EP. 76 — Weight Loss, Part 1

OFFICE-076-20210401-WeightLoss1-SKv03-PW.mp3

[00:00:04] Jenna I’m Jenna Fischer.

[00:00:05] Angela And I’m Angela Kinsey.

[00:00:06] Jenna We were on The Office together.

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

[00:00:09] Jenna And now we’re doing the ultimate Office rewatch podcast just for you.

[00:00:12] Angela Each week we will break down an episode of The Office and give exclusive behind the scenes stories that only two people who were there can tell you

[00:00:20] Jenna We’re the Office Ladies. Hi, everyone.

[00:00:24] Angela Hey. Oh, my gosh.

[00:00:27] Jenna Why are we screaming already? We’ll tell you. We are back in the studio.

[00:00:32] Angela We are in the studio, we are vaccinated. Our team is vaccinated.

[00:00:36] Jenna Look at this. I can put my arms all the way out to the sides and I don’t touch any clothes or any walls.

[00:00:42] Angela I am not staring at you through my husband’s T-shirts or smelling his socks.

[00:00:46] Jenna It’s so exciting.

[00:00:48] Angela Lady, I’m looking at your face in real life.

[00:00:50] Jenna It’s weird.

[00:00:51] Angela I want to touch it, but I won’t.

[00:00:53] Jenna Can I get you on a zoom?

[00:00:55] Angela Actually, will you go in the other room. Can we do this over zoom. We are thrilled to be here. It’s been over a year.

[00:01:03] Jenna Over a year.

[00:01:04] Angela Yeah.

[00:01:05] Jenna We don’t know what this is going to be, guys. We ended up doing more Office Ladies podcast from our closet than we ever did in person.

[00:01:12] Angela Crazy.

[00:01:13] Jenna But we’re back in person now and we don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ll tell you a few changes right off the bat. Angela has stopped using note cards, guys, and I’m freaking out.

[00:01:23] Angela And post it’s.

[00:01:24] Jenna Sam is clapping from the engineer booth.

[00:01:27] Angela It’s a moment of growth, you guys. I have a word document now. I put everything in.

[00:01:32] Jenna It’s very adulty.

[00:01:33] Angela I’m not saying I’m going to stick with it. Maybe it was something I started doing because I was in my closet and I just didn’t have space for my note cards. But look at me at this big table now.

[00:01:41] Jenna I know it’s almost like you want to fill it up with no cards. Don’t you? You want to fill it up.

[00:01:45] Angela A little bit. A little bit.

[00:01:48] Jenna Well, the other big news for today is that we are kicking off season five of The Office with Weight Loss, Part One.

[00:01:55] Angela Season flippin five.

[00:01:57] Jenna Yeah.

[00:01:58] Angela We’re here.

[00:01:59] Jenna Here we are.

[00:01:59] Angela Let’s do it.

[00:02:00] Jenna This is Season Five, Episode One, written by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, directed by Paul Feig. I’ll stop talking. We already don’t know what we’re doing in here.

[00:02:13] Angela You know what I was going to do? I was going to go pew pew pew pew pew.And then I was like, no, that’s annoying. So then I said nothing and then you said nothing and then we just stared at each other. You know why? Because we can.

[00:02:24] Jenna There might be a lot of long pauses in this podcast today. I’m going to move us into a summary. The gang at Dunder Mifflin participates in an eight week company wide weight loss competition. Pam begins her three month design program in New York City. And Andy attempts to get Angela to commit to wedding plans. But she’s busy. She’s having an affair with Dwight. An affair.

[00:02:52] Angela I know. She is stressed the F out. And the minute Andy asks her about the wedding, she runs to Dwight.

[00:02:59] Jenna Yeah, I have a question about that. Why can’t you guys have sex at home like after work? Are you guys having sex at home after work or is it only in the warehouse?

[00:03:10] Angela That is such a good question I’ve never thought about. I mean, I definitely see their hookups in this episode whenever Angela is spiraling.

[00:03:19] Jenna Yeah.

[00:03:19] Angela Maybe she’s happy at home with all of her cats and maybe she doesn’t let Andy come over. So she doesn’t need Dwight to cope.

[00:03:26] Jenna Yeah.

[00:03:27] Angela Or maybe they’re just shagging everywhere. I don’t know.

[00:03:30] Jenna Well, we’ll discuss more later.

[00:03:31] Angela We’ll discuss more.

[00:03:31] Jenna Guys, this was the start of our fifth season, like we said, and to make up for the shorter fourth season, that got interrupted because of the writers’ strike, NBC ordered 28 episodes for season five. So this season has the most episodes of any Office season.

[00:03:51] Angela Oh, my God, I didn’t know that.

[00:03:53] Jenna Yeah.

[00:03:54] Angela That’s some good Office trivia, milady.

[00:03:57] Jenna Thank you. Thank you. Well, it’s going to move us into fast fact number one, which is a little complicated. I’ll tell you why.

[00:04:07] Angela OK.

[00:04:07] Jenna Back at the end of season three, we said that Rashida Jones left the show and stopped playing Karen Filippelli because she had to go do Parks and Recreation.

[00:04:20] Angela Was she not going to do Parks and Rec then?

[00:04:22] Jenna She wasn’t, Ange, because Parks and Recreation did not exist yet. Parks and Recreation does not exist until the middle of season five of The Office.

[00:04:30] Angela Oh, farts. We got that wrong, milady.

[00:04:33] Jenna We did.

[00:04:34] Angela Why am I saying milady?

[00:04:36] Jenna I don’t know. Milady, the new lady?

[00:04:38] Angela I hope not, because people right now are like, my ears are bleeding. Stop saying milady. Wait, so Rashida, was she leaving to do a different project?

[00:04:46] Jenna No, she left because they finished the storyline of Karen, Jim and Pam. It was a storyline thing. I mean, she did go on to do more projects. She did a bunch of movies in that time.

[00:04:57] Angela Right.

[00:04:57] Jenna But no, it was a storyline thing. Similarly, I’ll have you know that we wondered during Branch Wars if the photo of Hillary Clinton in her office was a nod to Leslie Knope loving Hillary Clinton. We thought that it was. It wasn’t because, again, there was no Leslie Knope. There was no Parks and Rec yet.

[00:05:17] Angela We were determined to pull up Parks and Rec by a few years.

[00:05:21] Jenna Well, I love Parks and Rec, so.

[00:05:23] Angela I know. OK, well, there you go. We got that wrong.

[00:05:26] Jenna So this is important for two reasons. One, we need to know the timeline of Parks and Rec.

[00:05:31] Angela Clearly.

[00:05:32] Jenna And number two, Greg Daniels, who created the American version of The Office, he created Parks and Rec, along with one of our writers, Mike Shur. So midway through this season five, we’re going to lose both Greg and Mike because they’re going to be working on Parks and Rec. And that is why Jen Celotta and Paul Lieberstein take over as the show runners for season five.

[00:05:57] Angela Alright.

[00:05:58] Jenna There you go. Now, Mike Shur moved to Parks and Rec full time. Greg was doing both shows. Greg did a little bit of Parks and Rec. He did a little Office.

[00:06:07] Angela He bounced back and forth.

[00:06:08] Jenna He did. Yes. Just wanted us to get that timeline correct.

[00:06:13] Angela Yes.

[00:06:13] Jenna All right. Fast fact number two, writer of this episode, Gene Stupnitsky, said that the idea for a weight loss episode had been on the writers wall for a really long time, but they couldn’t figure out how to do it in one day because, remember, they had that rule where they tried to have plot lines that only cover one work day.

[00:06:32] Angela Right.

[00:06:33] Jenna When NBC asked for the premiere of Season five to be an hour long, Greg Daniels had the idea that we could do the weight loss episode as a sort of summer retrospective.

[00:06:44] Angela Right. Because we never see the characters over the summer.

[00:06:46] Jenna Yeah, Gene said this was a really cool opportunity to see the characters over their summer time and that they almost called this episode Summer.

[00:06:54] Angela Huh.

[00:06:55] Jenna You might notice also for this episode, there is no cold open. It just starts with the opening credits. Gene said that there was a cold open in the script. It was written that way, but they actually just folded it in to the plot. And he said that the pacing of this episode is a little quicker than previous seasons. This is going to become kind of our new pacing moving forward and that this was a change they made so they could fit in more jokes and more supporting character storylines.

[00:07:25] Angela I mean, I definitely noticed. I felt like it clipped along.

[00:07:28] Jenna Yes. Fast fact number three, this episode has an all crew commentary. Angela, take it away.

