Phyllis' Wedding Fact List

It was so nice to hear from Phyllis Smith! Ken Whittingham was great too.

Phyllis' Wedding

• Episode written by Caroline Williams and directed by Ken Whittingham.

• Fast Fact: The wedding was filmed at The First Christian Church Of North Hollywood in Studio City, and it's a Disciples of Christ church.

• Kent Zbornak and his wife Shelley got married in the same church.

• Jenna filmed a school recital scene for her TV show Splitting Up Together, and the holding room for hair and makeup was in the same room where Phyllis is getting ready before her wedding.

• Angela filmed a scene later in the show at that church because it's also where Angela's son Phillip went to daycare.

• Fast Fact: Ken Whittingham directed nine total episodes of The Office.

• Ken did an interview to be a director on the show. They had already filmed the pilot and were looking for directors to be a part of the series. Ken met with Teri Weinberg and Greg Daniels, and they all discussed whether or not America was ready for the type of show that The Office was. Ken was very optimistic about it.

• When there was an episode that would be off the set, they had about 4 days to to find a location and then prepare for how they would shoot at the location

• Ken made a list of the order that they would shoot all of the scenes for this episode.

• Phyllis' Uncle Al was supposed to just be sitting on a bench outside, but then on the night they shot the scene they improvised him wandering out into the street.

• They had to film the footage for Michael as a kid at his mom's wedding and then edit it to make it look like an old VHS. That was shot on the first day of filming.

• The scene where Michael asks Phyllis "did you break wind?" was very hard for everyone to get through without laughing and it took about an hour to shoot. Steve Carell kept breaking character, specifically when he had to say "pungent." Phyllis had to keep holding her breath just to get through it. That scene was not originally supposed to stay in the script. It was a random joke that was thrown in and it just stuck.

• Ken's two favorite episodes that he directed are Health Care and Phyllis' Wedding.

• The cold open shows Jim giving Dwight Altoids across multiple days. But they shot it all in one day, so John Krasinski and Rainn Wilson had a rack of clothes to change into for each "day" in the scene. Veda, the script supervisor, had to keep track of when they were wearing each outfit. Any characters that the cameras saw in the background during this scene also had to change clothes for each "day." When Jenna came to work that day she had 7 outfits ready for her in her trailer.

• Phyllis' bridesmaids and family were all played by actors, none of them were her real family members. Her main sister that is seen throughout the episode is played by Maile Flanagan. The wedding photographer is played by John F. Schaffer.

• Angela and Rainn got to improvise a lot in the scene where Dwight and Angela meet each other in the parking lot and then walk into the church together.

• Bob's groomsmen include a set of twins. They are supposed to be Bob's sons, which is written in the script.

• The minister is played by Rick Scarry.

• Since the show was off of the set for a whole week and at a different location, the cast spent a lot of time in their trailers. Angela and Oscar played music and danced at Angela's trailer. Everyone hung out and played Madden in John's trailer, and Rainn tried to teach Angela how to play. The girls took turns hosting lunch for each other in their trailers.

• Brian Baumgartner is really singing and playing the drums at the wedding reception. He practiced a lot for this episode.

• Bob's best man is played by Brian Douglas Hatton.

• The scene with Dwight and Angela dancing together outside of the church was shot in front of a busy street. On one of the takes someone drove by and yelled out "Oh my god, Dwight and Angela!" so they had to redo it.

• Uncle Al is played by George Ives. He passed away in 2013, and The Office was the last TV show he appeared in. Phyllis' father is played by Hansford Rowe and he passed away in 2017.

• At 19:30, as Phyllis is leaving the church, she has a black brace on her right knee. She didn't get injured in the filming of this episode, but she did have a few injuries throughout the series.

• The cake scene at the end was originally supposed to be earlier in the episode, right before Dwight confronts Uncle Al for stealing the bread at the buffet. But it became the tag at the end of the episode instead. The original ending tag was going to be a bunch of pictures of Michael photo bombing the wedding photos.

• The cake scene was done in one take so they didn't have to keep cleaning up the cake for each take. They rehearsed it without the cake a few times before that.