“The Office” writers almost had Jim cheat on Pam during Season 8, but John Krasinski refused to do it.
Krasinski recently wrote in the new book “Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of The Office” that a Season 8 script called for Krasinski’s Jim to “make out” with Cathy (Lindsey Broad), Pam’s replacement while Pam (Jenna Fischer) was on maternity leave.
- “That’s the only time I remember putting my foot down … I remember saying things that I never thought I’d say before, like, ‘I’m not going to shoot it,’” Krasinski wrote.
Per the New York Post, Krasinski wrote that the scene would push audiences too far.
- “My feeling is there is a threshold with which you can push our audience,” Krasinski wrote, according to the New York Post. “They are so dedicated. We have shown such great respect to them. But there’s a moment where if you push them too far, they’ll never come back. And I think that if you show Jim cheating, they’ll never come back.”
This isn’t the only time Jim and Pam almost faced a tough road. Writer Andy Greene explained in his book “The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s” that the writers planned to split up the couple in the show’s final season.
Per Collider, Krasinski pushed for the couple to split up at that point.
- “My whole pitch to Greg was that we’ve done so much with Jim and Pam, and now, after marriage and kids, there was a bit of a lull there, I think, for them about what they wanted to do … And I said to Greg, ‘It would be really interesting to see how that split will affect two people that you know so well.’”
The split would have happened during the middle of the season, according to writer Brent Forrester. But they would have rekindled their relationship during the series finale.
- “Greg really wanted to do something extremely risky and high-stakes, which was the documentary airs and we see what effect it has had on these characters. And there was going to be a reunion episode where you see that Jim and Pam have split up by this time, and they will have their reunion in the reunion episode,” he said, per Collider.