[00:07:37] Angela It does. You guys, when I started listening to this DVD commentary and realized it was all crew, I called Jenna right away. It was one of the best DVD commentaries I’ve listened to up until now. It’s so good.

[00:07:49] Jenna And you’ve listened to all of them.

[00:07:51] Angela I have. And I want to share with you guys who is on this DVD commentary for Weight Loss. OK, it’s phenomenal. It’s great. So much information. At the beginning of the DVD commentary, everyone in the crew went around, said their names and their job title for this episode.

[00:08:07] Jenna OK.

[00:08:07] Angela Randy Cordray, our brand new line producer, Michael Gallenberg, our production designer, Brian Whitall, our boom operator, Nick Carbone, our sound utility, Ben Patrick, our production sound mixer, Alicia Raycraft, our new costume designer, Kelly Cantley, our first assistant director, and Jake Aust, our post producer.

[00:08:30] Jenna Oh, my gosh. What was it like to hear all of their voices again?

[00:08:35] Angela It was so wonderful and, you know, Kelly Cantley I loved her so much and Jenna we still are on each other’s Christmas card lists. We send each other Christmas cards every year. And I just adore her. And I texted her, I said, Kelly, I can’t tell you how wonderful it is. I just spent an hour with you, like listening to your voice. I miss you so much. And she was like, Ange, I miss you, too.

[00:08:54] Jenna Ange, I get her Christmas cards, too, from her and her husband, Kevin, and their two dogs. I look forward to them every year.

[00:09:01] Angela There is so much awesome information about the making of Weight Loss, one and two. First thing I want to share with you guys that this was Randy and Alicia’s first episode that they ever worked on on The Office. And what an enormous, huge way to start their time on the show. So normally one episode, as Jenna said, is one day. They had to take our show over the course of eight weeks in one episode. It was a continuity nightmare. For Alicia, wardrobe had eight changes. And Jenna, you and I love tracking things. Well, guess who else loves tracking things?

[00:09:35] Jenna Alicia?

[00:09:36] Angela Kelly Cantley.

[00:09:37] Jenna Oh boy.

[00:09:39] Angela Kelly Cantley. She listed off all of the things that they would have to track over Weight Loss one and two. I loved it so much. I wrote it down and I began to track it as well. Number one, eight wardrobe changes. Number two, eight set dressings of the main office bullpen, number three, was it raining or not raining outside the windows, depending on the scene? Number four, they had three different goatee beards on Michael, Ryan, and Dwight. Number five, Meredith’s sunburned face- we’ll get to that. Number six, the dry erase board with everyone’s weight loss stats. Number seven, the fruit flies. And number eight, the rotting of fruit.

[00:10:22] Jenna Wow.

[00:10:23] Angela That’s what they were keeping track of. So many things. And then lastly, this episode was a huge challenge for the editing department. Do you remember in Goodbye, Toby how I had the script. I had the shooting draft and I kept telling you how the scenes were all rearranged differently?

[00:10:41] Jenna Yeah.

[00:10:41] Angela To the episode that actually aired?

[00:10:43] Jenna Yeah.

[00:10:43] Angela Well, Jake shared in the commentary that Greg and the writers were very used to being able to just move scenes around and kind of change how the episode would take shape. And they could not do that in this episode because it’s week to week and everything progresses week to week within one episode. And you can’t move around that story.

[00:11:03] Jenna No. And our clothes are changing, right?

[00:11:07] Angela Yes.

[00:11:07] Jenna And you’d notice. But there is- I saw a little flub.

[00:11:11] Angela Yes. Well, you’ll have to bring that up. And they also address- and I’ll bring this up when it happens- a character that they had to keep digitally changing their shirt.

[00:11:21] Jenna What?

[00:11:21] Angela Yes, I’ll share when we get to the moment.

[00:11:24] Jenna Angela, I think you need to do fast facts more often because that is possibly one of my favorite fast facts we’ve ever done. I’m giving you fast fact number three from now on.

[00:11:36] Angela Oh, I bet you are, thanks.

[00:11:38] Jenna I know you guys fast facts are really hard.

[00:11:40] Angela Facts are really hard. Jenna created fast facts for herself and then was like Angela, these dang fast facts. I wish every week the crew did the DVD commentary is what I wish because it’s the best commentary. It was the most insightful, interesting, the best background trivia. Fast fact three was easy because of our crew’s commentary.

[00:11:58] Jenna I cannot wait to watch that pay off as we break down this episode. Let’s take a break. Shocker. I need to go to the bathroom.

[00:12:08] Angela You know, we’ve had a big morning. It was a reunion. We both drink lots of beverages. All right. We’re going to go to the restroom. We’ll be right back. All right, well, we’re back, everyone is in the conference room, they are having a feast. I mean, there is a buffet of food happening here.

[00:12:27] Jenna Yeah, well, Michael tells everyone they better eat up because it’s their last meal. They’re going to start this weight loss competition. But first, they’re trying to bulk up.

[00:12:37] Angela So that when they lose weight, the number is big. There’s a big difference.

[00:12:40] Jenna Yes, exactly. Dwight has also told people they can’t even use the bathroom. You’re going to have to hold it. They want maximum poundage on the scale.

[00:12:49] Angela And the stakes are high because Michael explains that this is a corporate weight loss challenge and the branch that loses the most weight wins three whole extra vacation days.

[00:13:00] Jenna Everyone’s excited.

[00:13:01] Angela Yeah.

[00:13:01] Jenna I paused and I went frame by frame and I made a list of all the food I could see.

[00:13:07] Angela I love this. This is reminding me a little bit of my Pizza By Alfredo moment. Is it going to be ten minutes?

[00:13:13] Jenna No, there’s not that much food.

[00:13:15] Angela OK, let’s hear it.

[00:13:16] Jenna All right. There is a chocolate fondue fountain. There is a cheese fondue fountain. There are marshmallows, fried chicken, ribs, maybe some waffles. Cornbread muffins, donuts, lots of soda, mac and cheese, dumplings, I swear someone has mashed potatoes and gravy on their plate, and then Jim has some strawberries on his plate, probably for the chocolate fountain. But I was surprised to spot a bit of healthy food. Not surprised to see it on John Krasinski’s plate, however. He was such a healthy eater.

[00:13:51] Angela He was. Jenna, do you know what I remember about this scene?

[00:13:55] Jenna What?

[00:13:56] Angela How funky that cheese got.

[00:13:58] Jenna Yeah.

[00:13:59] Angela It got real smelly.

[00:14:01] Jenna Yeah.

[00:14:01] Angela Kelly shares on the DVD that they could only keep that cheese melted for three hours and it would start to like coagulate or whatever. It got so gross.

[00:14:14] Jenna I mean that really makes me think twice about any cheese fondue fountain.

[00:14:19] Angela The fountain food. I might be done with fountain food.

[00:14:23] Jenna When I was in college, I had a boyfriend and we read that there was like this protein shake company that was going to give a ten thousand dollar prize to whoever lost the most weight and gained the most muscle by like using their protein shake.

[00:14:38] Angela Right. So the idea is to get healthy, lose weight. And here’s your incentive is a bunch of money or something?

[00:14:43] Jenna Yeah. So we entered.

[00:14:45] Angela You and your boyfriend?

[00:14:46] Jenna Yeah.

[00:14:47] Angela You did the shake challenge?

[00:14:49] Jenna We did. Here’s the thing. We did the same thing where like in the week before-

[00:14:55] Angela You carbed up?

[00:14:55] Jenna We did. We ate a bunch of food. I probably gained about five pounds.

[00:15:00] Angela In one week.

[00:15:01] Jenna Yeah. Because we just like a pizza and burgers because we’re like this is great. I mean we’ll start out with more weight and then we’ll lose it all and more.

[00:15:11] Angela And we’ll win ten thousand dollars.

[00:15:13] Jenna Yeah. I mean we took pictures of ourselves. I still have it.

[00:15:17] Angela Oh no.

[00:15:18] Jenna I mean somewhere I have it I know because I was cleaning out some old photo albums and I found it and it jogged this memory. You had to prove the day, you know, of the weight loss start. So you had to hold up that day’s newspaper. I mean, like a hostage photo.

[00:15:34] Angela Oh my God.

[00:15:34] Jenna So I’ve got this picture of myself.

[00:15:37] Angela This was before you could Instagram. Now you can Insta story or Instagram and it’s a time stamp. But back then you had to hold up like a newspaper.

