‘The Office’: Jenna Fischer Said Her ‘Stomach Was in Knots’ About This Intimate Jim and Pam Scene
Every fan of The Office is familiar with the moment that things first changed for Jim and Pam — when he professed his love for her in a parking lot and later surprised her with a kiss. Though Pam rejected him because she was engaged, those moments between the characters brought their flirty co-worker relationship to a whole new place.
Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski were nervous about Jim and Pam’s first kiss
In a behind-the-scenes video for Peacock, The Office stars Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski reflected on what went into bringing the storyline to the screen. Both actors admitted that the parking lot and kiss scenes were nerve-wracking.
“I got that script for ‘Casino Night’ and found out about the kiss and the ‘I love you scene,’ which is what we call that parking lot scene, about two weeks before we had to shoot it,” Fischer explained. “And I just had, my stomach was in knots.”
Krasinski shared some of the thoughts and feelings they had ahead of shooting the scene. “What people don’t realize is that Jenna and I were as nervous to do that and find out about it … like, we were dying to know how they were going to end it,” the actor shared. “We didn’t know how it was going to happen, when it was going to happen, under what circumstances and it was just really, really fun to do.”
The kiss scene provided such an intimate moment
In the behind-the-scenes video, Fischer shared how they captured the intimate scene. “They cleared everyone off the set. The cameramen were hidden. We couldn’t see them.”
Krasinski added how filming was “really wild,” adding, “It was very quiet, the lights were really dim and you felt like something intense was happening.”
Fischer explained how they shot at night and how she first saw Krasinski at the moment his character comes through the door and kisses her.
“We both were just really nervous,” Krasinski admitted.
“The whole setup was very quiet and intimate and it really felt like a stolen moment between two characters and I think that’s why it worked so well,” Fischer noted.
The director created ‘tension’ between Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski
During the July 15 Office Ladies podcast, Fischer shared more details about Jim and Pam’s first kiss, including how the actors were separated before filming the scene to create real tension between them.
Director Ken Kwapis explained some of the reasoning behind the decision to keep Fischer and Krasinski apart.
“We shot the kiss actually the night before we shot the parking lot scene,” Kwapis explained. “The reason is just a practical one — that it was the end of the week and we saved our night exterior work for Friday night.”
“So I felt like it was hard because how do you go into the kiss without having experienced that parking lot scene? How do you prepare for it?,” he continued. “And so it seemed to me that maybe having some distance between the two of you might help create, I don’t know, just this feeling that you’re kind of off-balance.”
The actors had read the scene at the table read but didn’t rehearse the parking lot scene, so shooting the kiss and ‘I love you’ scenes out of order created a challenge.
“I just remember thinking, well since we didn’t do the scene which is really kind of the turning point in their relationship — when Jim declares that he loves Pam and it upends everything, since we hadn’t done that there might be a way to just create a little tension,” Kwapis noted.
