35 behind-the-scenes secrets about 'The Office' revealed on Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey's podcast

On the season three episode "Business School," Pam invites the entire office to come to an art show featuring her paintings. Michael comes and when he realizes that one of her paintings depicts the Dunder Mifflin office building, he decides to buy it and display it in their office.

At the end of filming the show, Fischer asked if she could have Pam's Dunder Mifflin painting, but the production department said no.

"As I was leaving, ['The Office' property master] Phil Shea ran up to me, and he said, 'Here, you should have this. I made a color photo of it, they'll never know,'" she said. "I have the original in my house."

Krasinski said later at the show's wrap party, Daniels told him that he had wanted to take the Dunder Mifflin sign home. Daniels was disappointed because it was the only prop he wanted, according to Krasinski.

"Literally, my brain exploded," Krasinski said. "[...] I lied to my dad! I lied to my TV creator! I lied to his face."

When Kinsey pointed out that she knew Krasinski had taken the sign because she saw the actor carrying the sign to his car, Krasinski appeared to admit it, saying, "I only had a bath towel [in my trailer], and that didn't even begin to cover it. [...] It was the worst heist of all time."

In season two, episode 13 ("The Secret"), Jim said that he had a crush on Pam when she first started working at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company (implying that Jim had already been working there when she was hired). However, in season four, episode three ("Launch Party"), Jim asked Pam, "Do you remember what you said to me on my first day at work, just before you walked me over to my desk?"

It turns out that there's no clear answer as to which of them joined the paper company first.

"This is just a continuity error," Fischer said while discussing the discrepancy. "That's it. I don't know who started there first. In one episode, we say one thing, and in another episode, we say another. The end!"

"The Office" had memorable episodes set at restaurants, including well-known chains Chili's and Hooters. In the season two premiere ("The Dundies"), Michael hosted the Dundies, his annual awards show for his employees, at a Chili's.

Later, on season two, episode 13 ("The Secret''), Michael took Jim to Hooter's for a "business lunch."

On "Office Ladies," Fischer and Kinsey mentioned that real-life restaurant employees and locations were used to film these scenes.

Although "The Dundies" was filmed at an out-of-business restaurant and not an actual Chili's location, real Chili's manager and franchise owner John Bossert appeared at the end of the episode, according to the podcast. His character said that Pam (who snuck drinks from other customers' tables) was not welcome at the restaurant chain "ever again."

The Hooters scenes from "The Secret" were filmed in a real (since-closed) Hooters in Burbank California. Fischer and Kinsey also noted that all of the waitresses in the episode besides Jim and Michael's main waitress, Dana (played by actress Lindsey Stoddart), were Hooters employees.

"My niece, Cece, was born about a week before we filmed the episode where Pam and Jim have their baby, and I asked if we could name their baby, Cece, after my niece," Fischer said.

The actress also shared that, coincidentally, her father's name is Jim, and her brother-in-law's name is Dwight.

One running bit on the show was Bob Vance (Robert Shafer), Phyllis' husband, regularly introducing himself as "Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration," in reference to his business.

That joke was based on Schur's real-life friend, actor Hayes MacArthur, who often introduced himself as "Hayes McArthur, Chicago, Illinois."

On the podcast, Fischer and Kinsey explained that Amy Adams appeared on three episodes of "The Office" as Katy (aka "Purse Girl"). She filmed the show in fall 2004, shortly before she received an Oscar nomination for co-starring in the movie "Junebug" in 2005.

"[Amy Adams was] who [Mindy Kaling] wanted to cast as the purse girl from her audition, but something that I think people don't realize is that Amy Adams wasn't Amy Adams when she was cast as the purse girl," Fischer said. "She became Amy Adams later."

Liberstein, who played Toby, was also a writer on "King of the Hill" at the time and participated in the Office Olympics.

"The Office" staff writer and eventual "Parks and Recreation" showrunner Michael Schur played Dwight's Amish cousin, Mose Schrute.