[00:15:44] Jenna Yeah. And take it with a regular old camera. I’m in like a sports bra and some, like, sport shorts. And I’m holding up a newspaper and I will tell you what, not only did we not win, I did not lose any of the weight.

[00:15:58] Angela That you gained carb loading?

[00:16:00] Jenna That’s right. After the eight weeks, I mean, we gave up so quickly. We were all in for the first week of the fitness challenge and then all that happened was from all of this is that I gained five pounds and then I held up a newspaper. The end. So that memory came flooding back as I was watching us in this conference room scene. So Stanley, Meredith, and Creed have plans for their leftovers. Stanley really wants to take some of these dumplings home, but Dwight is like, no, no, you cannot take any of this food home. We’re eating healthy now. And he starts spraying what looks like an insect repellent all over all of the food. We had a fan question from Chelsea B, Alice R, and Henry F., what was in the bottle that Dwight is spraying on the food?

[00:16:52] Angela Well, guess who knows?

[00:16:54] Jenna You?

[00:16:55] Angela Me. Thanks to our crew, it was not real bug spray, of course. This was a prop bottle that Phil Shea had designed. He had this made and it was full of aerosol water.

[00:17:09] Jenna Oh.

[00:17:09] Angela So he was just spraying water.

[00:17:12] Jenna You know, I assumed that’s what it was, but it didn’t look like water. I mean, it looks so real.

[00:17:17] Angela I thought it looked real and I thought everyone’s reactions were really good. Great acting, folks. You sold it.

[00:17:24] Jenna Well, now the gang is going to go down to the warehouse, they’re going to weigh in.

[00:17:27] Angela Yes. And Jenna, at one minute, five seconds, there is a great shot of the big scale that we’re all going to get weighed on, and I have a prop breakdown.

[00:17:38] Jenna Give it to me.

[00:17:39] Angela OK, that scale was custom made by Rice Lake Weighing Systems. They made it specific to our requests and they were able to program the little computer screen with whatever the writers wanted them to put on it. Right. It was like part of the joke, our weight. That was all like a writers joke.

[00:17:58] Jenna My mind is being blown right now that that was not a real scale.

[00:18:02] Angela No, the scale didn’t exist. It was made just for us. And Rice Lake Weighing System didn’t ask for any credit or any company plug. They were huge fans of the show and they did come to set the day we filmed this. And everyone on our crew said they were so nice. And after this episode aired, that scale stayed in the warehouse as part of the warehouse set.

[00:18:24] Jenna That I remember. Now during this weigh in, Angela, what’s up with Meredith’s face? Did you notice her face is all red? We got a lot of mail about it. They want to know what’s going on? Was there a storyline that was cut or something?

[00:18:38] Angela Oh, yes. I want you guys to know I took a photo of Kate’s face as Meredith looking like that. And I texted it to Kate last night and I said, Kate, you know what, you should win team player award for the run of The Office because her character was always getting into some kind of mishap, which resulted in Kate being in the hair and makeup trailer forever. Right? And here was the storyline and it’s shared in the deleted scenes. Meredith gets severely sunburned. And here’s her explanation. Sam, can you play the clip?

[00:19:11] Meredith These guys took me on a fishing boat. I don’t think I caught anything.

[00:19:16] Michael Hello? Hello. Hey, your face is almost back to normal.

[00:19:20] Meredith One more kid calls me Hellboy. I swear to God.

[00:19:22] Dwight Oh, you wish Hellboy’s a hero.

[00:19:26] Jenna Oh, wow.

[00:19:26] Angela Yeah, she went out on a boat, got super, super sunburned, and this was something they had to watch in continuity of which stage of the sunburn was her face at. Then the whole storyline got deleted. But they couldn’t take out Kate’s face, you know what I mean? So they just had to leave it in. And Kate said the day after the show aired, Steve came up to her on set and was like, you know what, Kate? I still thought it was funny. You know, I kind of love that Meredith has this mystery about her. That she has this whole other life we don’t even need to explain. And Kate said it made her feel so good that Steve was so thoughtful to come over and say that.

[00:20:03] Jenna Yeah, that was hard when you had a storyline and then you watch the episode. They wouldn’t warn you a lot of the times. You’d just watch the episode and it was gone.

[00:20:12] Angela Yeah. And, you know, with supporting cast, we were often, you know, in the B or C story and those really got moved around a lot. And trimmed and edited and it did happen. But Kate, man, such a good sport.

[00:20:24] Jenna Wow. Guys, also in this scene, Michael throws Pam off the scale because she’s going to go away to art school so he doesn’t want her extra poundage. Now, they’ve already weighed in and then Pam gets off the scale and a new weight is displayed.

[00:20:40] Angela So embarrassing. Everyone is clocking this number change.

[00:20:44] Jenna Yeah, we got some fan mail from Kim C who said, during the group weigh in, it becomes clear that Pam weighs one hundred and twenty six pounds. Jenna, did the writers consult you about your actual weight when they added this fact or did they just guess how much they thought you might weigh? And were you comfortable with sharing this speculation about your weight? Well, I’ll tell you guys, actually, in the script, the original table draft, Pam weighed one hundred and forty five pounds. And I said, you guys, this is I feel like a weird thing for me to split hairs about, but I don’t weigh one hundred and forty five pounds. It’s not accurate. Why don’t you just put my real weight, which at the time was one hundred and twenty six pounds. I don’t weigh one hundred and twenty six pounds anymore, but at the time that was my weight and so they changed it.

[00:21:38] Angela Yeah.

[00:21:39] Jenna But yeah when they speculated about my weight they put me at one forty five and I just, I don’t know, I just corrected it. I thought it should be correct.

[00:21:47] Angela I have no problem with that. Well Jenna that scene made me laugh just because your performance, your reaction, you watch everyone doing the math and you’re just standing there. And it was very funny the way you, you played that moment. Now it’s week two of their weight loss contest, Oscar and Andy arrive. They’re going to hold the elevator for Stanley. And Stanley says he forgot something and then he takes the stairs without them knowing. And he has a great talking head where he shares that he’s been losing weight on his own. And he just noticed some of his speed and fire that he’s lost a little bit of his pick up and go. And he’s doing this for himself.

[00:22:22] Jenna Yes. And in this talking head, he shows an old photo of himself. Well, we got some mail about that. People wanted to know, what is this picture? Is this from Leslie David Baker’s real life?

[00:22:35] Angela Yes, is this young Leslie in this photo?

[00:22:37] Jenna It is young Leslie in the photo.

[00:22:39] Angela Oh, my gosh.

[00:22:40] Jenna I texted Leslie and he gave me all the info.

[00:22:43] Angela Oh, let’s hear it.

[00:22:44] Jenna It’s a Photoshop picture. He does not know any of the other people in the picture. They Photoshopped him into it using one of his old prom photos.

[00:22:54] Angela Oh, Leslie, I love that.

[00:22:57] Jenna Yeah.

[00:22:58] Angela Well, they’re really taking this whole get healthy fitness thing seriously. Holly is running a yoga class in the conference room. I only saw three people in attendance, Creed, Kelly and Michael. I didn’t see anyone else.

[00:23:09] Jenna Oh.

[00:23:09] Angela Yeah. And then Michael is so excited. He runs up to Jim as Jim is going into the bathroom and is like, did you see Holly’s butt? And Jim’s like, no, you know why? Because we don’t do that. Friends don’t talk about other friends butts. Right? And Jim is really trying to get Michael to have a little growth, right?

[00:23:28] Jenna Yep.

[00:23:29] Angela And he’s like, what have you learned about her? And Michael says, I learned that she broke her left leg twice in one year. I learned that she’s allergic to sesame seeds. I learned that she has read Lonesome Dove three times… And that her butt refuses to quit, you know, and Jim’s like I give up. Little sidebar moment for you.

[00:23:47] Jenna What’s that?

[00:23:48] Angela Lonesome Dove was written by Larry McMurtry, who is from my hometown of Archer City, Texas.

[00:23:54] Jenna Yes.

[00:23:54] Angela And I knew Larry and I know his family. And Larry was this amazing, prolific writer. I got so excited just to see one of his pieces of work mentioned on The Office, knowing that I grew up going to his bookstore.

[00:24:06] Jenna That is so cool.

[00:24:07] Angela I love it. You guys got to know there’s only like eighteen hundred people in Archer City, so everybody knows everybody.

[00:24:12] Jenna We got some fan mail from Britney.

[00:24:14] Angela Uh huh.

[00:24:15] Jenna She did her own little mini deep dive.

