Round this time final yr, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey have been finishing their rewatch of Season 8 of “The Workplace” — its penultimate season — for his or her podcast, “Workplace Girls.” Having performed Pam Beesly (Fischer) and Angela Martin (Kinsey) for the reason that Emmy-winning NBC comedy premiered in 2005, the 2 actors affectionately break down every episode, minute by minute, of their ritualized “Workplace Girls” format. After they began the podcast in October 2019, recapping all 201 episodes of the present appeared like an insurmountable mountain to climb. Throughout an interview at their recording studio in Hollywood, Kinsey says, “I knew we’d begin it and see it by way of.” Fischer counters: “I didn’t suppose we’d end.”
“Workplace Girls” — one of many first rewatch podcasts, a now ubiquitous format — was in style from the beginning. In Edison Analysis’s most up-to-date report on the High 50 podcasts in the USA, “Workplace Girls” seems at No. 34. Kinsey and Fischer — self-identified BFFs for the reason that early days of the collection — knew they wished to maintain going past their preliminary rewatch, however wanted to determine what the subsequent iteration of the present can be. With their contract with SiriusXM coming to an finish within the subsequent yr, they determined to discover their choices.
However it was additionally a couple of yr in the past that Fischer obtained an inconclusive mammogram, after which, after an ultrasound and a biopsy, was recognized with breast most cancers in December. Fischer revealed this information final month on Instagram, to commemorate Breast Most cancers Consciousness Month, and to inform the world what solely a small circle of individuals had recognized.
When confronted with Fischer’s analysis and therapy plan — surgical procedure, chemotherapy, radiation — the Workplace Girls had a alternative. Ought to they put the present on pause till her therapy was full? Kinsey deferred to Fischer, trusting her implicitly. “From the very starting of our friendship, she’s the kind of person who makes you wish to be your finest self,” Kinsey says. Fischer had already made up her thoughts. With the help of her husband, Lee Kirk, and their two kids — and backstopped by pals — she knew she wished to maintain engaged on “Workplace Girls.” It’s a podcast made with love, in any case.
“All of the issues that I wanted in an effort to endure this time, they have been simply already ready for me to see them,” Fischer says, choking up for the one time throughout our dialog. “A type of folks was Angela, and one other one was the podcast. I already had the job that was going to see me by way of this hardest time of my life.”
Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey of “Workplace Girls” with “The Workplace” creator Greg Daniels.
Courtesy of “Workplace Girls”
Over the course of “Workplace Girls,” Kinsey and Fischer have interviewed many of the forged of “The Workplace,” together with lots of its writers, administrators and crew. Their recaps are hyper-specific, going by way of each body — but they do meander, protecting such diverse topics because the historical past of blood transfusions and deer penis wine. (The latter was prompted by one thing Rainn Wilson’s Dwight says in a Season 6 episode: “Fish sticks aren’t an aphrodisiac. You’re considering of deer penis.”) Of their optimistic, cheerful tone, they’ve navigated episodes that aged poorly, and delivered a feminist treatise on how unfair it was that Fischer needed to return to work solely 5 weeks after having a C-section as a result of actors don’t obtain paid maternity depart. They stored listeners firm throughout the stay-at-home-days of the pandemic, simply as “The Workplace” itself was seeing an enormous surge in reputation, as folks turned to the present for consolation: Based on Nielsen, viewers streamed 57 billion minutes of “The Workplace” on Netflix in 2020, making it the service’s hottest collection that horrible yr.
They created “Workplace Girls” partly as mother and father who wished to be current for his or her school-age kids. Kinsey was getting work solely out of city, taking her from her household — “If it was in L.A., I used to be not getting it,” she says — and was in Orlando when Fischer known as her concerning the thought of doing a podcast. Fischer did have the uncommon job in Los Angeles, however was working “70 hours every week” and placing her “children to mattress over FaceTime.” What began as an experiment to see whether or not they could possibly be, in Fischer’s phrases, “the architects of their very own time” is now an enormously profitable podcast. “Workplace Girls” has amassed greater than 400 million downloads, with greater than 1,000,000 listeners following the present on Spotify — and Fischer and Kinsey printed a ebook in 2022, “The Workplace BFFs: Tales From ‘The Workplace’ From Two Greatest Associates Who Have been There.”
They take note of the numbers, in fact — at launch it was, Fischer says, “like, 10 occasions extra in style than that they had projected” — however greater than something, they really feel an obligation to please the followers. “I wish to do proper by the legacy of the present,” Kinsey says. “It means a lot to so many individuals.” She realized the podcast had caught on when folks started yelling, “Woman!” at her on the road, utilizing one among her and Fischer’s favourite phrases, as an alternative of “Save Bandit!” (from a Season 5 episode during which Dwight begins a hearth within the workplace, and Angela throws her cat right into a gap within the ceiling to attempt to rescue him).
