNA FISCHER [00:50:12] I, then, you know, lady, this scene was the first scene of the next day, we had a super early call time and I was really feeling it like I didn’t, I had not had enough time to recover from my three margaritas.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:50:28] Oh, yeah. My call times were routinely like 5:00 a.m., 5:30. So.

JENNA FISCHER [00:50:33] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:50:33] You were, you were sweating tequila.

JENNA FISCHER [00:50:36] I was. And so I thought when you said earlier that you had an email from me about what I was doing this week. I was like, oh my gosh, did I write Angela about those margaritas?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:50:48] Sorry to disappoint, you had a mandatory physical, table read and a Sexual Harassment Seminar.

JENNA FISCHER [00:50:55] Exactly. Anyway, that’s my little, that’s my little tidbit. Every time I see the scene, I’m reminded of the night that I first drank three margaritas.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:51:05] Well, now I’ll always remember it. So now Michael has to call Ryan because Ryan is his boss and tell him he hit Meredith on company property and-.

JENNA FISCHER [00:51:15] With his company car.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:51:16] Yeah. And Ryan is such a badass boss in this. He’s clearly, he’s liking being the boss and talking to Michael this way.

JENNA FISCHER [00:51:25] Well, and then we go to the Ryan talking head and Ryan has a new look!

ANGELA KINSEY [00:51:32] Oh.

JENNA FISCHER [00:51:32] He’s got his like, his, what do you call that? It’s not a beard, it’s like a, the permanent stubble.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:51:39] Yeah, it’s like a five o’clock shadow, but it’s a choice. It’s a choice. Yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [00:51:44] Yeah. And his hair’s all slicked back. He’s got like kind of a Gordon Gecko thing going on.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:51:49] Yeah. He looks like he should be in the show “Succession”. That’s what he looks like.

JENNA FISCHER [00:51:53] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:51:54] Right? And he has the same kind of like cheesy attitude, he’s like, “Some people keep calling me, you know, Wonder Kid, you know, not really sure what that means. Well, I guess I do know what it means”. He’s. Oh, it’s so cringey.

JENNA FISCHER [00:52:05] Yeah, it’s great. This is, we’re going to get a glimpse now of what this new dynamic is going to be like. Well, then we have a scene that I love, Angela, because it’s a Dwight and Angela secret scene. Remember the people in the office, we don’t know you’re dating. Right? So you guys are still kind of like a secret couple. Whenever you want to talk to each other, you have to go be, like, weirdly secretive about it.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:52:32] Yeah. I mean, I guess only Jim knows, right?

JENNA FISCHER [00:52:36] And Pam.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:52:37] And Pam.

JENNA FISCHER [00:52:38] Have Jim and Pam hopefully talked about it at this point? We still don’t know.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:52:42] You would think. So, lady, I had a long speech where I talk about all of Sprinkles’ medications, and I did that thing like you did on “Beach Games”. I learned it backwards and forwards so that I could say it just effortlessly, you know, but but here it is. Sam, can you play that clip?

DWIGHT SCHRUTE [00:52:59] So what do you need me to do?

ANGELA MARTIN [00:53:00] I worked it out. There’s a diabetes shot role. Roll the insulin in your hands, don’t shake it. She gets an ACE inhibitor with her meal. You have to put her right in front of the dish or she won’t see it because of the cataracts. Mix one capsule of omega fatty acid in with her kidney medicine. And you want to give that to her 15 minutes after she’s eaten and oh, there’s a fungal cream because she has this infection under her tail. So you’re going to have to lift her tail and put the cream right at the base of her tail.

JENNA FISCHER [00:53:27] I love that you memorized it, Angela, because when I watched that, I wondered. I thought the answer was yes, because you delivered it like you knew. And if you had a cat that was sick, you would know. Right?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:53:40] Yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [00:53:40] You wouldn’t be searching for that information. You would know it.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:53:43] Oh, yeah. And they had, the props department had given me this blue note pad with all of the different steps written out, but not in the same order. Not exactly. So like actually if I looked at the notepad, it would have messed me up. But I saved the notepad with all of Sprinkles’ medications. And it’s the one I hand Dwight in the scene. He’s holding it. I saved it. I never tore off that first page and I still have it. And the whole notepad is unused and that first page just has all of Sprinkles like medicines and how to care for her.