[00:24:18] Angela On?

[00:24:19] Jenna On sesame seed allergies.

[00:24:21] Angela Oh.

[00:24:21] Jenna Yeah.

[00:24:23] Angela She did a deep dive?

[00:24:24] Jenna She did. She said that she would like us to know that sesame seed allergies are actually the ninth most common type of food allergy.

[00:24:32] Angela I did not know that. Do you have any allergies?

[00:24:35] Jenna I do. I’m allergic to sweet potatoes.

[00:24:38] Angela Crazy.

[00:24:39] Jenna Yeah, I found that out late in life because my mom would only make sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving. And I’m sorry, Mom, but they always looked really gross to me, so I just never even ate them. I don’t know if I had some sort of like, visceral kind of instinct that I shouldn’t eat them.

[00:24:57] Angela Your body knew?

[00:24:57] Jenna Yeah, but I never ate them. And then my first Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t afford it. So me and my friends, we had our own Thanksgiving and someone brought some sweet potatoes that looked effing amazing. So I had some. The next day I got super sick. I wrote it off. I had taken some of those sweet potatoes home is a leftover. I ate them again, got super sick again. That’s when the doctor was like, I think you should stop eating sweet potatoes. I got an allergy test and I am allergic to sweet potatoes.

[00:25:30] Angela My daughter has a mild allergy to dairy. But you can really tell, like if she’s had ice cream and stuff she’ll get really stuffy.

[00:25:38] Jenna Oh yeah.

[00:25:39] Angela Yeah.

[00:25:40] Jenna A lot of people have like a lactose intolerance that causes like some kind of like diarrhea.

[00:25:46] Angela Well, this is our spin off podcast. It’s called-

[00:25:50] Jenna What Foods Do To You?

[00:25:50] Angela Body Fluids and other stories.

[00:25:53] Jenna I mean, since we’re on the subject of milk and stuff, I just want to say, guys don’t give milk to cats.

[00:26:00] Angela Oh, yeah. It makes them sick.

[00:26:01] Jenna Yeah. It’s like a thing that’s been passed down in these cartoons forever. You give cats a dish of milk. They are allergic to the dairy and milk. Don’t give it to them.

[00:26:12] Sam Can I add to your milk with cats thing?

[00:26:14] Angela Oh yeah.

[00:26:14] Sam Don’t give bread to ducks.

[00:26:16] Angela Oh bread to ducks’.

[00:26:18] Jenna You know what you can give them.

[00:26:19] Angela What?

[00:26:20] Jenna Peas.

[00:26:21] Angela Oh, peas.

[00:26:21] Jenna And birdseed.

[00:26:22] Angela OK. More food talk for you. Three minutes, forty nine seconds. Dwight is replacing the junk food in the vending machine with fruit. Now Kelly Cantley said this scene, which I timed, it’s seven seconds, took them one hour to shoot.

[00:26:41] Jenna Because of the like banging the fruit in with the hammer?

[00:26:44] Angela Just all of it. Ripping everything out, resetting it, putting the fruit in. It took them an hour to do a seven second scene.

[00:26:51] Jenna Coming up is a really awkward scene in so many ways.

[00:26:54] Angela So many.

[00:26:56] Jenna Oscar is going to offer to set Holly up with his yoga instructor. I feel like that was awkward number one.

[00:27:04] Angela I mean, it’s jumping in real quick, being matchmaker.

[00:27:08] Jenna Yeah. I always feel like you wait for someone to ask you to set them up because there are so many assumptions you’re making about their life and their preferences when you offer to set them up, right?

[00:27:24] Angela Yeah.

[00:27:25] Jenna I don’t know, just-

[00:27:25] Angela Also, like, how long has he known her? Have they hung out? Like, what does he know about Holly? Right?

[00:27:30] Jenna Right.

[00:27:31] Angela This takes us to front reception and Jim is making sure Pam is all packed for New York. He’s holding a box of her items she’s going to take with her. Did you notice at four minutes, forty seven seconds, what is in the box that is so important it’s got to travel to New York City with Pam?

[00:27:48] Jenna Apparently her weird, spindly plasticky desk decoration. She can’t live without it.

[00:27:55] Angela I put the multicolored sphere bobble thing.

[00:27:59] Jenna Yeah, we’ve talked about it on the podcast before. I get that maybe she needed to clear her desk for whoever’s filling in for her. Just leave the box.

[00:28:08] Angela Yeah.

[00:28:09] Jenna Put it in a store room and get it out when you get back. There is nothing in that box you need at Pratt, Pam. Nothing. But Pam has a talking head. It’s super cute. I loved doing it, where I say what up, 212. I hate to tell you, Pam, the area code for Pratt, which is located in Brooklyn, is 718.

[00:28:30] Angela Oh, Pam.

[00:28:30] Jenna But it’s OK. You’re trying to be all New York-y trying to be cool. Yeah, that’s the Manhattan area code.

[00:28:38] Angela Well, at five minutes, 13 seconds, there’s going to be a storyline that starts, which is Andy and Angela wedding planning. There’s lots of delicious stuff. There’s lots more in deleted scenes. All of this wedding planning is just absolutely stressing Angela out and making her more and more irritated at Andy. This is how he walks up to her: Ange. Ella. Ella. Ella. Ella. Under my Anger-ella. Ella. Ella. Ella. Ay. Ay. What?!

[00:29:03] Jenna I loved it so much.

[00:29:03] Angela That’s how they’re starting their conversation.

[00:29:13] Jenna Andy’s excited. He says every little boy fantasizes about his fairy tale wedding.

[00:29:18] Angela And ding, ding, ding, this is when they had to go in and digitally change his shirt and tie in post-production because the writers wanted to move this talking head here. It had been in a different place in the story. His tie and his shirt are digital.

[00:29:35] Jenna Because they had to make it match the scene with Angela?

[00:29:38] Angela That’s right.

[00:29:39] Jenna My mind is blown.

[00:29:40] Angela Oh, yeah, they had to change all of that in post so they could move this talking head up.

[00:29:45] Jenna Well, in the scene with Angela, he is suggesting that they get married at the Breakers in Rhode Island, this famous estate. Angela doesn’t like it. He said this is really important to his family because this is where his parents decided not to get divorced.

[00:30:00] Angela How romantic.

[00:30:01] Jenna Yes, that’s where you want to get married. I looked this place up. It was built back in 1893 as a summer home.

[00:30:11] Angela Wow.

[00:30:12] Jenna Not even a main residence. It was built by the Vanderbilt family. It cost seven million dollars to build back then.

[00:30:19] Angela Back then!

[00:30:20] Jenna Back then, it took two years.

[00:30:22] Angela Is it massive?

[00:30:23] Jenna Yeah, there are 70 rooms in the house.

[00:30:27] Angela Come on.

[00:30:27] Jenna The Great Hall.

[00:30:29] Angela Seventy rooms for their summer residence.

[00:30:32] Jenna Right. And the Great Hall has forty five foot ceilings. There’s a gold room,

[00:30:38] Angela OK,

[00:30:39] Jenna that was actually built in Europe and then shipped to the United States and reassembled in Newport.

[00:30:46] Angela Good Lord.

[00:30:47] Jenna It is estimated to be worth one hundred and fifty million dollars today.

[00:30:51] Angela That one room?

[00:30:52] Jenna No, the whole house.

[00:30:53] Angela Oh.

[00:30:55] Jenna I know. I see how you went there because of the way I structured that.

[00:30:59] Angela Oh my gosh.

[00:31:00] Jenna So-.

[00:31:01] Angela One hundred and fifty million dollars?

[00:31:04] Jenna Yeah. It now belongs to the Preservation Society of Newport County. It is available for tours. It gets about three hundred thousand visitors annually. But get this, great grandchildren still live there while on the third floor during the summer.

[00:31:19] Angela Oh my god.

[00:31:20] Jenna But you can’t tour their private residence area when you tour the house.

[00:31:24] Angela This is like going to Buckingham Palace.

[00:31:27] Jenna I always wonder about that.

[00:31:28] Angela Like you live there but there’s tours.

[00:31:30] Jenna What’s it like to live in a house- Yeah. What is that?

[00:31:31] Angela I don’t know. I- seventy rooms. Maybe you don’t even know.

[00:31:35] Jenna Are you not giving tours of your home, Angela? To tourists. While you live there?

