Author: tanster

From Jenna Fischer’s TV Guide blog, dated January 12, 2006:

The Office Blog Is Back, and It’s Pam-tastic!
by Jenna Fischer, aka “Pam”

Let me start by saying that I am thrilled to be taking over this blog for B.J. Novak. If you read B.J.’s blogs, you might be disappointed when you read mine. B.J. is a professional comedy writer and I am not. B.J. is a handsome, single male who is very plugged in to what is cool-hip-interesting about life. I am a married female who likes to shop at Target and play with my dog. But I will try to give you good behind-the-scenes information and trivia to make up for it.

In this week’s episode of The Office [airing 9:30 pm/ET on NBC], “The Injury,” written by Mindy Kaling [who plays Kelly], Michael burns his foot on his George Foreman Grill. (Steve Carell’s bit at the top of this episode, where Michael explains how he burned his foot on his George Foreman Grill, is the greatest interview of the entire series. I think his performance is brilliant. Seriously, brilliant. I’ve already watched it seven times.) Dwight gets in a car crash on his way to “rescue” Michael and suffers a concussion — which goes unnoticed due to Michael’s dramatic overplay of his foot injury.

I loved shooting this episode because I got to spend a lot of time with Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight. Something you should know about shooting this show is that everyone is really, really funny in real life — especially Rainn Wilson. When you do a scene with Rainn, you have no idea what to expect, both on camera and off. When he plays Dwight he has the most off-putting ways of standing next to you. He breathes heavy. He thrusts his pelvis forward. It is all very gross and very funny. He’d probably also want me to say “sexy,” but, uh…

This episode also marks a first for the show — Jim, Pam, Michael and Dwight all appear in a scene together. We’ve done group scenes before but this is the first time the four of us have been in a scene with just one another. We all laughed harder doing this simple scene of walking Dwight to the elevator than any other time in recent memory.

One of the best things about working on this show is the fact that we are all very close in real life. John [Krasinski, Jim], Brian [Baumgartner, Kevin] and Rainn have PlayStation 2 football tournaments in our downtime. Their ranking from best to worst: 1. John, 2. Brian, and 3. Rainn. Rainn says he’s better at shooting games — that’s yet to be seen. Angela [Kinsey], Phyllis [Smith], Kate [Flannery, Meredith] and I have ladies’ lunches. We’ve run in to the paparazzi twice and both times they completely ignored us — except the one time they offered us money for inside scoops about other, more appealing celebrities. And every week the whole cast gets together in each other’s homes and we watch the show as a group. (This week it’s at Angela’s house!)

In other Officeland news, you might be excited to hear that our supporting cast members Angela, Brian, Oscar [Nunez], Phyllis, Stanley [aka Leslie David Baker] and Meredith were all made regulars starting in 2006. Go, cast!

Until next week…