JENNA FISCHER [00:54:18] Oh, my gosh.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:54:20] Oh, look. Wait. Oh, I took a picture of it. Do you want to see?

JENNA FISCHER [00:54:23] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:54:24] OK, here.

JENNA FISCHER [00:54:25] That is amazing. But that’s not your handwriting.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:54:27] No, no, no, it’s not my handwriting. Someone in the props department wrote that out.

JENNA FISCHER [00:54:31] Wow. We have to post that on the pod. Will post it on the pod.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:54:35] OK.

JENNA FISCHER [00:54:35] Sprinkle’s medication going on the pod. Well, we got a fan question from Tracy Prescott who said this, “I am a cat focused veterinarian in Atlanta. And I was wondering if an actual doctor of veterinary medicine was consulted about Sprinkles’ medical needs because Angela’s list of medications and treatments she gave to Dwight were very realistic”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:55:01] Oh, that’s fantastic.

JENNA FISCHER [00:55:03] Well, Greg told me that he had the writers’ assistants, Nate Federman and Jonathan Hughes, do research into the accurate cat medicines, and that is why that list of medicines is so realistic.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:55:16] Well, good job, writers’ assistants.

JENNA FISCHER [00:55:19] That’s right. Well, listen, before we go on, maybe we should take a break, because coming up, Michael is going to try to, I don’t know, right this wrong?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:55:31] He’s going to try. It’s not going to go well.

JENNA FISCHER [00:55:34] It never does.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:55:35] No. All right. We’ll be back.

JENNA FISCHER [00:55:42] All right, we are back and Angela, Michael has gone into the break room in an attempt to rally everyone to plant a tree in honor of Meredith, but do you know what I titled this scene? You are always titling scenes and I have titled a scene.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:55:59] What?

JENNA FISCHER [00:56:00] “John Eats Popcorn”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:56:02] Oh, my gosh.

JENNA FISCHER [00:56:04] Did you notice he eating popcorn through this whole scene? Not carrots, not baby carrots, but popcorn and the way he’s eating it, it’s so, it’s so delicate.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:56:18] Was he trying not to crunch too loudly?

JENNA FISCHER [00:56:20] I think he was trying not to be a problem for sound, but he was clearly hungry because he eats it through the whole scene.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:56:28] Oh, my God. Was this the year we got that little popcorn maker by craft services?

JENNA FISCHER [00:56:34] It must have been. This must have been the first week with the popcorn maker.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:56:38] We went a little crazy for popcorn and then the sound department, I think, said, “OK, guys”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:56:43] I remember it went away.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:56:45] Yeah, but we were excited about it.

JENNA FISCHER [00:56:47] Well, he’s eating popcorn in this whole scene. And it’s also in this scene that Pam explains to Michael, “You know, we’re just going to go visit Meredith. We’re going to go in shifts so we don’t overwhelm her”. But Michael is like, “No, we’re all going together at the same time. I’ll drive”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:57:03] So Jim and Pam are like, “Well, we can each take people in our separate cars”, and Oscar’s like, “Separate cars”. And Kevin’s like, “I don’t believe it”.

JENNA FISCHER [00:57:12] I know.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:57:13] Well, then Michael has a talking head and he says, “You know, I have flaws. You know, what? So sue me”. And he’s like, “No, no, no, don’t sue me”. But Jenna, there was an alt to this talking head and it’s in the deleted scenes and it made me laugh so hard. And it’s also in the bloopers and Steve couldn’t get through it. He kept laughing.

JENNA FISCHER [00:57:32] What is it?

ANGELA KINSEY [00:57:33] OK, this is, this is it. There’s one take, clearly, he got through it because it’s in the deleted scenes. He says, “I am not a bad guy. I am a good guy who runs over women with his car. Why am I having such a hard time getting my message across”?

JENNA FISCHER [00:57:51] Oh, my gosh, that is funny.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:57:53] And the way Steve does it is so good.

JENNA FISCHER [00:57:56] That’s good. I have to go watch that.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:57:58] Yeah, you have to.

JENNA FISCHER [00:58:00] Well, we don’t find out exactly how they get there, but the entire gang does arrive at the hospital. Michael has a whole bunch of balloons.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:58:09] And the entire gang minus Dwight.

