A Look Back on Nepotism Transcript - Office Ladies
Wednesday, May 8, 2024 • 1h, 22min

A Look Back on Nepotism

Office Ladies

The Ultimate Office Rewatch Podcast discusses the lip dub cold open, casting announcements, and behind-the-scenes stories from the episode "Nepotism."
Play

Speakers

Jenna Fischer
Angela Kinsey
Jenna Fischer
Angela Kinsey
Jenna Fischer
Angela Kinsey
Jenna Fischer
Steve Carell

Topics

Office Ladies
mentioned 6 times
Dunder Mifflin
mentioned 8 times
Indeed
mentioned 14 times
Aaron
mentioned 5 times
Texas
mentioned 6 times
Dave Rogers
mentioned 4 times
Evan Peters Araya
mentioned 4 times
Pamela Barnes
mentioned 46 times
Gabe Jones
mentioned 7 times
SimpliSafe
mentioned 7 times
Airbnb
mentioned 6 times
Kate Flannery
mentioned 5 times
Luke Spencer
mentioned 25 times
The Office
mentioned 8 times
Daryl Dixon
mentioned 5 times
St. Louis
mentioned 6 times

Summary

The Ultimate Office Rewatch Podcast featured Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey discussing the episode where Michael brings his nephew to the office, leading to a change in his behavior. They also talked about the lip dub cold open, casting announcements, and behind-the-scenes details. The podcast provided insights into the writing process, choreography, and character development, offering fans a deeper understanding of the show. The discussion highlighted the importance of exploring iconic moments and storylines from "The Office" while sharing anecdotes and trivia with listeners. The speakers engaged with fan questions and shared personal experiences, creating a nostalgic and informative podcast episode for dedicated fans of the show.

Learnings

1. Who choreographed the lip dub in the episode discussed in the podcast?
The lip dub was choreographed by Mary Ann Kellogg with a team of dancers.
2. Why was the original plan for the lip dub to start in the parking lot changed?
The buildings in the show were not connected in real life, so the director suggested the lip dub take place in the main office for a one-take look.
3. What was the significance of Pam's hairstyle change in the episode?
Pam's hairstyle change reflected the changes in her life, including breaking up with Roy, dating Jim, getting a new job, and becoming a mom.
4. Who played Michael Scott's nephew, Luke, in the episode?
Luke was played by Evan Peters, who received a fan mail flurry for his role.
5. Why did the writers introduce a storyline where Pam feels awful for blowing Jim's prank?
The writers needed ways for Jim and Pam to have storylines, and this conflict storyline was one of those solutions.

Transcript

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CHAPTER 1
Family dynamics at work
Jenna Fischer
00:00
Angela, we're always making lists of the places we want to go, and I've got another one for you.
Williamsburg
,
Virginia
.
Angela Kinsey
00:07
Whether you're a foodie, a golfer, an outdoor enthusiast, a thrill seeker, a history buff, or just friends looking for a good happy hour, you'll find what you came for.
Jenna Fischer
00:17
There is lots of good food and drink to be found in
Williamsburg
. There's contemporary cuisine. There's local craft breweries.
Angela Kinsey
00:24
I heard there's a winery that's stunning.
Jenna Fischer
00:26
Yes. You could go for a girls weekend, a romantic couples trip, or a family vacation.
Angela Kinsey
00:32
So for your next vacation, visit
Williamsburg
. If you love tequila cocktails, then check out the award-winning 21 Seeds Infused Tequila.
Jenna Fischer
00:41
It's a one-of-a-kind tequila that is infused with the juice of real fruit. So it's smooth, it's not sweet, it smells fresh and bright, and it tastes incredible.
Angela Kinsey
00:51
21 Seeds makes the most delicious and easy margaritas and cocktails so you can focus on the fun. Like game night with your besties.
Jenna Fischer
00:59
With 21 Seeds, you only need two or three ingredients to make your perfect cocktail.
Angela Kinsey
01:03
Try 21 Seeds infused tequila.
Jenna Fischer
01:06
Learn more at 21seeds.com.
Angela Kinsey
01:08
Enjoy responsibly. 21 Seeds. Diageo.
New York
,
New York
.
Jenna Fischer
01:18
I'm
Jenna Fisher
.
Angela Kinsey
01:19
And I'm
Angela Kinsey
.
Jenna Fischer
01:20
We were on
The Office
together.
Angela Kinsey
01:21
And we're best friends.
Jenna Fischer
01:22
And now we're doing the Ultimate Office Rewatch Podcast just for you.
Angela Kinsey
01:26
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
01:34
We're
The Office
Ladies.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank No, no.
No good. Go!
Bye.
Thank you.
We are here with nepotism and a big old lift up to start this episode and we have all the details about it welcome to office ladies welcome to office ladies you It is Season 7, Episode 1, written by
Daniel Chun
, directed by
Jeffrey Blitz
.
Angela Kinsey
02:23
We've got some great fast facts today.
Jenna Fischer
02:25
We really do. And we did a real two-hander on the fast facts today. We did. We did it together. We did. And I loved it.
I hope we'll always do it this way. I see what you're doing.
Angela Kinsey
02:37
Season seven, you're like, Ange, this is it. Fast facts have become a two-hander.
Jenna Fischer
02:42
Here is your summary.
Summer is over.
Once again, the cameras did not follow us over the summer for a reason we don't know.
Angela Kinsey
02:51
We don't know.
Jenna Fischer
02:52
They take the summer off. Dwight now owns Scranton Business Park. He did it.
Michael has brought in a new assistant for the office,
Luke
. But nobody likes him. He's completely incompetent. Michael will not fire him because we find out that
Luke
is his nephew.
Angela Kinsey
03:13
Yeah.
Jenna Fischer
03:14
Gabe
and Erin are dating. Yeah, that happened over the summer when the cameras were off.
Angela Kinsey
03:20
Yeah, apparently
Gabe
, you know, checked in with Andy first about it, and he said it was fine.
Jenna Fischer
03:25
Yeah, Andy is pretending like he's fine. Uh-huh.
And finally in this episode,
Pam
is going to play a trick on Dwight because she messed up this sort of long con prank that Jim was working on with Dwight's keys and she wants to try to make it up to him.
Angela Kinsey
03:42
Mm-hmm.
Jenna Fischer
03:43
So that's what's happening this episode.
Angela Kinsey
03:45
Should we get into fast facts?
Jenna Fischer
03:47
Yes, see how excited you are for that because you are part of the fast fact.
Angela Kinsey
03:51
That's not why I'm excited.
Jenna Fischer
03:52
Look at your enthusiasm, lady. That's not why I'm excited. You could have this every week.
Angela Kinsey
03:56
Stop.
Jenna Fischer
03:57
Fast fact number one. This was our season premiere and also
Steve Carell's
last season. Like we said last week, before season six ended, the cast and crew knew that this would be his last season. But the news was officially announced publicly over the summer break. And there were a lot of opinions about it.
Angela Kinsey
04:18
Oh, yeah.
Jenna Fischer
04:19
Mostly people were saying that the office would be dead without Steve.
Angela Kinsey
04:22
Yeah.
Jenna Fischer
04:23
This news also put a lot of focus on our season premiere episode. In fact, it was seen by 8.4 million viewers, which was a big bump from our season six finale of 6.6 million. So almost two more million people tuned in. That's a lot. I know.
The writers spent a lot of time over the summer talking about how to craft Steve's last season. Their big question was, why does Michael leave
Dunder Mifflin
?
Angela Kinsey
04:51
Yeah, because he loves
Dunder Mifflin
. It's his family.
Jenna Fischer
04:54
Exactly. Well,
Paul Lieberstein
said one thing they discussed was Michael getting fired at the end. And we had set this up a little bit with the problems with Sabre and the printers. He'd become kind of like the spokesperson. Right. So there was discussion, like, maybe that was all going to cave in and he'd have to leave.
Angela Kinsey
05:12
Yeah, he'd be the fall guy for Sabre.
