Despite being the “World’s Best Boss,” Jenna Fischer thinks The Office did just fine without Steve Carell.
The actress recently defended the NBC mockumentary sitcom’s later seasons following the departure of Carell’s foolhardy Dunder Mifflin branch manager character Michael Scott after Season 7 in 2011.
“My biggest takeaway from having rewatched it was that it’s really good the whole time,” she said on the Fly on the Wall podcast. “I think there was this lore, especially among the cast and the creatives, that maybe we hit our peak in Season 3 or Season 4.”
Fischer continued, “And also this belief that the two seasons after Steve left, we were just treading water and maybe they weren’t as good. But when I watched everything, some of my favorite episodes were in Seasons 8 and 9 after Steve had left. There were still these amazing storylines.”
Carell starred as Michael Scott from the show’s premiere in 2005 until 2011, when a rotating guest spot replaced the supervisor, featuring Will Ferrell, James Spader and Catherine Tate.
Fischer played Dunder Mifflin receptionist and struggling artist Pam Beesly for the entirety of the show’s nine-season run, which concluded in 2013.
In series creator Greg Daniels’ upcoming Peacock spin-off The Paper, the same documentary crew follows Domhnall Gleeson as the eager publisher of The Truth Teller, a struggling Toledo, Ohio newspaper, which he tries to revive with the help of volunteer reporters.
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