While filming the first season of The Office, Kate actually kept her waitressing job, unsure if the show would carry on; she got her weekday shifts covered and worked her Sunday brunch, she says. Then a customer said to her, “Hey, aren’t you lactose intolerant?” She replied, “Yeah, and thanks for not bringing up my hysterectomy!” The same year they started airing the show, 40-Year-Old Virgin came out and Steve Carrell’s star was on the rise. “We thought ‘ooh, this is gonna be big,’” she remembers. Her parents weren’t quite convinced; she says they would watch an episode and then call her and complain that she didn’t have many lines. But that never bothered her. “A lot of actors like to count lines….but I realized there’s this whole chess game going on...don’t mess it up by being an actor with a complaint!”

She recounts some of her favorite scenes, including “Michael’s Last Dundies” because it was the “first and only time you got to see Meredith’s house,” she laughs. She loves that “they never gave up on the ‘less is more’ thing.” Mike wants to know how she managed to keep a straight face during scenes, and she admits it was pretty hard to do. But when your co-stars are being so funny, you don’t want to ruin the take by laughing, she points out; “You’re part of the funny if you can keep it together.” And does she ever get sick of talking about the show, since it has such a cult following? Mike asks. Not at all, she replies: “It was such a great experience….it was hysterical, it was so smart. I’m just so proud of it.” Hear more great stuff from Kate Flannery’s career, what she’s up to now, and Jana and Mike’s best advice for marital harmony in close quarters, on this episode of Whine Down.

Daniel Suskind

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