[00:31:37] Angela You’re welcome to come over. The hall bathroom, you have to jiggle the handle. It’s a double flusher. It doesn’t quite do it the first time. Well, all of this wedding planning stresses Angela out and she immediately pages Dwight and they rendezvous in the warehouse. Angela comes out of the little warehouse- I don’t even know what you call it- storage room where they meet up. And she says, look, that was the last time. I have a fiancee I very much like. All right, Jenna. There are deleted scenes that throughout weight loss one and two really show Angela struggling between wanting to be excited for the wedding and also that Andy is driving her crazy and then she runs to Dwight. It’s sort of this love triangle. And the documentary crew clearly decided to ask her about it and here was her response. It’s in the deleted scenes.

[00:32:32] Angela Martin No, I’m not cheating on anybody. I have one fiance and I have physical relations with one man.

[00:32:41] Angela Hmm, keeps it separate, one guy shall marry and one guy for the shag. I guess Angela Martin is like, you know, once I’m at the aisle, it’s done.

[00:32:52] Jenna Yeah. Once I speak my vows, I’ll stop sleeping with Dwight. But for right now, I am engaged. This is a period of, I guess, non commitment, but commitment. I don’t know.

[00:33:04] Angela I don’t know. I don’t know how she’s going to deal with how batshit crazy Andy makes her. Once they’re married, what will her outlet be? But yes, I thought that was interesting because there’s that moment when she comes out of the storage room with Dwight where she sees the camera right. And this talking head would have happened immediately after where they would have confronted her, which I thought was pretty ballsy for the documentary crew.

[00:33:28] Jenna Well, they need to follow up on these things. Now we have a scene where Michael through his window, sees that Pam is getting into her car. She’s getting ready to drive to Pratt and he has not said his goodbye.

[00:33:43] Angela No, he hasn’t. And I want you to know I know whose office it was that he was in.

[00:33:49] Jenna Was it Paul Lieberstein’s?

[00:33:50] Angela No, it was Jen Celotta’s.

[00:33:52] Jenna OK.

[00:33:52] Angela There you go. If you’re curious, that’s the writer’s room that Michael was in. And poor Michael, he practically wipes out two flights of stairs trying to get to Pam so he can say goodbye.

[00:34:04] Jenna It’s so funny. And he wrote her a poem, but he left it upstairs. It ends with the word seagulls. Here’s what I have to say about this scene. Pam is going to drive to New York in a pencil skirt?

[00:34:16] Angela Also, here is my question. Where is she going to park her car? There’s nowhere to park your car in New York City. You have to pay for a parking spot.

[00:34:24] Jenna Well, she’s going to Brooklyn. She’s going to like a college campus.

[00:34:27] Angela Do you think they have a spot for her?

[00:34:28] Jenna I think they do.

[00:34:29] Angela Oh, OK.

[00:34:30] Jenna I think there’s a campus parking lot.

[00:34:31] Angela OK, ok, OK.

[00:34:32] Jenna I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about why did she come into work even for a half day? Why didn’t she change her clothes? She’s going to arrive at Pratt in a pencil skirt and panty hose. Really?

[00:34:46] Angela Really?

[00:34:47] Jenna Pam.

[00:34:48] Angela I hope there’s parking. Well, listen, I wanted you to know Randy Cordray shared that this parking lot scene took place on an incredibly hot day. It was like triple digit weather in Los Angeles. And, you know, Steve runs hot anyway. And he had to run into this scene and it was super hot in a suit. Well Phil Shea found a cooling vest that Steve could wear under his suit to help keep him cool. It’s the type of vest that marathon runners and athletes have. They use it to cool their body temperature down. It has these little frozen gel packs and Steve had that on under a suit.

[00:35:25] Jenna I’ve never heard of this thing, which makes sense to me because I would never seek it out. I would never think, how can I be colder? In any situation,

[00:35:35] Angela No, never. It’s a whole thing. I Googled it. There’s many different types of cooling vest that you can get. Athletes use them, soldiers use them. I mean, you know, it’s like a whole thing.

[00:35:45] Jenna You know what I do own?

[00:35:46] Angela What?

[00:35:47] Jenna A warming vest. I have a vest and you put little hot packs in it and it keeps you warm. I bought it so that I could watch my son play ice hockey outdoors.

[00:35:57] Angela Yeah, well, we used to stuff those little hot pocket thingies. What do you call them?

[00:36:02] Jenna Not the food. Hot Pockets.

[00:36:04] Angela What are they called?

[00:36:05] Jenna I love the idea of us having a vest filled with Hot Pockets though. Then if you get hungry it’s a snack as well. It keeps you warm and full.

[00:36:14] Angela Listen, listen on The Office, I had one skirt that had two little stitched pockets in the back and I had one little tiny stitched pocket in the front. They would give us those little hot pack things,.

[00:36:24] Jenna Little hand warmers.

[00:36:25] Angela Little hand warmers. I would stick two in my shoes. I would stick one in that front pocket, two in my back pocket. I’d stick a few in my bra.

[00:36:33] Jenna Same. Yeah, I remember that.

[00:36:34] Angela Yeah. And of my sweater had pockets. I’d stick them in there, I’d stick so many of those on my body when we were filming outside when it was cold. One time our camera operator Matt Sohn was like, Ange, just don’t take this the wrong way, but I can see lumps in your butt on camera. Like they don’t look human, like human lumps. I was like, dang it. And I had to take my little heater things out of my pockets.

[00:36:57] Jenna Well, I can’t believe that they got a cooling vest and I’m glad they did.

[00:37:00] Angela I am too. I thought that was so smart.

[00:37:03] Jenna Well, it’s time for another weigh in. Big announcement, they lost thirty one pounds.

[00:37:08] Angela Wow.

[00:37:09] Jenna Michael and Holly are so excited they’re going to do a rap.

[00:37:12] Angela It’s the most adorable thing because they’re so dorky and cute together.

[00:37:16] Jenna Well, a little rap trivia is that they have about ten minutes of them rapping, even though the part that you see in the show was completely scripted, even down to Holly, like rubbing her jacket.

[00:37:29] Angela Yeah, yeah. The wikiwiki what all of that was scripted.

[00:37:31] Jenna All of that was scripted, but they did go on and on. And Amy Ryan gave an interview where she said this was her favorite scene to shoot because they had so much fun.

[00:37:40] Angela The crew said the same thing, they said it was so much fun that those two just went off and that the chemistry was just so apparent.

[00:37:47] Jenna I think this was the scene when they were shooting, when they realized, oh, yeah, these two. True love.

[00:37:55] Angela Yeah.

[00:37:55] Jenna Well, now it’s week three and there is a new receptionist in town.

[00:38:00] Angela Yes, Ronnie.

[00:38:02] Jenna Yeah, Ronnie played by Dale Raul. She has been in a ton of stuff. She was Maxine in True Blood.

[00:38:08] Angela Oh, Maxine Fortenberry. I love True Blood. She was fantastic.

[00:38:12] Jenna Of course you would know that.

[00:38:13] Angela Yes. I have a crossover connection with Dale.

[00:38:16] Jenna Tell me.

[00:38:17] Angela We were both on Fresh Off the Boat. Well, there you go. Not Monk, surprisingly, but Fresh Off the Boat.

[00:38:24] Jenna Well, she will come back in season six. This is not the last we’re going to see of Ronnie. Meanwhile, we’re going to see Pam in her first class.

[00:38:33] Angela She looks so cute. She has, like I’m calling it, the college ponytail. She wears this really cute ponytail at school.

[00:38:40] Jenna All right. The ponytail is the only thing that’s cute about Pam.

[00:38:43] Angela Are you kidding? I thought you looked so cute in all of your college scenes.

[00:38:47] Jenna Did you notice how young everyone else is in the class?

[00:38:50] Angela Oh you stop it.

[00:38:51] Jenna No, but this was a deliberate choice.

[00:38:53] Angela Well, OK.

[00:38:54] Jenna Pam is in her late 20s.

[00:38:56] Angela Do you like how immediately I, like, stand up for my best friend. I’m like, you stop it. You are beautiful.

[00:39:01] Jenna You look just as young as those other ones.

[00:39:03] Angela That’s right. And you are smart.

[00:39:05] Jenna OK, thank you.

[00:39:06] Angela You’re welcome.

[00:39:07] Jenna I want you to know I was not being down on myself. I was just pointing out a deliberate production choice. Pam is in her late twenties and they made sure that everyone in this class that the background performers were all much younger. They’re just starting off in college, right. Pam’s going back to school. And they did want to create this story for Pam that she is kind of, you know.

[00:39:30] Angela Mm hmm. Yeah.

[00:39:31] Jenna I don’t know. What am I saying?

