The Untold Truth Of Jenna Fischer

Jenna Fischer is the quintessential working actor. Obviously, she is best known for her beloved role as aggrieved receptionist Pam Beesly on NBC's version of "The Office." Even early in the run, she told the Truman State University Index that she hoped this would be a long-running job. "Honestly it would be great to get to play Pam for a long, long time," she said. "I don't have real big aspirations to be a movie star. I would love to be on a long-running hit TV show. You end up playing a defining role." 

Fischer's depiction of ennui, alongside her legendary sitcom romance with John Krasinski's Jim Halpert, made her sympathetic in a number of ways. The romance between Pam and Jim formed the spine of the show during its first six seasons, and their later evolution into a married couple with children and problems to work out continued to be important to the story.

Of course, Fischer has had a wide variety of experiences as an actor, both before and after her big break. She wrote, directed and starred in a film prior to "The Office." She's done a lot of work on the stage. She's starred in a number of movies, including comedic seductress roles in films like "Blades Of Glory" and "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story." She played a substantial part in the 2018-19 series "Splitting Up Together," and she even wrote a book on acting and started a successful podcast. And there's a lot about her you might not know, so let's explore how Jenna Fischer's expressed her creative side. 

Prior to her breakthrough role in "The Office," Fischer wrote, directed, and starred in her own film, a mockumentary called "LolliLove." Co-starring her then-husband, director James Gunn (who would go on to fame with the "Guardians Of The Galaxy" franchise), it depicted a rich couple attempting to "improve" the lives of homeless people by giving them lollipops with uplifting messages on them. Co-starring acting friends like Judy Greer, Linda Cardellini, and Jason Segel (all still fairly early in their careers), it gave Fischer a leg up on the cringe comedy of mockumentaries.

Fischer earned a Screen Actors Guild Emerging Actor Award at her hometown St. Louis Film Festival for the project, and she also received the Tromadance Kodak Independent Soul Award, presented to "independent directors for outstanding achievements in filmmaking." Of the experience, Fischer told Playback, "It was a lot of hard work. The directing was exhausting and the writing was painful. It was very difficult to direct and star in a movie. We also had a very small crew so I did a lot of things a normal director doesn't have to do, like make the props and serve lunch. I was simultaneously getting into character, going over my lines, set dressing the next shot, coaching an actor, and brainstorming with my D.P. I'm good at multitasking, but that was too much for me. I couldn't enjoy any one part the way I would have liked. I think I'll stick to acting. That part was fantastic."

While Jenna Fischer's then-husband James Gunn co-starred in her directorial debut, she wasn't supposed to be in his first film, 2006's "Slither." Gunn had achieved some success as a screenwriter, but this Universal Pictures horror film was his first chance to display his quirky and dark sense of humor as a director. Gunn had cast a male actor to play the role of police dispatcher Shelby, but he begged off at the last moment. Gunn then gender-swapped the role and gave it to Fischer, adding a few more scenes as she became one of many victims of an alien hive-mind. By the time the movie debuted, Fischer had suddenly become famous thanks to the success of Season 2 of "The Office," and she wound up doing a lot of publicity for "Slither."

In 2008, Fischer met a screenwriter named Lee Kirk, and he pitched her an idea that became the film "The Giant Mechanical Man." A quirky love story, they developed the premise together. This was her first producing credit, and she also starred in the movie. As they nurtured the product through the national financial collapse in 2008, they fell in love, got married, and had a child. After years of delays, the actual shoot was just 19 days. Fischer joked about her marriage after the movie was completed, "I don't know what we're going to talk about anymore because for the last four years we've been talking about 'The Giant Mechanical Man.'"

Fischer started her career on the stage, and she's had a number of opportunities to get back to her roots. While "The Office" was starting to wind down, she worked with her husband Lee Kirk in a 2010 revival of his absurdist play, "Sad Happy Sucker." Workshopped three years earlier, Fischer put on her producer hat as her husband directed it at the Lyric Hyperion Theater. The story follows a man named Eddie who is literally stuck in his mother's back yard and the efforts taken to free him.

As "The Office" was airing its final episode in May of 2013, Fischer debuted in the off-Broadway production "Reasons to Be Happy," written by Neil LaBute. A sequel to "Reasons to Be Pretty," the play featured Fischer as Steph, a woman who hasn't gotten over her old boyfriend despite having gotten married. LaBute personally offered her the role and also directed the play, which ran for a month. As a result, Fischer wasn't able to watch the finale of "The Office" with her old castmates, but former co-star BJ Novak was in New York and came out to support her. 

In 2016, Fischer co-starred in Steve Martin's play "Meteor Shower," about a couple attending a meteor shower viewing party at another couple's house. It set a box office record at San Diego's Old Globe Theater, making nearly $1 million over its six-week run. Fischer played Corky, who has the cracks in her marriage undermined and exposed by the other party guests. 

Jenna Fischer told St. Louis arts channel HEC-TV that when she first arrived in Hollywood, she thought, "I'm a trained actor, I think I've got some natural talent. ... I'm going to make it in six months, and it was not six months. I mean, six months later, I was actually in debt, barely had a day job, didn't have an agent, had horrible head shots." She described herself as naive and wished she had a mentor who would have helped her navigate things. She needed "seasoning," adding, "You need to learn how to be on a set. You need to learn the etiquette. You need to learn how to perform for a camera. You need to learn how to endure the days which have a lot of changes."