JENNA FISCHER [00:58:12] That’s right, because Dwight has gone to take care of Sprinkles. Everyone gathers around Meredith’s bed and we talked about this scene with Kate about how Steve improvised crawling on top of her in that one moment, he’s like trying to give her a hug. It’s pretty amazing.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:58:31] It’s pretty great. There is a deleted scene from this moment where Creed, as they’re exiting, just grabs all her meds out of the little plastic cups. They’re sitting on her tray.

JENNA FISCHER [00:58:41] Oh.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:58:42] And Creed just pockets all her meds.

JENNA FISCHER [00:58:45] Of course he does. Well, I had a favorite moment from the scene and I wanted to ask you about it because I think maybe you improvised it. When Michael is trying to get Meredith to forgive him, he says, “That she should think about the Bible because it says that forgiveness is next to godliness” and you mutter, “That’s cleanliness”.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:59:09] I did improvise that.

JENNA FISCHER [00:59:12] Oh, I also wanted to mention in the scene the nurse who is an improv person from I.O.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:59:19] Yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [00:59:19] Her name is Silvia McClure. Well, I looked at her IMDB and I found this very interesting. In addition to playing a nurse on “The Office”, she has also played a doctor on “Young and the Restless”, “Dexter” and “Intelligence”. A nurse in “Night of the Dead” and a receptionist nurse on “The Unit”. So she’s played a lot of nurses and doctors, and incidentally, she’s also twice been cast as a nun.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:59:46] That is very interesting, like sort of a, it’s like a weird typecasting.

JENNA FISCHER [00:59:52] Yeah, exactly. Well, I used to get a lot of auditions for school teachers and nurses.

ANGELA KINSEY [00:59:59] Have you ever played a nurse or doctor?

JENNA FISCHER [01:00:01] Yes, actually. I played a pediatric nurse in this movie called “The Promotion”.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:00:09] I played a doctor on an episode of “Monk”. And I played a sexy nurse briefly in one of our Halloween episodes of “The Office”.

JENNA FISCHER [01:00:22] What were you most often typecast as for auditions?

ANGELA KINSEY [01:00:27] Before “The Office”?

JENNA FISCHER [01:00:29] Before “The Office”.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:00:30] Quirky. Quirky gal. What’s up?

JENNA FISCHER [01:00:33] Like quirky, quirky, fun neighbor.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:00:35] Quirky neighbor.

JENNA FISCHER [01:00:36] Yeah, yeah. I was, I got a lot of just the schoolteachers, waitresses and nurses.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:00:47] Well, I will tell you, we talked about how hard we laughed in the scene, but 11 minutes, 22 seconds is when you can see us breaking. If you’re looking for it, that’s when Michael crawls on top of Meredith.

JENNA FISCHER [01:00:59] Well, now we can go back to the office and we are going to find Dwight telling Angela some bad news.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:01:08] And she’s anxious to see him. She wants to know how it went. You can just tell. And then he’s like a “Hey, monkey” and she’s like, “Any problems”? “Well, you left the TV on and your cat is dead”. And my, my character’s like, “What”? And he’s like, “Sparkles. The white one is dead”.

JENNA FISCHER [01:01:25] Yeah. He gets the name wrong. It’s bad.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:01:27] It is bad. This will not end well.

JENNA FISCHER [01:01:30] Angela, you get so very immediately emotional and not in a funny way, like this is one of the ways that our show allowed characters to be real people because Angela, the character, really loved her cat and she is heartbroken and you see that real pain here from your character. How did you gear up for this scene?

ANGELA KINSEY [01:01:56] Well, Greg told me. He said, “You know, Angela Martin hearing this news will be devastated. And I need you to play out the beats of hearing news that kind of destroys you in the moment. You know, and I feel like we’ve all had moments in our lives where we’ve gotten that phone call with some bad news, you know, unfortunately. And I just sort of, I thought about a few of those moments where, you know, at first you’re just in total shock, where you’re not really sure what you heard.