[00:39:32] Angela What do they call it? A nontraditional student.

[00:39:34] Jenna There you go. Well, not only that, she’s in the wrong class. The teacher who was played by Sandra Lo, Professor Monahan,

[00:39:43] Angela she’s got that zinger of a joke about Zapf Chancery, you know, which which, by the way, I read a Reddit thread where people were like, that doesn’t apply. It’s wrong.

[00:39:53] Jenna Oh. Oh, my. Well, Pam does not end up leaving the class. And we got some mail. People are like, Pam has been so good about standing up for herself. Why doesn’t she just leave the class?

[00:40:05] Angela I don’t know. I sympathized. I felt like she’s new here. She feels out of place. She just got singled out. She’s going to tuck her head down and knows she’ll do it right the next time.

[00:40:15] Jenna Yeah, but I guess it’s going to mean she misses her actual first class.

[00:40:22] Angela Back in the office, Holly hears this coughing. Right? She’s at her cubicle. Kelly is coughing. She sounds sick. Did you notice on Holly’s desk what her nameplate says?

[00:40:34] Jenna Yes.

[00:40:34] Angela Hollis. And then in quotes, Holly P. Flax.

[00:40:41] Jenna I did notice that.

[00:40:42] Angela So that’s her real name.

[00:40:43] Jenna Her name is Hollis.

[00:40:44] Angela Hollis.

[00:40:45] Jenna Kelly has a talking head where she says she’s on the third day of her cleanse diet, where she’s doing the lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper and water. That’s all she’s allowed to have. Angela, have you ever done any of these fad diets?

[00:40:58] Angela I haven’t. But I had a roommate who did something with cayenne pepper and water, and I think it just gives you the runs, right? You just poop.

[00:41:06] Jenna You know, I got approached to do an ad for this diet tea that’s supposed to flatten your tummy.

[00:41:12] Angela So you drink the tea

[00:41:14] Jenna and it flattens your tummy.

[00:41:15] Angela How?

[00:41:16] Jenna By making you poop a lot. But it was like a cleansing tea. And I was like, well, first of all, I’m not going to do an ad for anything I don’t believe in. So send me the tea and we’ll see what happens. And I-

[00:41:30] Angela Did you drink the tea?

[00:41:31] Jenna I was doing Splitting Up Together at the time and I was talking to Oliver Hudson about it and he said, I’ll do it with you. Let’s both do the tea and see if we get flat tummies.

[00:41:40] Angela He’s so funny. But I can so hear him saying that because he’s just like, let’s do it.

[00:41:44] Jenna He was all in. So I asked for two packages of the tea, Oliver and I started doing it. Angela,.

[00:41:51] Angela Did you poop?

[00:41:52] Jenna First of all, I gained weight.

[00:41:55] Angela What?

[00:41:55] Jenna Second of all, we’re just pooping and farting. And just- we’re trying to work and do our scenes and the crew was like, stop drinking tea, you guys.

[00:42:05] Angela You’re like, farting them out.

[00:42:06] Jenna They’re like, seriously, we cannot have the two leads of our show drinking this tea.

[00:42:12] Angela Being so flatulent on set.

[00:42:14] Jenna It’s ruining everything. So I just I don’t know. I just don’t do this stuff.

[00:42:20] Angela Well, you know my husband, he’s super healthy and he just makes really good choices about what he eats and he exercises. It’s really annoying his ability to be so consistent. My hardest struggle is consistency, you know, just like making that space for myself. And I think it’s even like when you peel back the layer, it’s like, making that time for yourself and it’s just a hard thing to do.

[00:42:43] Jenna Yeah, well, I think we should take a break because I need a moment to center myself before Jan comes into the office.

[00:42:51] Angela Oh, yes. And there’s some really good Jan stuff I want to share.

[00:42:55] Jenna All right. We’ll be right back. We are back and so is Jan.

[00:43:03] Angela Oh, yeah.

[00:43:03] Jenna Jan interest the office and tells Ronnie to make her some copies of a document on canary yellow paper.

[00:43:09] Angela Oh yeah. She walks in like she owns the place.

[00:43:11] Jenna She also does not acknowledge that she’s speaking to a person she’s never met.

[00:43:15] Angela Oh, yeah, that’s true. This made me wonder if Jan is entertaining Michael being in her life again so she can just use him and use the office. She’s getting free copies, right?

[00:43:25] Jenna Yeah.

[00:43:25] Angela Well, in the deleted scenes, there’s a little bit of a runner about this. She is giving Michael like a list of things she needs him to do. All her errands, go to the dry cleaners. She hands him a bag at, like, grocery shopping, et cetera, like Michael is her personal assistant. And then when he kind of balks that anything, she’s like, well, I thought you wanted to help.

[00:43:46] Jenna Wow.

[00:43:47] Angela So to me, I feel like Jan is using him.

[00:43:49] Jenna For sure.

[00:43:50] Angela Jim has this talking head where he says, Michael led us to believe he was the father of Jan’s baby by telling us he was the father of Jan’s baby. Well, this talking head would have continued and they had to trim it. And Jim then holds up an email and says, but then Jan sent this email to everyone. And here’s what Jan’s email said. Hi, everyone. Jan here writing to share some wonderful news and to squash a rumor. First, the great news: I am expecting! The beautiful baby girl inside me will be ready to meet the world this fall, just a few months before the launch of the new Serenity by Jan line. Shameless plug. I know. Don’t hate me. LOL. Anyway, I also wanted to clarify that the father is not anyone that you or I have ever met. Remember, no matter how excited someone is about my baby, it does not make them the father. Best, Jan. PS Hope to ship you something soon.

[00:44:53] Jenna That’s amazing.

[00:44:54] Angela Yeah. So she sent that email to everyone in the office.

[00:44:58] Jenna Well, Holly would like to know who is Jan.

[00:45:01] Angela She says, who’s that woman in Michael’s office with the feet?

[00:45:04] Jenna Because Michael is rubbing Jan’s feet. Oscar explains that she’s Michael’s ex-girlfriend and Holly immediately decides, yes, you can give your yoga teacher my number. I want to date your hot yoga teacher.

[00:45:19] Angela Yeah.

[00:45:20] Jenna His hot, hot yoga teacher, because he teaches hot yoga and he’s hot. So.

[00:45:25] Angela I’m sure he’s very bendy.

[00:45:27] Jenna Yeah.

[00:45:27] Angela Yeah.

[00:45:28] Jenna Then Holly overhears Angela berating Kevin for being an idiot. And Holly is going to come to Kevin’s defense because remember, Dwight told Holly that Kevin was there as part of a special work program.

[00:45:41] Angela Yeah. When Dwight was hazing her.

[00:45:43] Jenna Yeah.

[00:45:44] Angela Oh, she runs over to Angela and she’s like, how dare you? You don’t speak to him like that.

[00:45:49] Jenna And this is when everyone realizes, including Kevin, what Dwight told Holly.

[00:45:54] Angela Angela is so delighted by this moment she can’t stop smiling.

[00:45:59] Jenna No, she loves that Holly has been humiliated. Poor Kevin, he’s crushed. This means that Holly has not been paying attention to him because she wants to date him.

[00:46:09] Angela No.

[00:46:09] Jenna He’s realizing. Well, now Andy is going to approach Angela in the kitchen. He has made nonrefundable deposits at four different wedding locations.

[00:46:20] Angela Hot air balloons over Napa Valley, world famous Walt Disney’s Epcot Center, scuba diving wedding in the Bahamas and the Wilkes-Barre Marriott Ballroom C, to which she replies, dangerous, tacky, sharks, haunted.

[00:46:37] Jenna And no. Just in general.

[00:46:40] Angela And no.

[00:46:43] Jenna And of course, this means Angela and Dwight are going to hook up again. We had a fan question. Kayla would like to know, when Dwight slaps Angela’s butt, was that scripted because she thought your reaction was very genuine. You were surprised.

[00:46:59] Angela No, that was improvised. That was Rainn Wilson. But now listen, you guys, Rainn and I were very, very good friends and we would always do a few takes where we would try to surprise each other a little bit within the boundaries of what I knew would not make anyone uncomfortable and vice versa.

[00:47:14] Jenna Right.

[00:47:15] Angela And so, no, that was Rainn just mixing it up and catching me off guard, which is why my reaction is so earnest.

[00:47:22] Jenna We also got mail from Alice who would like to ask, Angela, in your talking head afterwards, was any of that improvised? Because it’s one of my all time favorites.