The character was based on a character from the 2004 TV show "Amish in the City," which followed five Amish young adults who lived with six non-Amish "city folk" in Los Angeles.

On early episodes of the show, Kelly was portrayed as quiet and is shown with muted, drab clothes and her hair in a tight bun. However, Kaling pushed for her character to wear brighter clothes, and have a bubbly personality that was more in line with her own.

"This is a long campaign that Mindy waged behind the scenes," said Greg Daniels when he appeared on the podcast. "We'd do a double-take and be like, 'Hey, what are you wearing?' And she would've slipped something in. And she kind of hijacked that character, and made it her character."

In the season two episode, "Halloween," Michael had to fire one of his employees by the end of the day because of company cutbacks. Because Daniels couldn't fire any of the principal cast, he had to choose between the show's two background actors at the time: Creed Bratton and Devon Abner.

Daniels soon found out that Abner had an upcoming theater contract and was going on tour, so he was the one to leave the show.

Because Fischer doesn't drink much in real life, Novak took her out drinking to ask her questions and observe what she was like while drunk.

"After the first two drinks, I was like, 'Oh, I just feel buzzed and a little dizzy.' I was laughing a lot," the actress said. "So that's why I had Pam do all of those ridiculous laughs in the episode."

In the season two premiere ("The Dundies"), a very drunken Pam accidentally kissed Jim on the lips, in what some fans believe was their first kiss.

The cast disagreed — Kinsey thinks that it is, but Fischer insisted that the couple's first kiss was in "Casino Night," the season two finale.

"The intention was that Pam was going for his cheek, and it was one of those moments where he moved his head in a way that I wasn't expecting and I just followed through," Fischer said. "That was what was in my head as Pam, so I wasn't thinking that I was intending to kiss his lips… Pam kind of doesn't register it."

"John said that Jim, who is not drunk, was very aware that they just kissed on the lips," she continued. "This was a whole conversation that we had off-camera."

As Michael left in his last episode as a series regular (he appeared once more in the series finale), Pam ran up to give him a hug at the airport, and they had a conversation that viewers can't hear. Fischer said that this was actually her non-scripted goodbye to Carell as he left "The Office."

"[Director] Paul Feig told me, 'just run up and say goodbye to your friend Steve,'" she said.

In the season two episode, "Christmas," Jim got Pam in the office Secret Santa and gave her a teapot with a revealing, personalized note inside — however, he stole the note back before Pam could read it.

Much later, when Pam and Jim were having marriage troubles in season nine, Jim finally gave Pam the letter. She began crying as she read it, telling the documentary crew, "Just know it was perfect." Audiences never learned what exactly Jim wrote in the teapot note, but Fischer revealed that the actual note was a message from Krasinksi to her.

"[Greg Daniels] suggested to John that he write a personal message from himself to me just saying what our time together on 'The Office' meant to him, because we were wrapping up filming," she said. "And so that was his goodbye. It was the sweetest note. I'll never say exactly what John wrote, but I will say, just know it was perfect."

When Krasinski appeared on the "Casino Night" episode of "Office Ladies," he revealed to Fischer and Kinsey that he currently owns the teapot prop.

One well-known subplot on "The Office" revolved around Angela's beloved cat, Sprinkles. In the season four premiere ("Fun Run"), Angela entrusted her then-boyfriend, Dwight, with giving Sprinkles her medication. Dwight decided to put the sick cat in Angela's freezer so that, in his mind, he could spare her from further suffering.

When Angela found out, she and Dwight broke up for a substantial amount of season four.

But long before "Fun Run," Kinsey actually invented Sprinkles while she was bored when filming the show's pilot.

"I had just made up a backstory that my character had found this cat in the parking lot," the actress said.

Greg Daniels liked Kinsey's backstory, and Fischer added that "for four seasons we discussed Sprinkles, until her untimely death in the freezer."

