The Office‘s Leslie David Baker is giving back all the money for his Stanley spinoff show
Baker said he made the move "in light of the current economic situation"
Aux News Leslie David Baker
Leslie David Baker, still probably best known to comedy fans for his nine-season turn as Stanley Hudson on NBC’s The Office, has announced that he’s giving back more than $100,000 in crowdfunding money to fans who supported his efforts to make a TV spinoff based on the character. (Or, rather, on “Uncle Stan,” a character who would, from all appearances, have been more-or-less completely indistinct from Baker’s iconic Office grouch, other than trading out suits for Hawaiian shirts, and not being owned by the NBCUniversal corporation.)
Baker released a message on Instagram today, announcing that the project—which hit a “funds raised” height of more than $330,000 back in 2020—has faced a number of difficulties over the last few years, first in the form of the COVID-19 lockdowns and then, more recently, the SAG-AFTRA strike. And while Baker, in his note, writes that pre-production was moving forward, he also said that, “in light of the current economic situation,” he’s decided to refund people’s money, while also pledging to fulfill previously agreed-to perks and backer rewards.
Specifically, Baker will be sending back $110,629.81, which, he says, is the actual amount he and his fellow producers got from Kickstarter, after people lowered their pledges in the aftermath of the campaign. “The funds were never used for any purposes other than reward fulfillment and backer refunds,” Baker wrote in his Instagram post, “And have otherwise remained accounted for and untouched in the account.”
Rewards for the Kickstarter campaign included pins, T-shirts, posters, and other swag for the potential show, in addition to digital copies of the script, and getting followed on Instagram by Baker’s personal account. The campaign ultimately received support from 1,640 backers. (Meanwhile, Baker’s post made zero mention of one of his other recent ideas, Stanley Nickels, a cryptocurrency he rolled out in 2021 with fellow Uncle Stan star Sardar Khan—which does not, as far as we can tell, appear to have taken the crypto world by storm.)
40 Comments
Good guy does good thing. We need more of these stories.
eh. applaud when the money actually goes out.
that’s the spirit. douse the good flames with the usual shit takes.
Meanwhile, Baker’s post made zero mention of one of his other recent ideas, Stanley Nickels, a cryptocurrency he rolled out in 2021I dunno trying to bilk people with crypto based on a joke you didn’t even come up with seems pretty shitty. As did his attempts to spin-off Stanley, but not Stanley.
Not sure if you know his motivation was to “bilk” people. Yeah, crypto is a scam, but in 2021 it was shiny still.
ehh not for anyone who was actually in the know. The writing was on the wall so his development partner or whoever was doing the actual tech side of the coin would have known this was a pump and dump.
No, it was a scam then too. It’s been around way longer and it was always a long term grift
Have to imagine this had more to with several tweets in the past week calling him out that went viral, along with pressure from people emailing him, than any goodness of his heart:
Might you call it Some Good News?
Hey Leslie David Baker! Your Kickstarter sucks!
Boom roasted!
Stanley, you crush your wife during sex and your heart sucks. Boom, roasted.
Just do Cameo bro you don’t even need to leave your house
https://www.cameo.com/lesliedavidbaker
Idk how much someone with a career like his would charge for a short message, but he’s famous enough I would think he could pretty easily have a six-figure income just from doing Cameo messages for a couple afternoons a week.
One of the weirder things I’ve noticed lately is that minor Office characters do a lot of personal appearances at minor league baseball games. Baker does it, Brian Baumgartner does it, Kate Flannery does it, David Koechner does it. They throw out the first pitch, do meet-and-greet stuff, etc.
A lot of them are on Cameo, too. It’s not that weird. It’s still a hugely popular show, and for most of them (possibly excepting Koechner, though I’m struggling to think of anything he’s appeared in recently) they haven’t done anything bigger before or since. Gotta make a living.
Yeah, but you don’t see the cast of Cheers doing it, or Raj from the Big Bang Theory. Why the Office?
I mean Cheers isn’t that relevant pop culturally anymore, being several decades old, and I’m convinced that no one actually watches Big Bang Theory, it’s just always on in the background.
Raj made like a million per episode for a season. He’s fine. Brian Baumgartner was certainly doing well from the Office – but that kind of cash.Although he did make a million from Cameo
Because ppl still like to watch the Office, and they like the actors?
The simple answer for both is that they don’t need the money.I never watched Big Bang Theory, but evidently that actor you referred to made 18 to 20 mil PER SEASON, whereas people like Baker and Flannery made 3-4 mil on the ENTIRE SERIES.
As for Cheers: sure, it’s found a new life on streaming, but it still ended 20 years earlier, and the cast— those who aren’t dead— have gone on to Oscar noms, Emmy wins, successful sitcoms of their own, and so on (okay, except for George Wendt, who, like those Office folks, is on Cameo and does Masked Singer, et cetera).
Rememeber like a decade ago when Koechner would show up in everything
I’ve friends who own the boxed sets and will leave them on nearly 24/7 as background noise, tuning in for their favorite episodes. Others that consider the show the go to “there’s nothing on TV, oh hey there’s a rerun…” viewing.I’m not part of said crowd, but I can see the market. Between the original and the American, there’s apparently a nearly Star Trek level of fandom.
If anything, I hope this is a lesson for other Kickstarters that “If you leave the money in its own fucking account and don’t touch it, you avoid pretty much all fraud risk”. The show sounds like it was produced by… optimistic people.
Transparency. “Hey, we started development and are moving forward.” “Hey, here’s some concrete evidence that production is moving in the way we said it would.”. That sort of stuff. All you really need.
That sucks that he decided to end it. But he handled the ending of it amazingly well here. Everybody refunded, and still get rewards? wild.
I get it. It’s probably hard to let go of a character that gets you recognized and tons of social media love. And I bet he and the other secondary characters on The Office made good but not astonishing amounts of money (that show was beloved but modestly watched in its original run). And it probably REALLY hurts that the show exploded on Netflix, a platform that affords the actors little if any meaningful compensation, despite that the series accounted for the lion’s share of streaming activity on the platform. But also this idea sounded not great. Leslie David Baker is really talented, but The Office also benefited from insanely talented writers. You need both for something to work. (Not to mention most if not all Office characters would not work well in isolation.) Anyway, there’s always Camo and celeb appearances!
Yea without the Office writers and showrunners it would be awful. Stanley but not Stanley can’t carry a show alone.
I’d recently heard conversation about him and this project and frustration that he seemingly took the money and vanished. This is the only time I’ve heard of someone giving all the money back.But as an unauthorized spinoff, this thing has to be careful. It’s kind of like how, at least for its first season, Ash vs Evil Dead couldn’t mention anything from Army of Darkness.
“Hi boys n girls, I’m Stanley Spin-off and this is my show!”