[00:47:31] Angela You know what? People quote this talking head to me and it was completely scripted and it read like this. I have a nice comforter and several cozy pillows. I usually read a chapter of a book and it’s lights out by eight thirty. That’s how I sleep at night. Completely scripted.

[00:47:50] Jenna You go to bed at 8:30.

[00:47:51] Angela I know. I go- I have lots of cats to take care of, they get up early. Well, now Jim and Pam are going to talk via video call. You guys, old tech alert. This was a real big deal. This was an actual live iChat. Remember iChat?

[00:48:07] Jenna Yeah.

[00:48:09] Angela Yeah.

[00:48:09] Jenna This is before Zoom. This is before FaceTime.

[00:48:12] Angela And, you know, Dwight is annoyed. Michael is so excited and picks up the computer and wants to show Pam all around.

[00:48:18] Jenna I know. Which is making her a little sick. She’s like, can you please put me down? I thought it was so cute. Guys, this happened in real time. We had some questions from Alice R and Brianna P, how did you shoot the video chat scenes? Well, it was live. They built a little set over on the warehouse set to look like my dorm room at Pratt. And I sat there and we did this live. It was really cute.

[00:48:46] Angela Yeah.

[00:48:47] Jenna And I have to say, I was really excited because during most of this episode, I was not on our set. I was really filming on location to film Pam’s art school. And so for this day, I just remember how excited I was, even though I was all the way on the warehouse set, I was able to come over for hot snack. I stayed for lunch.

[00:49:08] Angela Yes. This was one of the hardest things for us as BFFs is when you were at the Pratt School of Art you were not on our set. You were on location. So I was so excited you were there. And one thing I want to share about this that Randy talked about in the DVD commentary is that this live iChat, Jenna, caused all kinds of technical problems.

[00:49:28] Jenna I remember.

[00:49:29] Angela Yeah, I remember because we had to start and stop. Here’s what happened. The wireless microwave system on the side of the cameras would get triggered whenever Steve picked up the laptop and walked around with you. It would shut the cameras off, which meant we got to hang out a little bit because they had to sort that out.

[00:49:48] Jenna I just remember shooting the talking head and I thought it was so cute the way they put the computer on the chair.

[00:49:53] Angela I did, too.

[00:49:57] Jenna Well, now the gang is going to weigh in again. And guess what? They’ve gained five pounds and then Kelly passes out. And we go to commercial.

[00:50:07] Angela We come back with some real Phyllis Sass. Phyllis is super smug with Angela. And, you know, she’s planning Stanley’s birthday party and she’s just giving Angela marching orders.

[00:50:17] Jenna She is she would like to get some cake. And any time Angela seems like she might disagree, Phyllis just kind of gives a little look like, oh we will be doing it this way and here’s why.

[00:50:28] Angela Yeah, and there was more Phyllis Sass in the deleted scenes. She was giving Angela grief this whole episode.

[00:50:36] Jenna Well, we talked about this at the end of Goodbye, Toby. Phyllis catches Dwight and Angela getting it on in the office. And we wondered, what does this mean?

[00:50:46] Angela Well, it has gone to Phyllis’ head. She has power.

[00:50:50] Jenna Mm hmm. Holly suggests that they do fruit instead of cake. Michael comes in, he’s going to weigh in. He suddenly has a goatee, no explanation, but he has a goatee.

[00:51:04] Angela Kelly Cantley said that goatee took an hour to put on, so they had to factor that into the day.

[00:51:09] Jenna He didn’t just grow a goatee?

[00:51:10] Angela No, none of their goatees were real.

[00:51:13] Jenna No!

[00:51:14] Angela That’s what she said.

[00:51:15] Jenna No. None of them?

[00:51:17] Angela Yeah. They were all put on and then they had to keep track that they were the right shape and size goatee throughout the episode for continuity. And Kelly said at the time this aired, they got some mail that a few of the goatees were off.

[00:51:37] Jenna Oh my gosh. Well, Michael is going to take his goatee into the conference room and he’s going to call a meeting because he wants everyone to know what is the leading cause of death. It is obesity caused illness. He wants everyone to take this more seriously so they don’t die of obesity. Jim pledges to lose sixty five pounds. He’s being sarcastic. Michael doesn’t get it. He’s thrilled. He says if everybody loses five pounds, that in addition to Jim’s sixty five, we’re going to win this thing.

[00:52:05] Angela Well, Angela has presented Andy with her list of criteria for her wedding. It’s pretty challenging. Here are the things she has to have in order to marry Andy: a thousand year old church in the continental United States. There has to be a rainbow, 24 hour veterinarian on call. And then she pages Dwight to meet her downstairs because she just can’t really stand being around Andy.

[00:52:31] Jenna But Andy tells Angela, you know what? I don’t care where we get married because all I care about is spending the rest of my life with you.

[00:52:39] Angela This melts Angela’s cold, cold heart.

[00:52:41] Jenna It does. And she does not show up for her rendezvous with Dwight in the warehouse.

[00:52:47] Angela She gives Andy a little kiss. And of course, he has to make a noise. He makes like a bay-oh!

[00:52:53] Jenna Yeah.

[00:52:54] Angela Well, there’s a very sweet deleted scene that shows Angela trying to bond with Andy over the wedding. It’s in the break room and I titled it Overly Animated Angela?

[00:53:06] Andy We could get a cake shaped like your cat.

[00:53:12] Angela Martin They can do that?

[00:53:14] Andy Yeah. For you, my love. I will find the finest cakesmith in all the land. Doo-doo-doo-doo! Bring me sir bakes a lot of Frostingham Forest.

[00:53:28] Angela Martin What about one shaped like, I don’t know, a litter box?

[00:53:29] Andy Hey-oh!

[00:53:29] Angela Martin Right? I mean is it gross or wonderful? I don’t know!

[00:53:35] Dwight I’ll be at my desk. Page me if you need me.

[00:53:41] Jenna Who are you?

[00:53:43] Angela I know. I don’t know. Who is this person?

[00:53:46] Jenna I don’t know.

[00:53:48] Angela Oh, overly animated Angela. She was trying.

[00:53:52] Jenna Maybe he should just do some Mad Libs. You love those.

[00:53:55] Angela I love Mad Libs and keep suggesting cakes that look like cats or cat accessories.

[00:54:00] Jenna It’s the way to your heart.

[00:54:02] Angela Well, Jim has arrived at Pam’s dorm room. Did you notice that Pam is the resident advisor?

[00:54:07] Jenna I did.

[00:54:08] Angela She’s the R.A. It’s so perfect.

[00:54:11] Jenna It’s perfect. But it’s also like, Pam…

[00:54:15] Angela Take on a job.

[00:54:16] Jenna Come on.

[00:54:18] Angela Well, Jim tells the documentary crew, you know what? Why don’t you go check out Pam’s art over there. And when they turn to look for it, he quickly shuts the door. Right. And at eighteen minutes, thirty one seconds, you hear the cameraman sigh.

[00:54:31] Jenna You hear Randall Einhorn sigh.

[00:54:33] Angela Yes, that’s Randall.

[00:54:34] Jenna And that was improvised. He just did that. And they loved it and they kept it in.

[00:54:39] Angela Oh, yeah. So fun.

[00:54:41] Jenna I would like to say, Pam, thank you for finally wearing a hoodie or any kind of casual clothing here at art school. I feel like she just has been overdressed since she got there.

[00:54:52] Angela We are on two different pages on this. I think that Pam has looked amazing for art school.

[00:54:57] Jenna I love her ponytail. I just think- and this was a choice- that I should say that this is all been a choice. It’s on purpose. It’s all to make her stand out a little bit, to be like she isn’t dressing the way the young people dress today.

[00:55:12] Angela Right.

[00:55:13] Jenna OK, so like I’m giving her grief about it. But you guys, we planned this.

[00:55:17] Angela Right. And also her affected speech, how she’s like top of the morning to ya. Shall we walk over here? Perhaps we’ll sit here. Let me cross my legs in my stockings.

[00:55:26] Jenna What are you talking about?

[00:55:27] Angela That’s how she talks.

[00:55:28] Jenna No, she does not. What are you doing?

[00:55:30] Angela I’m just messing with you.

[00:55:32] Jenna I really got worried. I was like, what?

[00:55:35] Angela I am messing with you. I don’t know how long Jim and Pam got to hang out and smooch, but Pam got a knock on her door. There was some girl mad at another girl because someone took someone’s soymilk. And now Jim is in like the dorm room common area at eighteen minutes, fifty five seconds.