Jenna Fischer
05:14
Yes. But ultimately, they thought that was like not doing right by Michael Scott. They decided that they really wanted him to grow. They wanted him to find love. They wanted him to have a really positive and iconic goodbye.
Angela Kinsey
05:29
So I listened to the DVD commentary for this episode. By the way, you guys, I have a whole story about what it took for me just to watch a DVD. It was a journey.
Jenna Fischer
05:38
Amazing. Because you were in
Texas
. Yes. Visiting your family.
Angela Kinsey
05:41
Yeah. In a very small town. Anyway, I will save that. Okay. Because we have so much to cover. But I have to share. Later. Anyway, so I finally was able to watch this DVD. It featured
Craig Robinson
,
Creed Bratton
, writers Danny Chun,
BJ Novak
, and
Paul Lieberstein
. Danny, BJ, and Paul talked about this being Michael's last season and how they wanted to approach storylines for him.
And I found this conversation so interesting. Jenna, we love the whole writer's process. We love it. And they shared that this episode kicked off a change in Michael. Because his coworkers were his family, and him bringing his actual nephew, his actual family into the office, he has to try to figure out how to separate work from family.
And they also said that they just wanted to show Michael's growth as a person. Here, they say it better than I do. Let's listen.
Speaker 4
06:32
You know, telling Michael that's mixing business and family, these are his two favorite things.
Jenna Fischer
06:36
Right.
Speaker 4
06:37
He, of all people, would not see the problem here. Just couldn't understand.
Angela Kinsey
06:42
And this was kind of, this came about from us talking about Steve's last season and what are the stories that are kind of quintessential Michael stories that we just never told?
And we were able to kind of have him grow in a way that... He wasn't...
Speaker 4
06:59
Yeah, the whole season we would approach Michael, finally letting Michael have grown a bit by the end of an episode, which we generally never did.
Jenna Fischer
07:10
Sending him off in style.
Speaker 4
07:12
Yeah, because we wanted him to be more of a whole person by the time he left. Yeah, we knew more or less how he was going to leave.
Yeah often up till up till this season michael would just find a new level of denial to end it right and that would be funny yeah But we could start firing off our...
Our Michael self-awareness gun because we knew we only had a few bullets anyway. Mm-hmm Mm-hmm.
Jenna Fischer
07:39
Yeah, I remember that, that there was this just overall idea of Michael growing into a man that could leave and marry
Holly
because they knew that was the end.
Angela Kinsey
07:52
That was the goal.
Jenna Fischer
07:52
Yes, but we only had one season to get him there now.
Angela Kinsey
07:56
Right. And it is interesting now as we rewatch this whole season seven, you are going to see Michael becoming more self-aware, more aware of his actions and how they affect other people.
Jenna Fischer
08:07
Really cool. All right, fast fact number two, we have a couple of casting announcements. First up,
Zach Woods
, who plays Gabe, was made a series regular for season seven. We were so happy to have him. And speaking of Michael Scott's nephew,
Luke
,
Luke
was played by
Evan Peters
. And boy, did we get a fan mail flurry.
Angela Kinsey
08:30
I bet we did. I mean, Evan's career has just skyrocketed.
Jenna Fischer
08:35
Oh, yeah. Fan question from Olivia R. In
St. Louis
,
Missouri
. Hi, ladies. Did you know that
Evan Peters
grew up in
St. Louis
? Jenna, he grew up in the suburb of Baldwin. Do you know it? I just love all of the
St. Louis
connections on
The Office
because I am from there myself.
Well, Olivia, yes, I know Baldwin because I grew up in Baldwin.
Angela Kinsey
08:59
Wait, you and Evan grew up in the same part of town?
Jenna Fischer
09:03
Yes, yes. Oh, my gosh. In Baldwin,
Missouri
, a suburb of
St. Louis
. Not at the same time. I am significantly older than Evan.
Angela Kinsey
09:12
I wasn't going to say anything.
Jenna Fischer
09:14
Possible I could be his mother. But yes, Baldwin,
Missouri
, home of Queenie Park. I'm sure he must have ice skated at Queenie Park. Same as me. Great part of town.
Angela Kinsey
09:25
How about that? I know.
Jenna Fischer
09:27
Another fan question from Sierra P in
Gresham
,
Oregon
.
I have to share a Monk connection. Monk was randomly on TV the other day, and
Evan Peters
was on!
Angela Kinsey
09:39
No way!
Jenna Fischer
09:40
It was Season 7, Episode 2, Mr. Monk and the Genius. No way! Lady gets me.
Angela Kinsey
09:47
I have a connection to Evan. Yeah!
Jenna Fischer
09:49
I've got a
St. Louis
connection, you've got a
Monk
connection.
Angela Kinsey
09:52
Okay, okay.
Jenna Fischer
09:54
Also, lady.
He was on
House
.
Angela Kinsey
09:58
No way.
Jenna Fischer
09:58
So we've got another guest star in the house.
Angela Kinsey
10:01
Oh, you love that pun. It's like your favorite pun.
Jenna Fischer
10:04
It's going to be my new thing. Every guest star I'm going to see if they were on
House
.
House
. Oh, lordy. Get ready for it, everyone. You've just got three seasons of me doing that. You're probably happy I didn't think of it sooner. And I'm sad.
I'll tell you a little bit about Evan, guys. He moved to
Los Angeles
when he was 15 years old with his mom to pursue his acting career. He landed roles in film and TV productions such as
Parenthood
,
One Tree Hill
,
The Mentalist
,
House
,
Monk
.
CHAPTER 2
Behind the lip dub
Jenna Fischer
10:35
He's probably best known for his work in nine seasons of the
American Horror Story
anthology and the
X-Men
film series. Quicksilver! He's Quicksilver! I know. Evan also recently won a
Primetime Emmy Award
for his work in
Mayor of Easttown
.
Angela Kinsey
10:50
He was so good in that.
Jenna Fischer
10:52
I was very, I don't want to give a spoiler, but I was very upset.
Angela Kinsey
10:56
I know. I know. It wrecked me. We won't say what happened.
Jenna Fischer
10:59
We won't say.
Angela Kinsey
11:00
Oh, he was so good in it. With David Denman.
Jenna Fischer
11:02
Crossover connection with David Denman.
There's another crossover connection.
Angela Kinsey
11:08
Okay.
Jenna Fischer
11:09
The
Office
was not his first time working with
Steve Carell
. They were also in a film together called Sleepover from 2004.
Angela Kinsey
11:17
I saw that. Is Steve like a mall cop or something?
Jenna Fischer
11:20
Yeah, he's like a comedic security guard. Yes. And it's basically about these four girls who are having a sleepover, and then they go on this wild...
Night out scavenger hunt. And then Evan is part of a group of guys. It's a very comedic role. Like he's very goofy in it. He's one of the high school kids. He has an amazing dance number.
Angela Kinsey
11:43
I saw that so long ago.
Jenna Fischer
11:46
I don't think he and Steve had any scenes together in that, though. But there is also going to be, after he did his role in
The Office
, a future crossover connection, which is that he was in the movie
Kick-Ass
with
Clark Duke
.
Angela Kinsey
12:00
Evan, you have so many office crossovers.
Jenna Fischer
12:03
I know.
Angela Kinsey
12:04
You can also come hang out with us anytime and you can talk all about it.
Jenna Fischer
12:08
Yeah. Come on over.
Angela Kinsey
12:09
Come on over.
Jenna Fischer
12:11
We'll give you some shortbread cookies and Josh will bake something. Yeah. And oh, I'll make you a gooey butter cake. There you go. To remind you of home. St.
Angela Kinsey
12:20
Louis.
Jenna Fischer
12:21
All right, lady, do you want a sip of tea or something?
Angela Kinsey
12:25
Because I will. I have made myself a wonderful iced tea because lip dub is about to happen.
Jenna Fischer
12:31
That's right. Our fast fact three is going to be breaking down that famous lip dub cold open. We got so many questions about this lip dub. I think we should just go through them one by one. We reached out to a lot of folks to get these answers for you. We did.
Angela Kinsey
12:49
We were busy.