JENNA FISCHER [01:02:31] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:02:31] And then it’s like someone slaps you in the face with the information. And then you’re trying to make sense of it, but you can’t make sense of it. It’s the unthinkable and it doesn’t make sense and your body is doing all of that. You’re in shock. You’re sad. Your body-, your mind is trying to make it right, but you can’t make it right. You can’t figure it out. You don’t understand why it happened. And I was just trying to process through all of that and, yeah, that’s what I did.

JENNA FISCHER [01:03:02] Did you have to do a lot of takes of that scene, do you remember?

ANGELA KINSEY [01:03:05] No, I didn’t. I was thankful for that.

JENNA FISCHER [01:03:08] In the next scene, your character is still crying.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:03:11] Mmhmm.

JENNA FISCHER [01:03:11] She’s standing at reception with Pam. And you look like you’ve been crying for a long time. What did you do to get there to start the scene in a place like that?

ANGELA KINSEY [01:03:23] You know, I’m chatty, so my instinct would be I’m standing by reception with you would be to be hanging out, you know, being part of the bullpen.

JENNA FISCHER [01:03:31] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:03:31] So one of the things I did was I went around the corner by the elevators, by myself in between takes. And I did not hang out. And I just tried to stay in sort of that sad space. And, and also the the makeup department, they wanted my eyes to really look like I had bawled my eyes out.

JENNA FISCHER [01:03:50] And they did.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:03:51] So I had to get myself back in that emotional place and get sad again. And also the makeup department, Kenneth Paul, who did my makeup, did like this type of eyeliner that really made the inside. It was like on the, in the inside of your eye, reddish pink. So my eyes, my eyes looked the part and then emotionally, I got there.

JENNA FISCHER [01:04:12] Your eyes looked like you had three margaritas yesterday. That’s what you looked like.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:04:17] Maybe, maybe that’s what I, that should have been my prep instead of eyeliner and sad thoughts.

JENNA FISCHER [01:04:22] Yeah, no, what happened was Laverne just showed Kenneth Paul a picture of me from the previous day and was like, “Make her look like that”. No, but in all seriousness, Angela, when I was watching these series of scenes where your character is really, really devastated over the death of Sprinkles. I was just so beyond impressed with your performance and your range and your believability, it was just, this is just great, great work.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:04:53] Aw, thanks. I appreciate that. I really appreciated Greg writing the story line for me. And I got to do all these things, you know, and, and, you know, his take as a director was always to try to keep it as honest as possible.

JENNA FISCHER [01:05:10] Yeah. Well, there’s another really great moment in the scene, and we actually had a fan write in, Katy Hardwick said, “I think we need to give a shout out to Michael when Angela’s cat dies. Not only did he know her name, but he was overcome with grief. He cares so much for his employees. And it was just such a sweet moment to me. But I do have to ask, do you think he was truly sad or did he just see this as a distraction from hitting Meredith that everyone could talk about instead? I personally think he was very distraught about Sprinkes”.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:05:49] Well, I agree. This happens at 12 minutes, 41 seconds. And it is one of my favorite endearing moments of Michael. Now, maybe because it’s personal for me because, you know, I played Angela Martin. I knew how much she loved her cats. But Michael, it’s like that moment when the trick-or-treaters come to his house and you see his joy. It’s like that moment when he shows up to Pam’s art show.

JENNA FISCHER [01:06:13] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:06:14] Michael really saw these people as his family. So Michael knew Angela’s love of Sprinkles. Of course he did.

JENNA FISCHER [01:06:22] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:06:22] And he was gutted to hear that Sprinkles died the way he puts his hand up to his face and he kind of collapses into the wall and he’s like, “Oh, shoot, I’m sorry, Angela”. I mean, could it get any worse? He’s feeling all of that. He really feels bad. And now he gets Sprinkles name right the first time and then he makes a big speech and calls her Prinkles. So, you know.

JENNA FISCHER [01:06:48] He does. That’s right. He says, “So many bad things have happened today. The computer crashes from porn, Meredith’s accident and now Prinkles”.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:07:01] “We’re cursed”. This seals the deal. To him, that’s it. The office is cursed. And now he’s got to figure out how to break this curse.

JENNA FISCHER [01:07:11] Yes, but he does say, “I’m not superstitious, but I am a little ‘stitious”.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:07:16] It’s like he thinks they’re two separate words.