Viewers will likely remember the show's season two finale, "Casino Night," because it's the episode on which Jim and Pam officially kissed for the first time. However, they might not know that the episode was actually written by Carell.

The actor pitched the idea that Michael should throw a casino night to Daniels, who loved the idea for the season two finale and insisted that Carell write the episode. Around this time, Carell had recently co-written the screenplay for his new movie 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

Carell also wrote the season four episode "Survivor Man."

In the pilot, Carell improvised the line where Michael's talking about his heroes.

Daniels apparently asked the actor who he thought Michael Scott's heroes would be, and that's how they created the line, "Bob Hope. Umm, Abraham Lincoln definitely. Bono... and probably God would be the fourth one."

"I remember trying to justify, just as myself, why is Pam still engaged to Roy after three years? Because in this episode, you find out like they've been engaged for three years," Fischer said.

In the actress's backstory for the character, Roy started working at an appliance store owned by Pam's family when they were both in high school. He soon asked her out, and they began dating.

"Because he works there, the families became very meshed," Fischer continued. "So this is why and how she kind of can't get out of this relationship, even though now it's clear it's a mismatch. It's because the families are so conjoined."

She continued to highlight the red flags in their engagement when the show's props department let her choose Pam's engagement ring from Roy. Fischer chose a simpler diamond cluster as opposed to the nicer diamond solitaire ring that Jim eventually got for Pam, as "a symbol of his lack of effort and his lack of knowing her."

During season one of "The Office," Fischer's commute from Los Angeles to Culver City was over an hour. To pass the time, she listened to a mixtape she had made called "Sounds of Scranton" to get into character.

"I made a lot of assumptions and I kind of went back to my college days and I had some classic rock and a little bit of Garth Brooks but now that I'm saying it I realize that I don't really know what East Coast people listen to," she said.

Fischer later gave copies of the mixtape to Krasinski, Wilson, Carell, and Novak as a season one wrap gift.

She also wrote an in-depth essay envisioning Pam's full backstory.

Angela Kinsey met Flannery in an all-female improv group, "Bitch Planet," years before appearing on "The Office."

Kinsey was also in a sketch comedy show, "Hot Towel," with Nuñez prior to filming. Neither of them knew that the other had been cast until the first day of filming the pilot.

"I was completely surprised when I saw Oscar, and not only did I see Oscar, but Ken Kwapis sat us next to each other," said Kinsey. "So I was like, 'Oh my god, I'm going to be OK!'"

Henriette Mantel, who had just had a breakout comedy role as Alice in "The Brady Brunch" movies, played Meredith in the "Office" pilot.

When the show was picked up for a full first season six months later, Mantel was working on a different project and Kate Flannery was recast in the role.

Fischer and Odenkirk, who already knew each other at the time and were called back for the "Office" live test auditions, even rehearsed bits to do together as Pam and Michael.

"He did this very funny audition where he brought in his guitar and sang along to Pam," Fischer shared. "We had worked it all out. We were going to ask if we could do it if we were paired together [in the auditions], but we never were."

When Daniels appeared on the podcast, he added that Carell originally booked another project (the canceled TV show "Come to Papa") when they were casting "The Office," making Odenkirk their top choice to play Michael until Carell eventually became available again.

Smith was originally an aspiring actress and burlesque dancer, and when writer Ken Kwapis asked the cast to bring personal items to personalize their characters' office desks, she brought in a photo of herself in her full burlesque costume that can be seen in some shots of "The Office."

Smith was originally a casting associate who read lines with auditioning actors.

"The Office" staff writer Ken Kwapis liked Phyllis' readings during the audition process so much that he convinced showrunner Greg Daniels to give her a part on the show.

"Greg asked [the real Jim Halpert] permission to use his name. And the guy was like, 'Oh, yeah, sure,'" Fischer said. "Nine years later, it was kind of a big deal. He would call places and be like, 'I am Jim Halpert.' And they'd like, 'Yeah, OK, right.'"