Jenna Fischer
12:50
We were. It was fun.
Angela Kinsey
12:51
It was really fun. I was also just so impressed with how quickly people got back to us. So thank you to everyone we reached out to. Jenna, list them off.
Jenna Fischer
12:59
We reached out to Randy Cordray, of course, our cinematographer, Matt Sohn, our editor,
Dave Rogers
,
Kate Flannery
,
Creed Bratton
. And there was also a great breakdown with our writer, Danny Chun, and our First AD Kelly Cantley over on officetelly.com. And Angela, you got some tidbits from the DVD commentary.
So without further ado, let's get started.
Angela Kinsey
13:22
Question number one, what was the inspiration for this cold open?
Jenna Fischer
13:26
Well, first off... Lip dubs were very popular at this time.
Angela Kinsey
13:30
Crazy popular.
Jenna Fischer
13:31
The idea was like you and a group of friends, or a lot of times co-workers, actually, you would film yourself lip syncing to a song, and it was supposed to happen all in one take, but move to various locations.
Angela Kinsey
13:44
Yeah, I remember one that was going around that everyone was watching was a bunch of office co-workers at a company called Connect Adventures. Oh, yeah. And they filmed it one night after work, and it was so fun. So guess what? The
Dunder Mifflin
gang wants to get in on this.
Jenna Fischer
14:00
Mm-hmm.
Angela Kinsey
14:01
Dunder Mifflin's
lip dub starts with Andy in the elevator. He sings
Nobody But Me
, performed by
the Human Beans
. And he dances to the front door of
Dunder Mifflin
. Someone flips the blinds to read lip dub. Who's that person?
Jenna Fischer
14:15
Someone did.
Angela Kinsey
14:16
That would be Pam. The door opens, and all of a sudden, everyone is dancing in the bullpen.
Aaron
is on roller skates. It goes. All the way through the kitchen into the break room and back And it ends with confetti, and everyone participates pretty much except for
Daryl
, Angela, and Stanley barely participates until the end.
Jenna Fischer
14:35
And Ryan uses it as an opportunity to promote woof.com. Right.
I have to say, my favorite part of the lip dub is Kelly in front of the fan.
Angela Kinsey
14:46
In front of the fan.
Jenna Fischer
14:47
I just love it.
Angela Kinsey
14:49
I love Kate strapped to Brian's back, but we'll get to that.
Jenna Fischer
14:52
Okay. Well, Danny Chun said the writers got the idea to do an office lip dub back in April or May, before the summer break, before the end of season six. He said they'd been just watching lip dubs like we all were, but he thought what I'd love to see is one. That's kind of full of mistakes.
Angela Kinsey
15:10
Yeah.
Jenna Fischer
15:11
And he said that felt like a fun idea to play with. But Danny said they kind of forgot about the idea for a while, but when it came time to pitch on the season premiere, Danny brought it up again.
Angela Kinsey
15:21
On the DVD commentary, Danny said that this cold open lip dub was one of the most fun things he's ever been a part of. He said he wrote it in one day and it was originally supposed to start in the parking lot. And then it was going to come through the warehouse and end up in the office. But since none of those buildings are connected in real life, as you know,
Jenna
.
Jenna Fischer
15:39
Yes.
Angela Kinsey
15:40
They could not do it in one take. So our director,
Jeff Blitz
, suggested it all take place in the main office so that we could do that whole one take look.
Jenna Fischer
15:50
That leads me into our next question, which was, how many takes did you have to do? And was it really one take or was there some sneaky editing involved?
Well, guys, this kind of depends on who you ask. This was very funny.
Angela Kinsey
16:05
Everyone's memory was a little different on this one.
Jenna Fischer
16:08
According to Danny Chun, it was one long continuous take, and we did it about three or four times.
My memory was that it was one long take, and I remembered that we did three. Angela, what did you remember?
Angela Kinsey
16:25
I remembered that it was all one long take as well because it was a domino effect of things. So I was there in
Daryl
's office and I had to shut the door, but me shutting the door cued Andy to say, go, go, go. So I just remember all of these moments and we did it all in one take. But I do remember that we got it pretty quickly. Like we were impressed with ourselves. We're like, oh my gosh, we got that.
Jenna Fischer
16:49
Yeah. Same memory. Well, when we reached out to cinematographer
Matt Stone
, he confirmed that we did do this as one long continuous take. However, he said that they did work in a couple of spots where we could cut if we needed to, but we did shoot it as one long take.
So then, when we reached out to our editor,
Dave Rogers
, he actually went back and checked his files. He said we did five takes.
Angela Kinsey
17:18
And he sent them to us.
Jenna Fischer
17:20
Amazing.
He said we used a combination of take four and take five. So he said, it's mostly all take five, but we cut when Angela slams
Daryl
's office door, and then we cut on the whip. To take four as the camera moves by
Phyllis
dancing and heads into Michael's office as he performs the magic tricks with his wand. And then we whip out back to take five as Andy yells streamers.
And then we stayed and take five until the end. And Dave said, looking at all the takes, he thinks the reason we did this was because Steve's magic in his office was best in take four, and they really wanted that magic take in the episode. I just have to give a big thank you to
Dave Rogers
because we all had different memories, and he had the answer.
Angela Kinsey
18:14
Yeah, thank you, Dave.
Jenna Fischer
18:16
Incidentally, in terms of Michael's magic, Danny Chun shared that they basically just gave Steve a bunch of dorky magic tricks and let Steve improvise it. So each of those magic takes in his office were a little bit different, except for the fire part.
Angela Kinsey
18:31
Yeah, they had a magician's helper named Amos Levkovich. He was hiding behind Michael's door to preset that flame trick at the end. So here were all of Michael's tricks. A dove comes out of his wand, flowers appear out of his cane, and then of course that flame in his hand.
Jenna Fischer
18:50
I remember Steve loved that dove coming out of the water. He did. And he does it like three times.
Angela Kinsey
18:55
I know.
Jenna Fischer
18:56
It's so funny. All right, let's see. Next question. How did they choose which song to use? Well, that was all Danny. It was the only song he considered. He said he really wanted a song that was, quote, short, upbeat, fun to lip sync to, and not too current.
Randy said it cost us $50,000 to get the song rights. And we should probably add that we could really hear that song. They had speakers, like, hidden all around the set, and it was really playing the song. We were really doing, like, lip syncing.
Angela Kinsey
19:29
Yeah. And I mean, I don't think you can fake that, that kind of energy that a song brings. I was so glad that they were playing it throughout the office.
Jenna Fischer
19:37
Yes.
Angela Kinsey
19:38
Our next questions are, who came up with the choreography and what was the rehearsal process like? This was heavily choreographed, you guys.
So the lip dub was choreographed by Mary Ann Kellogg. She planned it out with a team of dancers. They shared on the DVD commentary that every single detail you see was planned. Randy Cordray even sent us their rehearsal video. I loved watching it, Jenna.
Jenna Fischer
20:04
Me too. They had all these dancers doing our parts.
Angela Kinsey
20:07
Way better than we did them, by the way. Like real dancers. They were amazing. The rehearsal dancers need a shout out. They were Tammy To, Lauren Marie Menendez, Michael Cothran-Penna, Jennifer Mimi Karsh,
Aaron Cash
, and John Todd. They were so great. We couldn't have done this without them.
CHAPTER 3
Rehearsal day fun
Angela Kinsey
20:26
Randy Cordray said we can put the rehearsal in our Insta stories so you guys can watch it. And Danny said they had scripted out all the beats, but there were little things that were tricky. For example, getting Aaron from reception to the kitchen in time, or the fact that he wrote in the script that Meredith is strapped to Kevin's back in the break room.
Jenna Fischer
20:45
He just wrote that down. Yeah. But how to make that happen.
Angela Kinsey
20:49
Exactly. Kelly Cantley shared that our special effects coordinator,
Mike Thompson
, built the harness that Kate had to wear. And you guys, I reached out to Kate because I was like, Kate, will you please tell me about being strapped to Brian's back? How did you do it? What was the process? Here's what she had to say.