JENNA FISCHER [01:07:19] Well, we had a fan question about that line from Jessica Williard and Lauren Corwin. They said, “That line makes me laugh every time. Who wrote this joke”?

ANGELA KINSEY [01:07:31] I was curious too, did you find out?

JENNA FISCHER [01:07:34] I did. It was Gene Stupnitsky.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:07:36] Gene! Hilarious.

JENNA FISCHER [01:07:38] Yeah, I asked Greg and he said, “I’m pretty sure it was Gene or Lee”. I reached out to those guys. Gene said, “Yes, it was me”. He remembers. They were in a group and this talking head leads to a commercial break and they needed a button. They needed a little button at the end of this talking head so that they could go to commercial. And he said they were just trying to come up with something. And all of a sudden he said, he shouted out, “I’ve got it. This might be stupid, but how about this”? And he pitched that line. And it is so genius. It is such a good line and I hear that line quoted all the time.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:08:18] It is a Michael Scott classic line.

JENNA FISCHER [01:08:21] It is. It’s true. Well, speaking of classic Michael Scott, we’re now going to move in to one of Michael’s conference room meetings.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:08:30] This is an epic conference room meeting. We were in this conference room all frickin’ day. We got loopy, we got punchy. I’m going to tell you where we flat out lost it. It’s so good.

JENNA FISCHER [01:08:42] Yeah. I also remember that they very specifically did not seat Jim and Pam next to one another.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:08:50] Mmhmm.

JENNA FISCHER [01:08:50] This was part of Jim and Pam’s supposed like way of deflecting that we’re dating.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:08:57] Yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [01:08:58] And I remember that you have to just be sad and kind of cry through the scene and that I didn’t want to chat you up too much because I knew you had to stay in that space.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:09:07] And I did. I did. I really stayed sad until the end when Steve made me break into laughter. So Michael in the scene is questioning his employees. He feels like someone must have done something to get this curse, right?

JENNA FISCHER [01:09:21] Mmhmm.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:09:21] Like had they violated an ancient Indian burial ground? And then, you know, he wants to know what everyone’s religious beliefs are.

JENNA FISCHER [01:09:29] Which Toby says, “Michael, we can’t, you can’t do that. You can’t discuss that”.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:09:34] Michael calls Toby “Satan” repeatedly in this scene. One, because he won a week of free pizza. So he’s like, “I don’t think there’s a curse”. And Michael is like, “OK, Satan”. So he goes around the room. Pam and Darryl are both Presbyterian’s. They high five. Phyllis has this great line where she says, “I’m a Lutheran and Bob is a Unitarian. Keeps things spicy”.

JENNA FISCHER [01:09:57] Mmhmm.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:09:58] Creed’s said, “He’s been a follower in a cult and a leader in a cult. The followers have more fun, but the leaders make more money”. But Michael has decided he thinks maybe we should do an animal sacrifice.

JENNA FISCHER [01:10:10] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:10:10] You know?

JENNA FISCHER [01:10:11] That’s going to do it.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:10:12] Maybe that would help.

JENNA FISCHER [01:10:13] Yeah. And then he starts naming animals, but they don’t exist. I wrote them down. He suggests that we sacrifice an animal that has the body of a walrus and the head of a sea lion. Or. The body of an egret with the head of a meerkat. Or. Maybe one that has the head of a monkey with the antlers of a reindeer and the body of a porcupine.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:10:50] OK, Jenna, when Steve started this runner, they just let him go. Do you remember this?

JENNA FISCHER [01:10:56] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:10:56] He just started improvising different animal combinations.

JENNA FISCHER [01:11:01] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:11:01] We didn’t know what was going to come out of the guy’s mouth. We all started dropping like flies, cracking up. And the other thing is he would see it with such seriousness. And this was the comedy killer. The long pauses. He takes such a long pause before he says, “Body of a porcupine”.

JENNA FISCHER [01:11:24] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:11:24] We were on the floor. We were on the floor. I am not in any background shots while he’s doing these animal combinations because I couldn’t keep it together. And at 18 minutes, 11 seconds, you can see Craig Robinson covering his face.

JENNA FISCHER [01:11:40] I saw it. I remember that.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:11:43] We were losing it.

