Jenna Fischer thinks The Office has always been a hit — with or without Steve Carell.
During a Wednesday appearance on Fly on the Wall, Fischer shared her “biggest takeaway” after doing a full rewatch of the beloved mockumentary sitcom on her Office Ladies podcast. Despite a “belief” that the show was “just treading water” after Carell left the series in 2011, Fischer thinks the show was “really good” during its full nine-season tenure.
“It’s really good the whole time,” she said, adding that there was “this belief that the two seasons after Steve left, we were just treading water and maybe they weren’t as good.”
Fischer, too, pointed out that there was “this lore, especially among the cast and the creatives, that maybe we hit our peak in season three or season four” long before Carell exited the series.
After doing a complete rewatch, the Mean Girls actor admitted that “some of my favorite episodes were in seasons eight and nine after Steve had left,” adding that the show “still [had] these amazing storylines” despite the Despicable Me star’s departure.
The Office aired its final episode in 2013 after debuting almost a decade earlier in 2005. After much speculation of a potential reboot of sorts, Peacock announced an official series order for the follow-up in May 2024.
The Paper is set to arrive via the streamer in September of this year. The series will notably spotlight Oscar Nuñez, who is reprising his role of Oscar Martinez from the OG Office. While Nuñez is set to return to the follow-up, Carell told The Hollywood Reporter he will not be making an appearance on The Paper.
“I will be watching but I will not be showing up. It’s just a new thing and there’s really no reason for my character [Michael Scott] to show up in something like that,” he said. “But I’m excited about it, it sounds like a great conceit. I love the idea — I guess it’s set in a failing newspaper company, and I worked with Domhnall Gleeson, who is one of the leads; I did [2022 series] The Patient with him and he’s an excellent actor and a super nice guy so I think it’ll be great.”
Like Carell noted, instead of centering around the Dunder Mifflin paper company, The Paper will follow the staff of a struggling newspaper based in Toledo, Ohio.
“It’s about this struggling Midwestern newspaper that’s much reduced from its glory days,” former Office showrunner, Greg Daniels, said at NBCUniversal’s recent upfront presentation. “A lot of the story lines are about how this guy, Domhnall Gleeson’s character, is trying to restore this paper, and he just doesn’t have the budget for hiring reporters, and he has to use all the staff that work there on a volunteer basis to be reporters. They’re completely untrained and don’t know what they’re doing.”