Speaker 5
21:07
Hey, it's
Kate Flannery
. Okay, so this is the deal. I was on a harness on Brian's back. There was a table. Behind us so that I wasn't putting all my weight on him the entire time. So I would squat on the table, even though it was high up, just to get my weight off of his back. Like, don't break another actor. Don't do it. Anyway. So I'm on his back on this crazy harness, and then he turns around. And I have...
The word nobody on my stomach. Okay. The first time we do it, it's perfect. The whole thing was perfect. Like you guys, there's no cut in a lip dub. It has to be all one take. So everybody has to get their part right. Everybody. And we did, except that they felt like my nobody was too faded.
The marker had like absorbed into my skin. So I feel like I let everybody down. So we had to do, we did, I think we did two more. Takes for safety, but I still feel like we would have had it on the first one if you could read my nobody. So my pasty white skin absorbed the Sharpie. It was...
Yeah, it took a couple days for it to come off, I'll be honest with you.
It's kind of weird to look in the mirror when you're taking it. Taking a shower or getting dressed and your stomach says nobody.
Don't try this at home, folks. I don't know.
Angela Kinsey
22:38
But she said that nobody, they had to go back and write it over and, you know, really darken it, and it was there for days.
Jenna Fischer
22:47
Well, I loved this day. I remember we came in early, and we rehearsed, and then we went to hair and makeup, and I remember Randy told us we had the whole day. We should just take the day.
Angela Kinsey
22:57
Right, no stress.
Jenna Fischer
22:58
Yeah, and all the dancers were there. We watched their video, and then whoever was dancing our part would show us our part.
Angela Kinsey
23:05
And show us the timing.
Jenna Fischer
23:07
Mm-hmm. Yes. So Randy told me that, yes, we started rehearsing at 7.15 in the morning. We got our first take at 11.23.
That's the precision of Randy Cordray. He knows the exact moment.
Angela Kinsey
23:19
He's like an air traffic controller. Your flight will leave at 7.12. Okay.
Jenna Fischer
23:24
Exactly.
Angela Kinsey
23:25
Hi, Randy.
Jenna Fischer
23:26
And we wrapped for the day at 1.36. And it was just so much fun.
Angela Kinsey
23:31
That's an early wrap day for us, you guys. So that meant we had the whole afternoon. We were probably so excited.
Jenna Fischer
23:35
I know. I remember our biggest hurdle was that there was a big cleanup between each take.
Angela Kinsey
23:40
Right.
Jenna Fischer
23:41
With all the streamers and everything. But besides that, we were able to really go through those takes pretty quickly. Angela, I got a fan question from Ian O in
South Africa
and Diana T in
Paris
,
France
. To international folks who are wondering, Angela, were you bummed that you couldn't really participate in the lip-dub festivities?
Angela Kinsey
24:07
I mean, you know me in real life. I wanted to be on those roller skates. I wanted to zip through. I was so excited. It looks so fun. But it made sense that my character would not want to participate. But I still got to be in it. I was glad that at least I had that little moment with
Daryl
.
And I yelled at the camera and slammed the door. So we were in there the whole time. And as the camera went past us into the kitchen, we got a little bit of a break. But I have a great memory of that day because... It was pretty relaxing. I didn't actually have to do... Any heavy lifting in the lift up.
I kind of got to watch it. And you know, Craig is such an easy person to hang out with. We had a fun time. We were sort of like the goldfish in the glass bowl, like watching the humans go by. Jenna, what about you? Did you have fun? You got to dance, and you love to dance. You got to do a shimmy.
Jenna Fischer
24:54
I know. But you had to go backwards.
Angela Kinsey
24:55
Was that hard?
Jenna Fischer
24:56
That was really tricky. So it was a little stressful because Ed and I had to start it off, and if we didn't start off with the right timing, then forget it. We should just not even continue. And that's really me pulling the blinds. And then I had to dance backwards into a very specific spot where I'm hiding people behind me who can jump out.
Yeah. So that was like a big choreography between me and Matt Sohn, our camera operator. And you can see me glance out of the corner of my eye because I was worried I was going to run into the little chair at reception when I'm going back. If you look closely. I had to look. I was really afraid I was going to run into it.
Angela Kinsey
25:37
I think all of those moments were because exactly of what Dani said. This is like paper company.
Jenna Fischer
25:43
I bet Dani would have loved it if I ran into the show. She would have been like, that's fine. Yeah. But yes, like you said, it was really, really choreographed, except at the end, that stuff of us, we're just improvising and dancing and throwing streamers and stuff.
And so that was a relief once we got to that point. We also, speaking of that ending part, had a fan catch. From Cecily G. In
New Mexico
. At two minutes and 19 seconds, I have a cheesy
John Krasinski
jumping up and down catch.
She said he's doing.
Angela Kinsey
26:14
He's busting out some of his dance moves.
Jenna Fischer
26:16
Yeah, the same kind of stuff he did in Cafe Disco.
I looked for it and it's great.
Angela Kinsey
26:22
I'll have to go look for it. I was really curious about Creed playing the guitar.
Jenna Fischer
26:27
Yeah.
Angela Kinsey
26:28
Because, you know, Creed comes over to my house and plays the guitar all the time. Yeah. The man's amazing. So I reached out to him and I said, Creed, are you really playing that part of the song? Are you really playing the guitar?
What's happening here? He said, Ange, I'm not actually playing that. I'm approximating what the notes would look like. And it looks real because I can actually play the guitar, but I'm not synced up to where the music would be.
Jenna Fischer
26:51
Oh, interesting.
Angela Kinsey
26:53
Yeah. Oh, so fakey playing by a real person who can play on a real guitar.
Jenna Fischer
26:59
It really looked to me like he was playing the notes exactly. Yeah, I'm impressed.
Well, our final question is this. Was Toby really behind the camera or was his voice added in post?
His voice was added in post.
Angela Kinsey
27:15
Yeah.
Jenna Fischer
27:16
The camera was operated by our cinematographer, Matt Sohn. I don't even think Paul was standing behind the camera that day.
I don't have a memory of it, Paul. I'm sorry. Were you there? You're so quiet.
Angela Kinsey
27:28
I do love, though, that they made it Toby's voice because by doing that, then the whole entire office participated.
Jenna Fischer
27:34
Yes. Yes. Kelly Cantley shared that she walked around the room with Matt while they were filming. Also, our boom operator,
Brian Whittle
. And I totally remember that.
Angela Kinsey
27:45
I remember that. Kelly was like, it's like she had the outline of the whole thing. And she had a stopwatch. Like, she was like, let's go.
Jenna Fischer
27:53
Yeah. They were like this little trio clump just kind of moving through.
Angela Kinsey
27:57
Keeping us on track.
Jenna Fischer
27:59
But. We also had our second AD, Stephanie, hiding behind the reception desk. She was giving cues. Our PA, Chuck, was hiding behind that door over by a county. Nobody goes in. And I remember he would peek out and give the cue when the guys were coming back in through the kitchen so we could be ready. It was just.
Angela Kinsey
28:18
It was this whole machine.
Jenna Fischer
28:20
And some of the dancers were hidden to kind of remind us what we were supposed to do.
Angela Kinsey
28:25
The magician was hidden.
Jenna Fischer
28:26
Gosh, I wish we had like actual documentary footage of all the people it took to pull this off.
Angela Kinsey
28:33
You guys, thanks so much for sending in your questions. That was really fun to break down. It was so much fun to do. I rewatched that so many times this week, Jenna.
Jenna Fischer
28:42
It made me happy every time.
Angela Kinsey
28:43
Me too.
Jenna Fischer
28:44
What a fun thing we got to do.
Angela Kinsey
28:46
I know. We were so lucky.
Jenna Fischer
28:48
Well, why don't we take a break?
Angela Kinsey
28:50
And when we come back. I have to share the journey I went on to find a DVD player that could play a Blu-ray disc in Archer City,
Texas
.
Jenna Fischer
28:59
I was on that journey with you, Angela, via text message. You were. And it is quite a journey. It is.