JENNA FISCHER [01:11:46] It was so funny and they let him go for a long time.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:11:50] I mean, you are not seeing all of it. He went for so long and I, I remember we were cracking up. We were just like, like, as a group, we’re like, no, get it together. These are too good. We can’t ruin these.

JENNA FISCHER [01:12:04] Well, while all this is happening at the office, Dwight has gone to visit Meredith and he has this talking head where he’s saying, as he’s sitting next to her, that sometimes the best thing to do is to put an animal out of its misery.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:12:22] He’s a farmer. Yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [01:12:23] You could power a small fan for two days with the amount of electricity Meredith is hooked up to. I have to say, please, if you go back to rewatch this episode, during this speech by Dwight next to Meredith’s bedside, please look at the woman in the bed on the other side.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:12:44] Yes.

JENNA FISCHER [01:12:45] OK? Over Dwight’s shoulder. That’s all I’m going to say, just enjoy that performance the next time you watch the scene. It’s wonderful.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:12:54] Oh my God, Jenna when we were all crammed around Kate’s bed, that woman was there.

JENNA FISCHER [01:13:01] I swear that woman, it was like she was a real patient.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:13:07] She let out some kind of noise and I thought we were all going to shit her pants.

JENNA FISCHER [01:13:13] She was a background actor. But it was, she was so real.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:13:18] She literally, while we were standing there one time, went, “Blaaagah”, like I think they told her to maybe make a moaning sound.

JENNA FISCHER [01:13:27] Yeah.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:13:27] And her interpretation of that, we went loopy.

JENNA FISCHER [01:13:31] Well, watch her in the background of the scene because she’s excellent.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:13:34] So now the doctor comes in and Dwight has some questions for him. And you and I both know that this is our writer, Justin Spitzer.

JENNA FISCHER [01:13:43] Yes. Creator of some of your favorite Dwight-isms, Justin Spitzer.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:13:48] And the creator of the show “Superstore”.

JENNA FISCHER [01:13:51] Well, I reached out to Justin and he told me that he got this role after reading the part in the table read. That he made Greg laugh.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:13:58] Which Paul Lieberstein has shared, that this would happen, they wouldn’t have some of the roles cast and they would have writers read them. And if a writer read a part, get ready. Because Greg, there was a good chance Greg was going to put you in the show.

JENNA FISCHER [01:14:11] Well, he also told me that the look he gives to camera was actually him misunderstanding a piece of direction from Greg. That Greg did not intend him to, like, perform that line to the camera as like a little joke like, “Oh, so that’s where it went”. He’s talking about Meredith’s uterus.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:14:29] Yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [01:14:31] But Greg left it in.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:14:33] I liked it.

JENNA FISCHER [01:14:34] I liked it too, but he said that was not the intention, that was a mistake.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:14:38] Well, we learn in this scene that Meredith has been bitten by a bat, which we knew, but not only by a bat, but recently by a raccoon and a rat. What the hell, Meredith?

JENNA FISCHER [01:14:53] What is she doing?

ANGELA KINSEY [01:14:55] Honestly, a few of those animals could just live in her van.

JENNA FISCHER [01:14:57] Meredith’s van.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:15:00] Mmhmm.

JENNA FISCHER [01:15:00] Well, when Dwight comes back from the hospital, he fills Michael in on all of this, he says, “You know, it turns out Meredith had been exposed to rabies”.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:15:11] Michaels, like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!

JENNA FISCHER [01:15:14] “And that going to the hospital might have saved her life because she got a rabies vaccine”.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:15:19] That is all Michael needed to hear. He hit her with a car and saved her life.

JENNA FISCHER [01:15:28] Yes, now he also says in the scene, Dwights says, “The only way to treat rabies is to start treatment before the symptoms start”. Well, I looked it up.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:15:39] Mmhmm.

JENNA FISCHER [01:15:40] This is true. Did you know, Angela, that nearly 100 percent of people who develop symptoms die from rabies? Die. It cannot be cured once you get it.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:15:53] I did not know that.

