Angela Kinsey Reveals She Wasn't in Axed “The Office ”Spinoff Because Writers Wanted Dwight to “Have a Clean Break”

On the 'Office Ladies' podcast, Kinsey said Rainn Wilson envisioned her character as the Lilith to his Frasier in the axed spin-off

Angela Kinsey says her namesake character from The Office would have been to the scrapped Dwight Schrute spin-off what Lilith was to Frasier.

On the most recent episode of Kinsey and fellow Office alumna Jenna Fischer’s re-watch podcast Office Ladies, the hosts dove into the 17th episode of the NBC sitcom’s final season. As Fischer explained, “The Farm” was originally meant to be a backdoor pilot for a spin-off show centered on Rainn Wilson’s character.

Filmed in August 2012 — prior to much of the show’s ninth season — the episode would have aired as a regular episode of The Office, but would only have featured the familiar cast in its cold open.

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The remainder of the episode would have found Dwight leaving Dunder Mifflin to deal with his extended family of oddballs on their beet farm. The planned spin-off series The Farm would have then premiered in January 2013, airing alongside the final episodes of The Office.

When NBC declined to move forward with The Farm, Fischer explained, the pilot was then recut to feature a second plotline involving recurring character Todd Packer (David Koechner) set in the Dunder Mifflin office, and the episode ultimately aired in March 2013.

Fischer also noted that The Office producer Mike Schur only makes a cameo as his recurring character Mose — Dwight’s cousin — in the episode because he was not intended to be a regular member of The Farm’s cast.

Kinsey’s character, Dwight’s spikey co-worker and long-time love interest Angela, wasn’t meant to be in the spin-off either. The actress recalled Wilson explaining the decision to her.

“He said, ‘Angela, I'd love to talk to you about The Farm.’ And I went to his trailer on my lunch break, and he said, ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘Ang, I'm gonna do this show.’"

She continued, "And he said, ‘You know, I sort of saw your character like Lilith for the Frasier spin-off, you know, where Lilith is the mother of Frasier's child, and she pops in every once in a while. But, really, the show is about this new journey that Frasier's on.’ And that's how Rainn told me he envisioned the show.”

Related: The Office's Creed Bratton Says Cast Still Has 'Bone of Contention' About Steve Carell's Emmys Loss

“They ended up wanting to have a clean break,” Kinsey continued. “That Dwight would be part of a whole new world, his family on the farm, and they really didn't want my character kind of bogging down Dwight's future. So, my character did not go to the funeral and was not included in the farm pilot.”

Still, Kinsey, Fischer and some fans all took issue with the character not being present at the funeral of Dwight’s aunt, whom Angela had helped care for in an earlier episode.

The Office Ladies explained that this seeming inconsistency had a lot to do with the cobbled-together nature of the episode, and the changes to The Office’s final season that had to be made to reintegrate Dwight into later episodes after The Farm was axed. Fischer explained, the show’s writers “had to scramble to fit Dwight back into the greater story of The Office starting in January.”

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“I think that if this episode and this story of Aunt Shirley's funeral was just an Office episode from the beginning, I think Pam and Angela would have been invited to this funeral. You would have seen more Office people at this funeral,” Fischer said.

“There was actually a lot of the first half of season 9, particularly with the character of Dwight, that was written with the idea that his character would be leaving in the middle of the season,” Fischer continued. “All of that had to be changed when The Farm didn't move forward.”

Fischer cited the season 8 finale, in which a DNA test revealed that Dwight is not the real father of Angela’s son. “That was done only because they were sort of already writing toward this idea that there was gonna be this spin off,” she said. “There was also that plot line, remember, when Dwight finds the pills and he starts taking them? He was depressed at work. All of that was going to support him leaving Dunder Mifflin.”

Fischer and Kinsey agreed that as aired, “The Farm” was ultimately a “clunky” episode, that didn’t fit well with later developments, like Dwight and Angela getting married in the series finale.

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