[00:55:52] Jenna Yeah. He’s watching a baseball game.

[00:55:54] Angela Yes. And Jenna, you can very faintly hear some sort of baseball commentators like announcers. Sports announcers. Those were played by our very own producer, James O. Carey and Eric Colgan.

[00:56:07] Jenna All right. See, I wondered, is that a real baseball game? So it’s obviously real baseball footage, but then we put our own commentators on it?

[00:56:15] Angela That’s right. So Jenna and I have been in touch with James. He is fantastic. He was that guy that could get you anything on set. If you needed it, James got it. And we had lots of questions for him and he answered them for this episode. He even had the shooting draft. James, thank you so much. I feel like we might have a James-A-Pedia.

[00:56:33] Jenna Yeah, it couldn’t come at a better time.

[00:56:35] Angela Yeah.

[00:56:35] Jenna You know, because we don’t have Kent-a-pedia anymore, James. James Carey, will you be our James-a-Pedia? Should we talk about Stanley’s birthday?

[00:56:49] Angela I mean it looks a little sad, everyone standing around eating fruit. Ronnie wants to know if anyone wants to dance. By the way, my Dolly Parton fans, did you catch the song playing?

[00:56:58] Jenna Oh yeah.

[00:56:59] Angela Here you come again. I love that song.

[00:57:03] Jenna I love that song too.

[00:57:04] Angela I went and listened to it after I watched the episode.

[00:57:06] Jenna It’s not the song I would play at a birthday party.

[00:57:09] Angela No, no, probably not.

[00:57:14] Jenna But I love that song. People are going to sneak off from this party and they’re going to have some cake in the warehouse. The warehouse is the sneak site, clearly.

[00:57:26] Angela Clearly, and I mean, isn’t Angela uncomfortable being in that room with all those other people, including her fiancee?

[00:57:34] Jenna She doesn’t have any guilt about it.

[00:57:36] Angela I guess not.

[00:57:37] Jenna She has no problem sleeping at night. We’ve established that.

[00:57:40] Angela That’s true.

[00:57:40] Jenna Stanley is in the room with the cake, but he’s not even eating it. He said his tastes have changed. Now all he likes is baklava, which I thought was a really interesting thing to say because baklava is very, very, very sweet. Like if you’ve lost your sweet tooth, I mean, it’s nutty. I love a baklava.

[00:57:57] Angela I do too. It’s dense, though. It’s a dense, sugary treat.

[00:58:01] Jenna I know. And I often eat too much of it. And I get a stomach ache because, you know, they give you a tiny piece and I’ll eat like five of them because they’re just so good.

[00:58:12] Angela Well, that’s what happens with you. You’re always like, Ange, look how cute. It’s so tiny.

[00:58:16] Jenna I know.

[00:58:16] Angela And then you’re like, Ange, I have a stomachache.

[00:58:18] Jenna I know. Dwight, Holly, Michael and Ronnie spy on the group.

[00:58:24] Angela Dwight’s like, they should not be in there. You know why he’s saying that.

[00:58:28] Jenna And Michael says, we should have our own party. Let’s all go play mini golf.

[00:58:33] Angela Ronnie and Michael and Dwight and Holly, that foursome.

[00:58:38] Jenna Oh, I wish that happened.

[00:58:39] Angela Me too.

[00:58:40] Jenna Well, Holly can’t go because she has a date tonight.

[00:58:43] Angela Hmm. And then Michael has the sweetest talking head. He’s like, Holly doesn’t need any luck. Everyone who meets her instantly loves her.

[00:58:51] Jenna Yeah.

[00:58:52] Angela So cute. I want these two kids to get together.

[00:58:55] Jenna Angela, I have a question for you about the next scene, which is when Dwight busts in and he kicks over the cake.

[00:59:01] Angela Yeah.

[00:59:01] Jenna I wasn’t there. I’m at art school. What was it like to shoot that scene?

[00:59:05] Angela Here’s the thing. That room was like I mean, Jenna, it was like six feet by six feet. It was really small and we were all in there. They tried to put chairs in so that we could sit, but not everyone could sit obviously. We were pretty crammed in. I remember I couldn’t look at Phyllis or I would laugh. Whenever she had her exchange with Michael, she would kind of start to break a little. And then Rainn kicked over that cake with such like force. It went flying. We all got cake on us and then they would have to clean it up. We couldn’t do it very many times because we were like, Rainn do you have to kick it that hard? So pretty much I just remember being crammed in and trying not to laugh.

[00:59:48] Jenna Well, I thought that scene looked like it was a lot of fun to shoot. And I know don’t ask Rainn Wilson to kick something unless you really want it kicked.

[00:59:56] Angela Yeah. Unless you want it to go flying. I don’t think they anticipated that that much cake would travel because it was quite a cleanup.

[01:00:03] Jenna Well, now it is week five of the weight loss competition. The Scranton branch is not doing very well. Holly tells us that corporate has now upped the prize to five vacation days. But things are breaking down between people. I mean, Kevin’s in the kitchen. He’s making himself a peanut butter bagel. Creed and Kelly are glaring at him.

[01:00:23] Angela Oh, there is a deleted scene where Meredith and Kelly and Holly are working on the dry erase board.

[01:00:29] Jenna Yeah.

[01:00:30] Angela And Kelly goes, I’m doing a blood type diet. And Meredith goes, who gives a (BLEEP). And Kelly goes, what do you say, whore? And Holly goes, I got it. OK, hey, hey, hey.

[01:00:39] Jenna Oh, my gosh.

[01:00:40] Angela I mean, things are getting really intense.

[01:00:43] Jenna They’re so intense that Kelly says in a talking head that she swallowed a tapeworm last night that Creed gave her from Mexico.

[01:00:50] Angela Kelly, why would you swallow a worm Creed gave you?

[01:00:54] Jenna I know. Creed says it wasn’t a tapeworm. Angela, I’ll have you know, I looked it up.

[01:01:00] Angela Yeah.

[01:01:00] Jenna The tapeworm diet is a real thing.

[01:01:04] Angela Oh, God. Really?

[01:01:05] Jenna Well, it’s obviously illegal in the United States and it’s totally dangerous.

[01:01:10] Angela Where are they doing it?

[01:01:12] Jenna I don’t know. But I guess you can buy pills that have a tapeworm egg inside of it.

[01:01:17] Angela Don’t do this.

[01:01:18] Jenna No, I read on Healthline that it doesn’t even work because, yes, it feeds off your body’s nutrients, but it feeds off the good stuff, too, right. It doesn’t just eat your fat everybody. It eats everything. And you get really sick. You can get diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea, fever, weakness. You can also get bacterial infections. You can get neurological issues. Most of these pills are a scam, OK? They do not really have a tapeworm, but a woman in Iowa swallowed a real one and she got super sick and she had to confess to her doctor what she did. He had to report it to the State Department. It was a whole crazy thing. He didn’t even know how to kill it. It was a whole thing. Guys do not swallow a tapeworm on purpose are words I’m saying, just in case anyone out there thought they should.

[01:02:14] Angela You know, Jenna, I have a tapeworm story. But, you know, I’m going to save it for the finale. When we are done with the whole run of The Office you will remember. I don’t want to spoil it. There is a scene in the finale. I don’t want to spoil it. You’ll remember, Jenna, Rainn and I traded tapeworm stories. I’m saving it for the finale.

[01:02:37] Jenna Guys, if you’ve ever had a reason…

[01:02:41] Angela To tune in-.

[01:02:42] Jenna To at least our finale episode of Office Ladies, you have it now.

[01:02:47] Angela There is a real life Angela/ Rainn moment that happens behind the scenes of the finale. It involves a tapeworm. We’ll get to it.

[01:02:57] Jenna Well, guys, that’s Weight Loss part one. We will be back next week with weight loss part two when Jim has a big surprise for Pam. We’re going to tell you all about it.

[01:03:09] Angela Aww. Jam fans. You don’t want to miss it.

[01:03:13] Jenna See you then.

[01:03:13] Angela See ya.

[01:03:13] Jenna Thank you for listening to Office Ladies. Office Ladies is produced by Earwolf, Jenna Fischer, and Angela Kinsey. Our show is executive produced by Codi Fischer. Our producer is Cassi Jerkins, our sound engineer is Sam Kieffer, and our associate producer is Aynsley Bubbico.

[01:03:33] Angela Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton.

[01:03:36] Jenna For Ad free versions of Office Ladies go to Stitcher premium dotcom. For a free one month trial of Stitcher premium, use code: office.