Angela Kinsey
29:06
And then, of course, let's talk nepotism because, oh, man, does a lot happen in this episode.
Jenna Fischer
29:12
Some corporate punishment.
Angela Kinsey
29:13
Oh.
Takk for at.
Jenna Fischer
29:20
So this winter, we went on a little ski trip with another family and we got an
Airbnb
, which was so wonderful, right? Because you can make your own breakfast in the morning. We could even go there for lunch to warm up.
Angela Kinsey
29:32
Listen, I always want a kitchen with kids.
Jenna Fischer
29:34
Yep.
Angela Kinsey
29:35
I don't want to call room service for some sliced apples. I want to have my groceries. I need a kitchen.
Jenna Fischer
29:40
Yes. Well, this is why doing the
Airbnb
thing was so perfect.
Angela Kinsey
29:43
Yep.
Jenna Fischer
29:44
Well, this family we were staying with told us that they listed their house on
Airbnb
back in
California
.
Angela Kinsey
29:50
Oh, that's so smart. I know a lot of people that do this. It's like, oh, we want to go to Disneyland. We can
Airbnb
our place and then use that money to go.
Jenna Fischer
29:57
It pays for your trip.
Angela Kinsey
29:59
Yep. Hosting can easily fit into your lifestyle and is a great way to earn some extra money.
Jenna Fischer
30:04
So if you have a home but you're not always at home, you have an
Airbnb
.
Angela Kinsey
30:08
Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at
Airbnb.com
slash host. Host.
Jenna Fischer
30:15
I'm loving Hungry Root.
Angela Kinsey
30:17
Oh my gosh, yes, Jenna, we're loving Hungry Root too. They've got fresh produce, high quality meat and seafood, snacks, smoothies, sweets, ready to eat meals, kids snacks and meals, and vitamins and supplements.
Jenna Fischer
30:30
Well, I took the quiz over on Hungry Root and oh my gosh, they nailed it. One of the things that I really wanted was I wanted a salmon dish that was quick and easy. I said I wanted to cook food in less than 12 minutes.
I was very ambitious. This was one of the choices. And they sent me a miso salmon that, oh my goodness, it blew my mind. And it was easy. It was maybe five ingredients. So tasty, so fresh. I loved it.
Angela Kinsey
31:02
Right now, Hungry Root is offering
Office
Ladies listeners 40% off your first delivery and free veggies for life. Just go to HungryRoot.com slash Office Ladies to get 40% off your first delivery and get your free veggies. That's HungryRoot.com slash
Office
Ladies. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you.
Jenna Fischer
31:22
When you travel, do you ever think like, oh no, I hope I locked up? Did I leave a window open? Things like that. Well, that's why you should invest in
SimpliSafe
home security today.
Simplisafe
was named best home security system in 2024 by the U.S. News World Report. And
Newsweek
ranked it best customer service in home security.
CHAPTER 4
DVD commentary adventure
Angela Kinsey
31:45
Well, you all have heard me talk about
SimpliSafe
because it really is simple and it does make me feel safe. We went through the website and we picked exactly what we needed for our home. That's what I really like is you can customize what you need. To fit your living space. You know, I love our
SimpliSafe
.
Simplisafe
has given me and many of my listeners real peace of mind, and I want you to have it too. Get 20% off any new
SimpliSafe
system when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash officeladies. That's simplisafe.com slash officeladies. There's no safe like
SimpliSafe
.
Jenna Fischer
32:27
All right, we are back. And Angela, you have to share the story about watching this DVD in
Texas
. And for some context, I just want to say this to preface.
We have been recording this podcast now for three years. Three years, lady. It's been three years. Uh-huh. And I am still so impressed at the lengths that you will go. To prep an episode, even when you did not have the tools readily available. I mean, I'm just really proud of us.
Angela Kinsey
32:57
I feel the same way about you. I have talked to you while you have been hiding in a bathroom with your laptop while at like a family reunion. So you're trying to get some time, some work done. So you guys, we love doing this podcast and we'll do it from wherever we can.
Jenna Fischer
33:12
That's right.
Angela Kinsey
33:14
So here's my story of how I watched the DVD commentary for Nepotism.
So I knew I would be in my hometown of Archer City,
Texas
, very small town in
North Texas
, population, according to the last census, 1,601.
Jenna Fischer
33:29
Everybody knows everybody in
Archer City
.
Angela Kinsey
33:30
Everybody knows everyone, and they're all willing to chip in. So before I went, I asked my sister, Janet, I said, hey, do you have the DVD box set? She's like, oh, I have one somewhere. So I was like, okay. She goes, no, I know it's here. I said, okay. So my sister finds her old box set. But Jenna, it was the Blu-ray. The Blu-ray old box set, they don't even make them anymore.
Jenna Fischer
33:51
Yes. I started getting texts from Angela about eight in the morning and I get this text. Oh my God, my sister has the box set, but it's Blu-ray and we can't figure out how to get it to work in my mom's DVD player. And then you wrote, I don't think it's been used in a decade.
Angela Kinsey
34:08
Oh no, it hadn't.
Jenna Fischer
34:09
They were not compatible.
Angela Kinsey
34:10
They were not compatible. Not only that, we started using old remotes, completely messed up my mom's TV.
Jenna Fischer
34:15
Oh no. And you were like, now you're like a little... Not panicking, but you're like, what am I going to do? This was my prep day.
Angela Kinsey
34:21
Yeah. So then my sister Billy's like, come on over. Try mine.
Jenna Fischer
34:26
I got that text. 830. My sister Billy has a DVD player. I'm going to head to her house.
Angela Kinsey
34:31
Yeah.
Jenna Fischer
34:31
And then it was like radio silence. I did not hear from you until 1130.
When you said, nope, that didn't work. Headed to the elementary school. And I'm like, what?
Angela Kinsey
34:43
Yeah.
Jenna Fischer
34:43
What is happening? Okay. Third location.
Angela Kinsey
34:45
Third location. I get to the elementary school. My sister is a school teacher. She was up there preparing her classroom for the upcoming school year. She was like, maybe there'll be one here. The principal of the elementary school, Amy, opened the door for me. She was like, Angela, I think we've downloaded a program that will work on my desktop to play the Blu-ray.
Jenna Fischer
35:02
She downloaded a program. I know.
Angela Kinsey
35:04
So I sit in the elementary school principal's office and it didn't work. So now they're like, okay, let's try one of the classrooms. I go into my sister's classroom. Now PE teachers, Krista and Julie and another pre-K teacher, Miriam, is in there.
We're all trying to make my sister's laptop work. It won't play it. And then finally, to the rescue, Amanda, the librarian, she says, I think we have a Blu-ray disc player in the elementary school library. But here's the thing, it's closed because it's summer.
And it was 114 degrees that day. That library was super hot and stuffy, but they opened it up, and guess what? It did work. It played the Blu-ray.
Jenna Fischer
35:44
And then I get this video of you, Angela, that you sent me at 1245. This is like four hours later of you sitting and watching the DVD commentary, and they even brought you a fan. You're sitting in front of a fan.
Angela Kinsey
35:57
I'm sitting on the floor in the little reading nook of the elementary school library, And that is where I prepped this episode. Thank you so much to the ladies at the Archer City Elementary School for helping me watch Nepotism.
Jenna Fischer
36:11
Amazing. I was very impressed with your tenacity that day, Angela.
Angela Kinsey
36:14
Thank you.
Jenna Fischer
36:15
It was like a whole town helped you watch the DVD. So we dedicate this episode of
Office Ladies
to
Archer City, Texas
. Thank you. I noticed something at the very top of this episode, lady.
Angela Kinsey
36:26
New opening credits!
Jenna Fischer
36:28
We added a bunch of new shots! They did this because it was our season premiere episode. We had these big, long, extended credits. We're going to have shorter credits moving forward, but we do keep these new shots of Michael, Dwight,
Pam
, Jim, Ryan, and Andy. And we will always end with Michael moving the dundee on his desk.
Angela Kinsey
36:47
Here's a little bit of opening credits trivia I heard on the commentary.
