There could have been two more seasons of The Office at NBC, says Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey
However, Fischer explains in a recent interview that the show starting feeling "sad and wrong"
Aux News The Office
In their new joint book, The Office BFFs: Tales Of The Office From Two Best Friends Who Were There, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey share that NBC offered to extend the show for two more seasons rather than end the series at season 9.
Like any normal office, there are “glory days,” or times when people feel like friends rather than coworkers, with a certain synergy that makes the job more bearable. The Office was no different.
However, so many of the original cast members had departed the series, along with writers Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak (who of course performed double duty as cast members too), Jen Celotta, Gene Stupnitsky, and Lee Eisenberg, that both Kinsey and Fischer felt continuing on the show “felt sad and wrong.”
“I mean, the idea of slowly kind of losing people,” Fischer tells Entertainment Weekly. “It just felt like, I don’t know. It just felt sad and wrong.”
“It felt wrong. It felt wrong and like it would just ruin the [Office] world to slowly make up excuses of why people are leaving,” Kinsey says. “One of the things I loved and we all got excited about was being able to know what the end was. As soon as we collectively made that decision, then we could start—the writers in particular—could start developing an end and having a story and having all the characters have their arc towards the same goal.”
Kinsey says producer Greg Daniels then allowed the cast members to help create the final arcs of their characters. “He invited us all in to meet with him, to talk about, ‘What is something we always had hoped for our character?’ or what we always hoped for the show, and we got to share with him. I mean, that was just such a gracious thing that he did.”
It’s probably for the best The Office ended when it did. There are few shows that can and should last for 9 seasons (and even fewer shows that could sustain eleven seasons). Also, not to piss off any people who are still watching The Office in 2022, but the show tanked in quality with the departure of its core cast and writing team, understandably.
The Office BFFs: Tales Of The Office From Two Best Friends Who Were There hits store shelves on May 17.