Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey came up with Office Ladies podcast after dreaming of co-hosting Today's fourth hour

The New York Times

"Rainn Wilson used to say we should have our own talk show," says Fischer. "We have dreamed for many years of one day taking over the fourth hour of The Today Show. I’m going to keep putting it out there until it’s a reality. That was what morphed into the idea of a podcast — we wanted to be storytellers and tell our stories out loud." Kinsey adds: "And we love to chitty-chat, so." In Office Ladies, which premieres today, Fischer and Kinsey revisit episodes in order of airdate. "The show’s documentary format makes it very easy to revisit one episode at a time," says Kinsey. "We’re going in order, but even if we hadn’t, you can watch almost any episode and basically know where everyone’s at. But also, The Office is just so beloved. The people listening to this podcast will have probably seen it way more times than even Jenna and I have. They have a real handle on each episode. They have very strong memories of the episodes." Will they do a podcast episode for all 201 episodes? "We’ll keep going as long as people are listening," says Fischer.

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• Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey really want an Office reunion to happen: "I want to be back in a room with them so badly," says Fischer. "We want a reunion. We’d like a reunion special. We’d been tossing around ideas, but it’s ultimately not up to us. We don’t own this show. We can want it as much as the fans do, but it’s in the hands of … I don’t even know who it’s in the hands of."
• Fischer emphasizes that Office Ladies is a podcast filtered through their eyes and friendship: "I should say, what the podcast is not is a critical evaluation of The Office, or of comedy, like you might have done by a television-critic-type person," she says. "We’re really sharing our personal stories and behind-the-scenes memories and taking questions from fans, so all of those things get weaved into the episode. Angela has become a little bit of our background expert, spotting these weird, obscure details in the background and then figuring out why they happened or what was going on."
• Here are some of The Office tidbits from the Office Ladies podcast's debut episode