Jenna Fischer
36:51
What? The commentary is already paying off?
Angela Kinsey
36:54
While sitting in the elementary school library. They shared that we will have new opening credits every time
Dunder Mifflin
gets a new boss. Moving forward.
Jenna Fischer
37:05
Oh.
Angela Kinsey
37:06
How about that? Okay. We'll be on the lookout for that. Yes.
Jenna Fischer
37:10
Well, Michael is going to arrive to work. And he has a talking head. He says, sadly, summer had to come to an end.
Angela Kinsey
37:18
You guys, a lot happened. He got
West Nile
virus. Then he stepped on a piece of glass in a parking lot. That hurt. He peed on it, and he was surprised it got infected. And maybe he saw inception. I mean, what a summer.
Jenna Fischer
37:32
So under all of this, we see various shots of Michael, and one of them is a very simple. Swish pan over to a fall tree, a tree with beautiful autumn colors.
Angela Kinsey
37:43
Yeah. That seems really out of place. It did. It seems like a big old fakie tree.
Jenna Fischer
37:49
Guess what, lady? What? It was a big old fakie tree. Okay. But it was in the script. There was a script note that came along with Michael's talking head that said this. Michael gets out of his car. Something catches his eye. He looks over at a tree with brilliant autumn colors. He sighs. Forlorn, if not angry.
Angela Kinsey
38:09
Oh my goodness.
Jenna Fischer
38:11
Autumn tree.
Angela Kinsey
38:12
What a narrative.
Jenna Fischer
38:13
Well, Randy Cordray said to get this autumn tree was quite an ordeal. Just this little script note. He said, we shot this on August 2nd in 2010. There were no trees with fall colors to be found anywhere in
the United States of America
. Anywhere. They couldn't fly one in from anywhere.
Angela Kinsey
38:31
Nothing in Vermont.
Jenna Fischer
38:33
I don't know. Did the trees start changing that early? Early August?
Angela Kinsey
38:36
I am the last person to ask that question. I'm sure there's listeners in Vermont right now going, lady, lady.
Jenna Fischer
38:42
He said, there is a place that you can go in Hollywood. It's called Green Set. And they have amazing trees, shrubs, and landscape decor for any budget. And they have fakie fall trees.
I went on their website. Once again, I was clearly meant to be some sort of props or designer. In another life, they have fakie box hedges and real box hedges. This place, in addition to fakie hedges, also has animal statues. Like, you can rent. Yeah, like, come on.
If you want to put a big tiger in your yard, they also have glacier walls. What? Like, if you're doing, I don't know if you're, like, doing a movie or something and you need to look like you're standing in front of a glacier. Or if you have a theme party about ice climbing.
Angela Kinsey
39:37
I'm getting so excited.
Jenna Fischer
39:39
I mean, if you guys ever take Office Ladies on the Road, please use that as stage backdrop.
Angela Kinsey
39:43
Like a giant glacier wall?
Jenna Fischer
39:44
Yeah, depending on what state you're in.
Angela Kinsey
39:46
Tiger?
Jenna Fischer
39:46
Mm-hmm. Yes! Oh my gosh, that's amazing. And then everyone can see what we were talking about in this episode. Here's your glacier wall.
Now, I just want to say, I'm still talking about this tree because in addition to having to find this fake.
Jenna Fischer
40:01
Randy said there was more just for this little
swiss
shot what more he said they had to shoot very early in the morning okay and they had to rent a special light to backlight this tree it was called a 10k it has 10,000 watts of light.
Angela Kinsey
40:19
Just for this one sentence in a script.
Jenna Fischer
40:21
Yes, because they wanted it to look like it was early morning sun coming through the colorful leaves to highlight these leaves and set them apart from everything around them.
Angela Kinsey
40:31
This is that moment as a writer where I'm like, Do you think Danny was like, oh, we could have lost the autumn trees. You know what I mean? Exactly. I didn't know it was all that much work.
Jenna Fischer
40:40
Well, that's Randy's job is to like go through the script. And then I think sometimes he'll have to go to production. He'll be like, okay, here's the thing. You can either have your lip dub song. Or the autumn tree.
Angela Kinsey
40:52
Pick.
Jenna Fischer
40:53
I mean, I don't have the budget for all of it.
Angela Kinsey
40:56
Or sometimes he finds a way to make it all work, which is amazing.
Jenna Fischer
40:59
Which is usually the case.
So what happens next, Ange? Andy is going to be chatting up
Aaron
and then
Gabe
walks in.
Angela Kinsey
41:08
Yes, we find out that
Aaron
and
Gabe
have started dating over the summer. Gabe says it has been, in a word, exquisite. Then
Aaron
has a talking head that sounds like she only said yes because she thought she had to because
Gabe
was her boss, which makes me real sad.
Jenna Fischer
41:24
Yes, but now she seems to enjoy her relationship with him. It seems.
Angela Kinsey
41:28
It seems.
Jenna Fischer
41:30
Andy has a talking head where he says he's all right with it.
Angela Kinsey
41:34
He's on a nice beach at
Cape Cod
gazing out across the whitecaps. That's his anger management.
Jenna Fischer
41:39
That's right.
Angela Kinsey
41:40
But oh look, it's a humpback whale.
Jenna Fischer
41:42
Who's eating
Gabe
?
Angela Kinsey
41:44
Well, I also watched in the elementary school library, the deleted scenes. And there were a ton of deleted scenes where everyone shares what they did over the summer. Oh, it was a much bigger runner. One is hilarious. I'm going to save and share it later.
Jenna Fischer
42:01
Okay.
Angela Kinsey
42:02
Hint, hint. It's about Kevin.
Well, Pam is adjusting the thermostat and Dwight comes up and locks it up.
Jenna Fischer
42:10
Mm-hmm. Yeah, he says if she's so hot, she can just sit on an ice pack.
Angela Kinsey
42:14
Thanks, Dwight.
Jenna Fischer
42:15
Mm-hmm.
Angela Kinsey
42:16
Can we talk about the hydration backpack that Dwight has on?
Jenna Fischer
42:20
He requires hands-free hydration, Angela.
Angela Kinsey
42:22
I know. I looked it up. It's called a Camelback hydration pack. They have many options of these online. And I'm quoting the internet here, with minimal storage space, this pack is best for quick hikes or trail runs that won't require a ton of gear.
And the two liter reservoir capacity ensures you'll have enough water for your trip. Danny said something on the commentary that really made me laugh. He said, I wish that Dwight had worn that
Camelback
backpack for the rest of the season.
CHAPTER 5
Summer's end reflections
Angela Kinsey
42:51
I was like, oh man, me too.
Jenna Fischer
42:54
I see people with those on all the time when we're skiing. Oh. And honestly, I think next season I'm going to get one. Yeah. Because you got to stay hydrated on the slopes, lady. And there's nowhere to put a bottle of water.
Angela Kinsey
43:06
Please tell me if you wear one of those that you'll take a picture and send it to me. Because I need that image in my life. Dwight has my favorite talking head of this episode.
He says,
Dwight Schrute
, star salesman, beet farmer, bed and breakfast proprietor, aspiring freelance bodyguard. Add to that list, owner of this building, then burn the list. And then he takes a big swig out of the little hose. Like, he looks like a four-year-old with a sippy cup.
Jenna Fischer
43:33
He really does. I love Kelly's talking head.
Angela Kinsey
43:36
Oh, and talk about a new look.
Jenna Fischer
43:38
Oh, yeah.
Angela Kinsey
43:40
Corporate sassy, Kelly.
Jenna Fischer
43:42
Well, the reason for that, lady, is because she did the minority executive program at
Yale
. She says, you don't even know how smart I am now. You could ask her to name the biggest company in the world, and she would be like, blah, blah, blah, blah, giving you the exact right answer.
Angela Kinsey
43:60
Brilliant.
Jenna Fischer
44:00
So good.
Angela Kinsey
44:01
Brilliant. Our writers are brilliant.