Kinsey noted that she performed the scene from the first episode in which Pam is fake-fired by Michael in her audition, but the producers thought she would be a better fit for Angela.

The actress also wore her own clothes in the pilot.

When NBC initially approached the actor about the sitcom, he says they asked him to read for the part of Dwight. However, Krasinski says he had already read the pilot and thought that he might be better suited for the role of Jim.

"I said, 'You know what, I'm gonna put my best foot forward. Let me know when they're casting Jim,'" he said. "And I remember the response from the NBC casting director to my manager at the time was, 'No, but honestly, who does he think he is?'"

Luckily, several weeks later, NBC called Krasinski back and invited him to audition for Jim.

Fischer recalled meeting her costar Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute) at a "live test audition," in which several different actors being considered for principal roles performed auditioned scenes together in alternating groups.

Wilson, who was also at the audition, came in-character as Dwight, making her think that the paper salesman's personality was what the actor was like in real life.

"I thought he was the weirdest person I ever met in my life," Fischer said. "He was just Dwight."

The actress noted that she also acted rather in-character while auditioning for Pam, putting her hair in the character's signature half-up, half-down style and shyly avoiding small talk.

In one episode of "Punk'd," Novak played a driving instructor who tries to convince Hilary Duff that it's legal for her to hit pedestrians.

Novak was only 25 when he was hired as an actor and writer on the show.

"Greg Daniels saw [B.J. Novak] doing standup comedy," Fischer said. "And he thought this guy, I want this guy. So he offered B.J. a role as both a writer and the role of Ryan the temp on the show. And he was also the first example of that synergy of having people who were both performers and writers."

Many of the actors who appeared on the sitcom were also part of its writer's room — particularly Mindy Kaling (who played Kelly Kapoor), B.J. Novak (who played Ryan Howard), and Paul Lieberstein (who played Toby Flenderson), who co-wrote and starred in all nine seasons.

"[Daniels] believed that it would be a great idea for writers to have the experience of acting because it would give them a bigger appreciation of what an actor does," Fischer said. "They really got to not just understand our jobs but they got to see us being our characters first hand. They got to see our improvisations that they would never see if they were just stuck up in the writers' rooms."

"It made us a cohesive show between the two departments, the writers and actors. This creative partnership," Kinsey added. "And made me feel safe like I could try things."

Kaling and Novak both had acting experience, but this was Lieberstein's first onscreen role.

Because the American version of "The Office" was conceived with multiple seasons in mind (as opposed to the British version, which only had 13 episodes), Fischer said that Merchant recommended prioritizing Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Pam Beesly's slow-burn romance, and to make it "the heart of your show."

Fischer shared that, during a lunch meeting with Ricky Gervais while they were filming the pilot, the original "Office" star advised the cast and crew on how to make the character of Michael Scott distinguishable from his British counterpart (played by Gervais).

"He said, 'In England, you can be really, really bad at your job for a long time, and you never get fired,'" Fischer recalled. "'In America, that's gonna frustrate people. So my one piece of advice is that Michael can be a buffoon, he can be silly, he can be irritating, but you should show glimpses of him actually being a good salesperson.'"

Instead of simply characterizing the main character as a buffoon, Carell and the writers portrayed Michael as more of a sympathetic misfit.

"As awkward and cringey as he could be and really not aware of the things he said and how they affected people, they would give him one moment that was redeeming, one moment in the episode where you rooted for him or felt bad for him so that it wasn't just all like, 'Oh, that guy is such a jerk,'" Kinsey said.

The pilot's script was an adaptation of a script that the original British "Office" used.

They also filmed it in an actual office building in Culver City, California. Because the show was meant to be a documentary, this helped that angle seem more authentic.

"A lot of times on sets, they actually build the office so if they wanna film and get a certain camera angle, they can move a wall. They can move a window. They can move a door," Kinsey said. "On our show, because it was in an actual office building, you just had to work with it. And it sort of really lent itself to the documentary style that all the shots weren't going to look pretty."