Amy Adams Almost Didn't Guest on “The Office” Because She Looked Too Much Like Jenna Fischer

Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey are taking a second look back at Amy Adams’s guest appearance in the first season of The Office and revealing new details — including the fact that the future Oscar nominee almost lost out on the gig because she looked too similar to Fischer.

On the latest episode of their re-watch podcast Office Ladies, Fischer and Kinsey revisited the hit NBC sitcom’s first season finale, “Hot Girl.” The 2005 episode centers around the shenanigans that ensue when Adams’s character, Katy, shows up to the Dunder Mifflin office trying to sell knock-off purses and the show’s male characters all vie for her attention.

Fischer and Kinsey previously recapped “Hot Girl” in 2019, but on their Dec. 18 episode, they looked at the special extended “Superfan” version, currently available to stream on Peacock.

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As Fischer noted, in their original recap the duo confirmed that Adams was “Hot Girl” writer and Office star Mindy Kaling’s first pick for the role. “But what we didn't share,” Fischer revealed, “was that Amy Adams was not the first person cast in the role.”

“We originally shot ‘Hot Girl’ for an entire day with a completely different actress in the role of Katy. And unfortunately, she just wasn't quite right for the role,” she continued. “They had to let her go. We replaced her with Amy.”

“I remember when Amy came on the set, she was so seamlessly Katy,” Kinsey said. “She improvises a lot, you guys. We'll get to it. But a lot of her improvs make it in. She just knew who this woman was.”

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Fischer added that casting director Allison Jones shared that Adams, who had previously appeared in films like Drop Dead Gorgeous, Catch Me If You Can and The Wedding Date, actually was everyone’s first choice to play Katy.

“But there was this concern that Amy and I looked too similar,” Fischer explained. “I guess one of the writers even said, ‘I'm sorry. We can't cast her. She's like Jenna 2.0.’ And so they got cold feet and they cast someone else.”

One of the episode’s side plots involved the show’s male characters comparing Katy’s looks to those of Fischer’s character, Pam. When the original actress cast in the role didn’t work out and Adams was brought in, the show’s writers decided to lean in to the fact that she and Fischer looked alike. According to Fischer, Steve Carell’s line describing Katy as “Pam 6.0” in the episode is a direct reference to the behind-the-scenes “Jenna 2.0” comment.

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