JENNA FISCHER [01:15:55] Yes. So this is why you have to seek treatment immediately if you are ever bitten by an animal and a lot of animals can carry rabies. But since I looked it up, I’ll let you know that in the United States, the most likely way to transmit rabies is through bats, coyotes, foxes, raccoons and skunks. In Africa and Southeast Asia, it is stray dogs.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:16:18] I mean, what about monkeys? There’s, there’s parts of like Indonesia, like if you go up to Ubud, like there’s monkeys. Like all over the place.

JENNA FISCHER [01:16:25] Any animal bite. If you get bitten by any animal, just go. Go get a rabies vaccine. It also said-.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:16:31] What about squirrels?

JENNA FISCHER [01:16:34] Yes, any animal. If any animal bites you. I’m just telling you, the animals that are most likely to carry rabies in these locations, but any animal can, can give it to you.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:16:46] Is a mongoose on the list?

JENNA FISCHER [01:16:49] Is a mongoose, any animal?

ANGELA KINSEY [01:16:53] I’m just messing with you, but it’s been really fun.

JENNA FISCHER [01:16:58] Well, listen, here is the thing that I found most interesting. This is from the Mayo Clinic website. Here’s what it says.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:17:07] OK.

JENNA FISCHER [01:17:07] “If you wake up in the morning and there’s a bat in your room”.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:17:12] OK.

JENNA FISCHER [01:17:12] “You should assume you’ve been bitten because a bat can bite you without waking you up”. It also said, “If you find a bat by a person who can’t tell you that they’ve been bitten like a child or an impaired adult, assume they have also been bitten, and go get a rabies vaccine”. Because once you show symptoms, there is no cure.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:17:37] Well, I was watching an episode of “Our Planet” and they were talking about these baby seals and there are vampire bats that go and try to just suck their blood and they can hop. They hop around.

JENNA FISCHER [01:17:51] The seals or the bats?

ANGELA KINSEY [01:17:52] The bats! They jump. I’m going to send you a video, they hop and they, they are bloodsuckers. It was real-.

JENNA FISCHER [01:18:01] They hop and bite.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:18:02] They hop and bite.

JENNA FISCHER [01:18:06] Yeah, well.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:18:07] Well-.

JENNA FISCHER [01:18:08] There you go, guys.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:18:09] There you go.

JENNA FISCHER [01:18:09] That’s your rabies-.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:18:12] Cheat sheet.

JENNA FISCHER [01:18:13] That’s everything you ever wanted to know about rabies.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:18:15] Basically, if you get bitten by an animal, that’s what I learned, get that rabies shot.

JENNA FISCHER [01:18:20] Good. Oh, yes. That was the take away I was hoping for.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:18:24] Well, there you go.

JENNA FISCHER [01:18:25] Well, Michael is thrilled to find out that he has saved Meredith’s life.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:18:29] Oh, yeah.

JENNA FISCHER [01:18:29] He walks into the bullpen. He declares that the curse has been broken. Turns out there is a God. Everything is great.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:18:38] But who is Jesus’s dad?

JENNA FISCHER [01:18:42] Yeah, he’s not sure, I guess.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:18:44] And meanwhile, Kevin, you know, has been on the case this whole episode trying to figure out if Jim and Pam are dating, he’s positive that they are. But it’s the end of the day. And he’s like, “You know what, I guess they’re not together. And now they probably never will be. And it’s too bad because they’re like PB and J. Pam Beasley and Jim”.

JENNA FISCHER [01:19:07] Yeah, and that was an inside joke because at this point, fans of the show had started calling Jim and Pam “Jam”.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:19:15] Yes.

JENNA FISCHER [01:19:16] They had mashed our names as Jam. And so it was this funny thing that Kevin would call us PB and J and not Jam.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:19:24] A little nod to the fans.

JENNA FISCHER [01:19:25] A little nod. Well, you know what? We see Pam leave for the day. She gets in her car, she drives away. She’s by herself. Clearly, the documentary crew is as suspicious as Kevin because they follow her as she drives off, it made me wonder, my gosh, how long do they follow us after we leave work?

ANGELA KINSEY [01:19:46] Well, I don’t think you should be that worried because Pam doesn’t drive very far. I was like, Pam, do better. You drove like four car lengths and then you pulled over. And then what? Are you going to just leave your car there? Does your-? Your car is not that far from work and you’re just going to leave it?

JENNA FISCHER [01:20:04] No, I’m not going to leave it. I’m going to pick up Jim.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:20:08] I think they could have done better.