In August, “Workplace Girls” moved from SiriusXM to Audacy. Although they’re loath to criticize their former company overseer, they’d made their displeasure clear in February when SiriusXM laid off their longtime sound engineer Sam Kieffer with out consulting them. Relating to the change, Kinsey mentions their early days on the podcasting firm Earwolf, which felt like “a small little group throughout the huge leisure trade — and I believe we have been searching for one thing that felt like that once more.” Throughout their search, Fischer and Kinsey met with Jenna Weiss-Berman, Audacy’s podcast chief, beloved her — and trusted their guts. (As soon as at Audacy, they promptly rehired Kieffer.)
Weiss-Berman was capable of supply “Workplace Girls” a wholesome minimal assure on advert gross sales (she wouldn’t say how a lot), and gave Fischer and Kinsey the “white-glove-y” steerage they sought. As soon as Weiss-Berman noticed their numbers, she was impressed: Although many podcasts have misplaced half their viewers previously yr due to a change in Apple’s iOS, “Workplace Girls” has solely grown, with its viewers “actually listening to each single episode, and listening fairly shortly,” Weiss-Berman says. She factors to the podcast’s 1.1 million Instagram followers. “The engagement is loopy,” she says. “They usually get simply these, like, stunning love letters each single day.” (The podcast’s Fb group, with greater than 72,000 members, is the one pure, variety nook on the web. As a shock for Fischer and Kinsey for the finale episodes, a bunch of 300 members — organized by Suresh Singaratnam, a musician from Toronto — put collectively their very own model of the music “All of the Faces,” which “Workplace” co-star Creed Bratton sang throughout the last moments of the collection.)
NBCUniversal by way of Getty Photos
“They might discuss something, and they might preserve the viewers that they’ve,” Weiss-Berman continues. “Persons are there to listen to them simply discuss, as a result of they’re humorous and unbelievable, and they’re true finest pals who’ve only a actually enjoyable rapport and dynamic.”
The way forward for “Workplace Girls,” which was introduced on an episode in early October, will go effectively past that, although. In what they’re calling “Workplace Girls 6.0,” Fischer and Kinsey will proceed their deep dives into “The Workplace.” Of their first “6.0” episode, which dropped final week, they interviewed Allison Jones, the casting director who assembled the present’s ensemble. They’re planning a set go to to “Workplace” creator Greg Daniels’ new iteration of the collection, unofficially titled “The Paper” and anticipated to premiere on Peacock subsequent yr. They’ll have themed episodes, in addition to character research, starting with a complete examination of Michael, who was performed by Steve Carell. “I’ve been attempting to resolve Michael Scott’s origin story,” Fischer says. “And I’m fairly positive writers from ‘The Workplace’ are sick of listening to from me. However I can’t surrender.”
They’ll even be rerunning “Workplace Girls” from the start, topping every episode with new materials. This encore run known as “Second Drink,” a reference to the Season 2 premiere, when a wasted Pam sucks melted ice from a frozen drink by way of a straw and enthusiastically pronounces it “second drink!” That they had thought of beginning the rewatch over once more, Fischer says, however then “I began relistening to the podcast, and I used to be like, ‘Woman, we didn’t miss that a lot.’”
Fischer appeared within the “Imply Ladies” film musical earlier this yr, however considers herself on hiatus from appearing. “I believe it is going to make me a greater actress sooner or later to have taken a break,” she says. Now most cancers free, she says that when her children have left the home, she and her husband wish to transfer to New York so she will do theater. As for Kinsey, she’s open to appearing alternatives that don’t take her away from her husband and their children for lengthy, and she or he filmed a Hallmark Christmas film over the summer season: “My mother is over the moon!”
They’ve come a great distance as podcasters since 2019, when Oliver Hudson, Fischer’s co-star on the short-lived ABC sitcom “Splitting Up Collectively,” urged she may wish to do one, as a result of, he mentioned, “you’re keen on sweatpants, and you’re keen on being at dwelling.”
They’re gratified by what they’ve constructed. “We transfer slowly, as a result of we’re additionally mother and father, and we have now different issues that we do,” Fischer says. “However I’m simply so extremely, deeply pleased with what we have now made collectively.”
They usually’ve come even additional than once they bonded 20 years in the past throughout manufacturing on the primary season of “The Workplace.” After a late evening of filming, whereas heading again to their trailers, Kinsey and Fischer wordlessly locked arms to carry out the opening credit of “Laverne & Shirley.” They sensed somebody behind them, and regarded again to see Carell, the present’s star. “He simply checked out us,” Kinsey says, “and smiled, and he mentioned, ‘It doesn’t matter what occurs with the present, this is what you guys will take from it.’”
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