Jenna Fischer
44:03
We had a fan catch from Leah J. In
Charleston
,
Indiana
, who said, At five minutes, 36 seconds, the whiteboard behind Kelly says, meeting with Chris, Nick, and Ed. Is that referring to Nick the IT guy? And who are Chris and Ed?
Angela Kinsey
44:21
Oh, hold up. That's our camera crew.
Jenna Fischer
44:24
Yes. Chris and Ed were our assistant camera operators and our sound guy was Nick Carbone.
Angela Kinsey
44:30
Well, now we are going to meet Luke. Luke's going to show up with the coffee. He's gotten everyone's order wrong.
Jenna Fischer
44:37
Well, I was very surprised and I paused to make sure that we used real
Starbucks
cups. Those were...
Starbucks
.
Angela Kinsey
44:46
Yeah. How did we get away with that?
Jenna Fischer
44:48
I asked Randy about it and he said that at first this was flagged by standards and practices because if you want to use a real product, you have to clear it with the
NBC
ad sales department. Because if they had an advertiser who might be a competitor, you know, then that person who had bought AdTime would definitely not want to see.
Free advertising on a show. Right.
Angela Kinsey
45:17
Like if you're the guys at Pete's Coffee.
Jenna Fischer
45:19
Yeah. Or Coffee Bean. You're like, hey, hold on a second.
Angela Kinsey
45:23
Hey, get that
Starbucks
out of there.
Jenna Fischer
45:25
Well, I guess coffee chains were not actually huge ad buyers at the time.
Angela Kinsey
45:30
Really? Yes. Wow.
Jenna Fischer
45:31
That's what Randy said.
Angela Kinsey
45:32
That's how old we are. That's how old the show is.
Jenna Fischer
45:35
Yes.
Angela Kinsey
45:35
We had flip phones. There was no
Instagram
and coffee companies weren't that big of a deal. Yeah.
Jenna Fischer
45:42
And so I guess there were no conflicts, and we were able to get approval to use real
Starbucks
cups.
Angela Kinsey
45:49
Wow. Mm-hmm. You know about the whole
Starbucks
cup on the set of
Game of Thrones
that made it into the
Game of Thrones
episode.
Jenna Fischer
45:56
I do.
Angela Kinsey
45:56
Mm-hmm.
Jenna Fischer
45:57
I can't believe they haven't gone back and, like, wiped that out.
It's not like such a lore of the show that it's like an Easter egg. You're just going to keep it in.
Angela Kinsey
46:07
Winter is coming and so is your
Starbucks
.
There's now a series of talking heads that are really funny, but basically the theme is everyone hates
Luke
and that
Luke
sucks.
Jenna Fischer
46:19
Yeah, in the kitchen, Andy is going to confront Michael and just say,
Luke
is the worst. He needs to be fired, Michael. But Michael's just kind of hedging. Oh, yeah.
That other intern we had was worse. Lady, I need to talk about this. Did you notice? Steve's holding an apple in his scene. He's got a coffee in one hand and an apple in the other. I went to the script. I'm like, did this apple have a story? No, it's just, I guess he went to the kitchen to get an apple. I thought it was interesting.
Angela Kinsey
46:51
This is like an interesting choice.
Jenna Fischer
46:53
Why is Michael holding an apple?
Angela Kinsey
46:54
Interesting choice.
Jenna Fischer
46:55
Well, I mean, I don't know, apple and coffee.
Angela Kinsey
46:59
Sounds gross to me. We are now going to start a whole storyline that is really centered around
Pam
at the core. Dwight has this impressive ring of keys. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's huge. He has all these keys. And Jim is doing basically...
Classic Jim prankage.
Jenna Fischer
47:18
Yes. Jim has a bunch of extra keys in his desk. When he gets Dwight to go check for raccoons in the wall, he tries to add a few extra keys to the key ring. His goal is very similar to when he was putting the nickels in Dwight's phone receiver.
Angela Kinsey
47:32
Oh, amazing.
Jenna Fischer
47:33
It's my favorite prank.
Angela Kinsey
47:34
Me too.
Jenna Fischer
47:34
Personally, he's going to put so many extra keys, like one a day, two a day, onto this key ring that eventually his pants will fall down. That was his goal.
Angela Kinsey
47:43
Well, Jim has a talking head that said, what happened to me this summer? Dwight bought the building. So actually, this has been the busiest summer of my life.
Jenna Fischer
47:51
Yeah, he had to make plans.
Angela Kinsey
47:53
Lots of prank plans.
Pam
finds it hilarious and starts laughing. And Dwight busts Jim.
Jenna Fischer
47:59
Yeah. We had a fan question from Sarah C. In Lubbock,
Texas
.
Does Rain throw real keys at John's head, or are they fakey keys? One of them hit him. And you hear like a thump.
Angela Kinsey
48:11
Well, I know. I was wondering the same thing.
Jenna Fischer
48:14
I swear they were real keys. Same. Because I have this memory, Rain was kind of throwing them at John's chest. Yeah. In the scene. But then, I swear it was this take. One of them just accidentally kind of like flew at John's head.
And... They stopped. And John was like, dude, and Rain was like, I'm so sorry. He's like, it's okay. But like, those are real. And yes, so I totally have that memory of shooting that scene.
Angela Kinsey
48:45
But I think they're real too. I have the same memory.
And also if you watch John's reaction, that's what I mean. Yeah. Well, you know, this is interesting because
Pam
feels really bad and Jim is bummed out that his prank didn't go. And BJ talked on the commentary about how they had to get creative with conflict scenes for Jim and
Pam
. Now that they're a happily married couple, I thought it was really interesting. Let's listen.
Steve Carell
49:10
So this was something we thought of because we like when Jim and
Pam
have stories, but we don't want to invent fights. There are a couple that gets along really well, and we like stories between them, but we don't always want them having conflict because that's not real. So what would be a light conflict? It's real but not sad.
Angela Kinsey
49:29
Isn't that interesting? They had to find ways for Jim and
Pam
to have storylines. And this sort of
Pam
trying to do right by Jim with this prank was one of those light conflict storylines.
Jenna Fischer
49:42
Well, we also had a fan catch from Ashley W. In
Oklahoma
for this scene. You're going to like it, Angela.
Angela Kinsey
49:49
Okay.
Jenna Fischer
49:50
Here's what Ashley said.
Pam
's desk plant has a bow on it. It's like a gift bow. Are these plants gifts from someone? Does she have a plant subscription box? Maybe that's why they were constantly changing.
Angela Kinsey
50:05
Wait, is there such a thing as a plant subscription box? I've never heard of that. Could I get plants sent to me every month?
Jenna Fischer
50:13
You've never heard of this?
Angela Kinsey
50:14
No.
Jenna Fischer
50:16
It's like, you know, like cheese of the month. You can get flowers of the month, plant of the month, wine of the month.
Angela Kinsey
50:21
Okay, cheese, wine, I guess flowers make sense, but I didn't know you could get a whole living plant like in a pot.
Jenna Fischer
50:28
I mean, I believe it.
Angela Kinsey
50:31
I want one.
Jenna Fischer
50:33
Okay, plant subscription box. Coming your way, lady.
Angela Kinsey
50:37
Josh
is going to be like, Ange, plants are all over the house.
Jenna Fischer
50:42
I had a flowers of the month. Lee got it for me for Christmas one year. And every month I got fresh flowers. It was so amazing.
Angela Kinsey
50:49
What a great gift.
Jenna Fischer
50:50
I know. Well, I'll tell you what, Ashley. I don't know if there was a subscription box, but I'll tell you my backstory for that plant. Do you remember when Jim let
Pam
's plant die on her desk when she went on maternity leave?
Angela Kinsey
51:04
So you think Jim bought
Pam
a new plant?
Jenna Fischer
51:07
I do. Oh, I like that. And that's why there was a little bow on it. And I think she didn't take the bow off because it reminded her of Jim's thoughtfulness.
Angela Kinsey
51:16
I like that.
CHAPTER 6
Deleted scene insights
Angela Kinsey
51:18
Well, there is someone in the office who you don't want to tick off, and that is
Phyllis
.