JENNA FISCHER [01:20:10] Well, you know what this is, this is the street we could get a permit for, Ang. We couldn’t block off the whole street. This is as far as I was allowed to drive.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:20:19] Well.

JENNA FISCHER [01:20:19] But it’s true. I pull over and then Greg wanted to kind of further the misdirect. So he directed me to put my head down on the steering wheel, like maybe Pam pulled off the side of the road because she was just having kind of an emotional moment and maybe you’d find out what that was or why that was, that she was sad or something like that. But of course, what happens is Jim comes over, he gets in the car, they share a kiss, and then they drive away.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:20:50] Well, I, I loved this little moment that we got to see. I will say this, the way you slumped on the steering wheel, I did not think you were overcome with emotion. I thought you were awkwardly trying to hide.

JENNA FISCHER [01:21:04] I’m going to say when I watched that back, it’s one of my worst acting moments on the show.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:21:10] I thought you were trying to hide.

JENNA FISCHER [01:21:12] I. The idea was that I was sort of like, oh, what a day. I needed to pull over because, oh, what a day this has been. I need a moment to collect myself. I mean, it didn’t work. I don’t think it worked. You thought I was trying to hide behind my steering wheel.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:21:32] I thought, I thought it worked because I thought Pam was trying to possibly cover her face from any one of her coworkers who might be leaving since she didn’t pull very far away from the building.

JENNA FISCHER [01:21:43] Well.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:21:44] That’s what I thought.

JENNA FISCHER [01:21:46] It was strange. It was strange. But there you go.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:21:51] And on the DVD, guys, there is a very interesting extra feature. There is a rabies PSA. It is Steve looking like Steve. Cute jeans, button down, he has normal Steve hair, but he’s sort of delivering it more like Michael, but he’s Steve. I don’t know. It’s like it was written for Michael, but it’s delivered by Steve. It’s a rabies PSA. Remember those things on NBC?

JENNA FISCHER [01:22:17] Yes. Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:22:17] It’s the “More You Know”, bing, bing, bong, bing or whatever.

JENNA FISCHER [01:22:21] Yes.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:22:22] And he’s giving a few, like, tips about rabies. And then he says, “Rabies kills nearly 4000 Americans every 1000 years”.

JENNA FISCHER [01:22:33] Well, here’s an interesting fact that I found, Angela.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:22:37] What?

JENNA FISCHER [01:22:37] Which is that the day after this episode aired, this episode aired on September 27th, 2007. The next day was the first annual World Rabies Day, it was a global health day to raise awareness of rabies.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:23:00] So do you think NBC had Steve do a PSA?

JENNA FISCHER [01:23:03] I don’t know. I don’t know. But what a weird, crazy thing.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:23:10] Yes. And guys, if you get bit, get that rabies shot.

JENNA FISCHER [01:23:14] I hope I made that clear in today’s episode.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:23:16] I got it.

JENNA FISCHER [01:23:18] I hope you also learned maybe don’t drink three margaritas before you have a real early call time, aspiring actors. Maybe you can learn that from me today as well.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:23:27] Jenna, you’re giving all kinds of gems today. So many gems.

JENNA FISCHER [01:23:31] Well, thank you.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:23:33] You’re welcome. Here’s the takeaway for me today. Save the boring emails and then no one will hack you.

JENNA FISCHER [01:23:42] That’s right. Oh, there we go, guys. That was “Fun Run: Part One”. We’ll be back next week with “Fun Run: Part Two” where we actually run.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:23:54] Oh, man, do we? All right, guys, have a great week. Bye.

JENNA FISCHER [01:24:03] Bye.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:24:04] Are you still here? Bye. Thank you for listening to “Office Ladies”. “Office Ladies” is produced by Earwolf, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey.

JENNA FISCHER [01:24:15] Our producer is Codi Fischer, our sound engineer is Sam Kieffer and our associate producer is Aynsely Bubbico.

ANGELA KINSEY [01:24:21] Our theme song is “Rubber Tree” by Creed Bratton.

JENNA FISCHER [01:24:24] For ad free versions of “Office Ladies”, go to StitcherPremium.com. For a free one month trial of Stitcher Premium, use code “Office”.