That's why she wrote "The Actor's Life: A Survival Guide." It's not a book about learning how to act. It's a book about learning how to navigate the business of acting. Here, she points out, for example, that only 5% of Screen Actors Guild members make over $100,000 a year. The median is $52,000, and that's before agent and manager fees. Even getting to the point where you have an agent is an arduous process. Fischer also dishes out tips and advice based on her own experiences. She talks a lot about food and taking advantage of buffets and urged actors to save food for later. Just as she dishes on the behind-the-scenes information on "Office Ladies," so too does she dish on the mundane mechanics of being a working actor.

After "The Office" ended in 2013, Fischer's career slowed. And after having a second child in 2014, she was limited to guest-starring jobs. However, she landed the part of Andi Burns, the wife of Matt LeBlanc (aka Joey from "Friends"), on his show "Man with a Plan." She was hoping the CBS show would be her next long-running role. 

On the day the show was announced, she got a phone call. She said, "'It's bad news, isn't it,' and they said, 'Yeah,' And I said, 'We didn't get picked up,' and they were like, 'No, it's worse. The show got picked up; it's going to be moving forward without you.' And I was like 'I got fired?' And they're like, 'You've been fired.'" Watching it later, she realized the focus groups that said they didn't believe Pam and Joey as a couple actually might have been right.

"I watched it, and I was like, 'Oh, I thought I was charming and cute, and it was great.' But I think I saw what the focus groups saw which was, yeah, we didn't seem like a couple. We kind of seemed like two people doing good performances and they were both quite good shows, but they weren't the same show."

LeBlanc's show lasted four seasons before being canceled in 2020. Fischer was replaced by Liza Snyder, but she went on not only to have a solid two-year run on "Splitting Up Together," she also started her podcast.

When "The Office" was still in the audition process, Jenna Fischer was paired with John Krasinski as her scene partner. They quickly developed an easy chemistry, and Fischer was delighted when she learned both had nailed down their roles. And after many seasons of Jim and Pam flirting as best friends, spending time apart, and then finally getting together, they were married in the sixth season.

This was an epic event, and it was shot on location in Niagara Falls. Balancing an episode where the premise wasn't necessarily funny with the cringe humor associated with the show was a difficult task. At one point, writer Greg Daniels was pushing for Pam's ex-fiancé Roy to show up on a horse and object to the wedding. Later, when Pam would flatly turn him down, he was going to leave the horse there. Even later, Dwight would ride on the horse, and it would accidentally go over the edge of the falls.

This bizarre idea got a cold reception. Daniels said "The entire staff and actors were yelling at me: 'Don't ruin Jim and Pam's wedding with a horse!'" Instead, they substituted the Dunder-Mifflin employees recreating the viral video of a family doing a dance to Chris Brown's "Forever." The genius of the episode was that Jim and Pam had anticipated their friends interfering with their wedding with these kind of antics, so their actual ceremony was on a water-swept boat moments before.

Fischer's known for her side-eye exasperation and fairly conservative wardrobe from "The Office." Certain films, however, have seen her playing against type. In the 2007 figure-skating spoof "Blades Of Glory," Fischer plays sexpot Katie Van Waldenberg, the younger sister of the sinister skating siblings played by Amy Poehler and Will Arnett. There's a scene where she's sent to seduce Jon Heder's character in order to break up his skating duo, but she can't quite go through with it. "There's some lingerie," she later reflected. "I definitely challenged myself in ways in this movie that I think will be a stepping stone for me trying to spread my wings."

In 2007's "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," Fischer plays Darlene Madison, one of Dewey's backup singers, who eventually tempts him into cheating on his wife. Fischer wears revealing outfits showing a lot of cleavage, but the real fun is in the suggestive ways they incorporate woodworking and horseback riding into their flirtations. Fischer said playing Darlene was liberating, noting, "It got kind of cool to just flaunt it and not care, and be in the spotlight ... by the end of the movie those guys couldn't stop me. Like, I was on a roll. I was like, 'When's the next — push the boobs up higher. I can't see them enough, you guys.'"

It only lasted ten episodes, but Jenna Fischer had a compelling role in the 2015 NBC science-fiction/comedy series "You, Me and the Apocalypse." The show centers around an ensemble cast reacting to the knowledge that an asteroid will be hitting Earth in about a month, causing the end of the world. Fischer plays Rhonda, a seemingly mild-mannered librarian who's in prison. She was sent there for hacking into the NSA, but she only did it to protect her son. A hacker springs her from prison, and she becomes the sidekick to a white nationalist played by Megan Mullally. 

Fischer took the role after taking time off following the birth of her daughter. Of the show's bizarre premise, she said, "It was like how you meet somebody at a party and you have a small conversation with them and you can't stop thinking about them — I got a little crush on this show ... I get to do stunts and be in shootouts. I take someone hostage at one point. I never get asked to do stuff like that because no one wants to see Pam doing that! So it was fun."