Jenna Fischer
51:22
Oh, that's right.
Angela Kinsey
51:23
And
Luke
has crossed
Phyllis
. She lost an account because she's pretty sure
Luke
did not send the samples he was supposed to.
Jenna Fischer
51:31
That's right. Lehigh Motors has not gotten their samples.
Angela Kinsey
51:36
He blows off Phyllis. And then, you know, he's just like playing video games on Meredith's computer. Everyone's getting so frustrated with
Luke
. Michael sends him to get ice cream.
Jenna Fischer
51:46
At 8 minutes and 49 seconds, Angela, you are not at your desk in the background of this scene. I noticed.
Angela Kinsey
51:52
I thought I had gone to the bathroom.
Jenna Fischer
51:53
Where have you sneaked away to, lady?
Angela Kinsey
51:55
Probably talked our AD into letting me go to the bathroom. Like, they're not going to see me.
Jenna Fischer
51:59
I know.
All right, we are 10 minutes into this episode and we are going to move to a scene in the conference room, I noticed, with the conference table.
Angela Kinsey
52:09
Yeah.
Jenna Fischer
52:09
Not the usual row of chairs.
Angela Kinsey
52:12
Table is back.
People are going to figure out pretty quickly that Michael is related to
Luke
. Oscar accuses Michael of nepotism.
Jenna Fischer
52:21
This whole conference room scene is delicious and amazing. During this rewatch, lady, I love our conference room scenes. Same. I loved doing our conference room scenes. I used to feel bad for Steve because I knew how much work they were for him. We'd be in there all day and he would be the leader.
Angela Kinsey
52:40
He would be driving the scene. He would have the majority of the dialogue. And all we had to do was chime in with a line or two here. And basically everyone that worked at
Dunder Mifflin
was always versus Michael.
Jenna Fischer
52:50
Yes. But they are delightful. I get so excited every time we go to the conference room. At 10 minutes and 19 seconds in this conference room scene, Rain is drinking water from his pouch.
I swear to God, I remember that he drank real water from that pouch all day long. I remember he had to pee all day long.
Angela Kinsey
53:11
No, it's true.
Jenna Fischer
53:12
He was not fakey drinking.
Angela Kinsey
53:13
He was not fakey drinking. Rain is very method, you know, as an actor. So if he was like, if Dwight's supposed to be drinking water, I'm going to be drinking lots of water.
Jenna Fischer
53:21
Yeah.
Angela Kinsey
53:22
Creed has a talking head that I absolutely love. Creed says, I couldn't care less about nepotism, but I'm loving the debate. Great minds battling it out, and I've got a front row seat.
Jenna Fischer
53:35
So good.
Angela Kinsey
53:36
So good.
Jenna Fischer
53:38
I mean, I'm Creed. Really? You're like, I'm like, I'm loving it as well. Well, lady, maybe we should take a break.
Angela Kinsey
53:45
Yeah. And when we come back, Luke is going to have soy ice cream and bagel chips for everybody.
Jenna Fischer
53:52
And there was a mini Michael Pam tangent that was cut from this conference room scene that I'm excited to share. Ooh.
Angela Kinsey
54:05
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55:07
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55:36
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Jenna Fischer
55:55
Thank you.
Angela Kinsey
55:57
Well, we are back from break. Michael is continuing to defend Luke. He's even comparing himself and Luke to like God and Jesus.
Jenna Fischer
56:05
That's right. And Jim has this line where he says, oh, so you and Luke are God and Jesus. And Michael says, no, not that. I'm just saying, why does God get to do something I don't? Why does God get to do nepotism, basically? Yeah. And then Oscar says. This is all hypothetical. We're talking about
Luke
, who is actually terrible.
And I don't know if you noticed, lady, but at 11 minutes, 48 seconds, when Oscar says that line to Michael, I'm sort of smiling and shrugging like I have. A sort of out of context body energy. Yeah, like reaction. And at first I thought, oh my gosh, am I breaking?
And then I remembered, no. Pam and Michael had a bit because I suddenly had that like sense memory of shooting it and we were laughing like all these memories came back. So I checked the shooting draft and I found it. Here is what would have happened.
So Michael was going to say, why does God get to do something I don't? And then
Pam
says... Michael, you've built yourself up fair and square. How can you support favoritism like this? To which Michael said,
Pam
, let's say you're my daughter, and I'm the CEO of the world's biggest toy company, Scott's Games and Fun.
We make funny putty, magic marbles, connectables. And Dwight said, what are connectables? And Michael said, they're my knockoff Legos, almost as good half the price. And I remember... That was, we would lose it on this, like, connectables. Like, what are connectables?
So anyway, then Michael would say...
Okay, one day I fall in the Slimeinator and die. And we would all laugh.
Angela Kinsey
57:51
Like we could not get through this runner of Michael's Toy Company.
I'm doing this because I remember also how well thought out it was. Yes. He's throwing it out as just an off-the-cuff example, but it is a well thought out toy company.
Jenna Fischer
58:04
Yes. He says, Pam, I left you the company. Would you turn it down? So in this example,
Pam
is Michael's daughter.
Angela Kinsey
58:13
And Michael's created this insanely successful toy company.
Jenna Fischer
58:17
But he dies in the Slimeinator and has left her the company.
Angela Kinsey
58:21
He's Willy Wonka. He wants to know.
Jenna Fischer
58:25
Would I turn it down? And
Pam
said, if I was unqualified, yes. To which Michael says, very seriously, but you're not. You've got an amazing mind for toys. And then the script said,
Pam
looks flattered. Oh my gosh. And then Oscar said, this is all hypothetical.
Angela Kinsey
58:45
Oh, that's why he's like, yes.
Jenna Fischer
58:46
Look at my face.
Angela Kinsey
58:47
But also why Oscar is saying, this is all hypothetical.
Jenna Fischer
58:51
Yes, this toy company. But it's why when I'm sitting next to him on that line, I'm like, oh, well, thank you very, you can see that I'm saying non-verbally, thank you very much, Michael.
Angela Kinsey
59:02
Pam
is like, oh, well, if you say so.
Jenna Fischer
59:04
That's right.
Angela Kinsey
59:06
Oh, my gosh. I remember all of that now.
Jenna Fischer
59:08
Yes, right?
Angela Kinsey
59:09
It's like you opened a folder in my brain.
CHAPTER 7
Pam's hair evolution
Angela Kinsey
59:12
Yes, Michael's Toy Company.
Jenna Fischer
59:15
And by the way, I went to the bloopers to see if it was in there because I know it wasn't in deleted scenes. It's not in there. But we were cracking up. Somewhere.
Angela Kinsey
59:24
Well, that was a delightful trip down memory lane. I do want to address something, though, with
Pam
. Oh, she's about to have a talking head where she says she feels awful for blowing Jim's prank. Can we talk about how fancy fancy
Pam
is looking? What is with this hair? I noticed black eyeliner. I mean, fancy
Pam
.
Jenna Fischer
59:45
You are not the only one, Angela. We got mail about it. We got a fan question from Kaylee E. In
Indianapolis
and Kristen H. From
Little Rock
,
Arkansas
.
Pam
's look takes a big shift this season. Straighter hair, a tucked-in shirt, more blazers than cardigans. Surely there were many meetings about this?
Angela Kinsey
01:00:04
Surely they were, Shirley. Shirley? Shirley.
Jenna Fischer
01:00:07
Surely there were.
Angela Kinsey
01:00:08
Shirley.
Jenna Fischer
01:00:09
Yes, there were many meetings about this, starting in wardrobe, I will tell you. We decided that we wanted
Pam
to keep her blazers, but we wanted to bring back more of what they would call
Pam
's color palette. So rather than having a dark shirt with a dark blazer, we wanted to bring the pastels back because that really felt like
Pam
. The pinks and the lighter colors.
Angela Kinsey
01:00:32
Light purples. Yeah.
Jenna Fischer
01:00:34
So you're going to see that. And then in terms of the hair, I went to Kim Ferry and I said, Kim, I miss
Pam
's hair. I miss the
Pam
mullet.