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Jenna Fischer has opened up about why she decided to step back from television acting after years of success on The Office and later Splitting Up Together.
On the Dinner's on Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson podcast, Fischer recalled the workload on Splitting Up Together as overwhelming.
"I really loved that cast so much, but the hours were so intense. It was like 65, 70 hours a week," she said. "It was really, really hard, and my kids were very small."
When the ABC sitcom was canceled in 2019 after two seasons, Fischer realized the demands of leading a show no longer fit her life. "I just decided after that that being, like, the lead of a television show or even a regular on a television show was not going to be a fit for me anymore," she explained.
Instead, she pivoted to podcasting with her former Office co-star and close friend Angela Kinsey. Together they launched Office Ladies, a rewatch podcast revisiting every episode of the NBC hit. Fischer said the new path gave her both stability and freedom.
"That afforded me a lifestyle with both a steady income and also, I was now at every school drop-off, every school pick-up, every teacher conference, every concert. I didn't have to beg someone to go to the Halloween parade. I was the agent of my own time, and that was great."
The shift also changed how her children saw her career. "Because they were so little when that change happened, they thought of me as a podcaster. Like, if anybody asked them, 'What does your mom do?' They [would say], 'Oh, she's a podcaster. She has a podcast.' They didn't even understand what my podcast was about."
Now in its sixth season, Office Ladies has kept Fischer and Kinsey connected.
For Fischer, the decision to leave acting wasn't about walking away from creativity but about reshaping her career to fit her life. "I was the agent of my own time," she said.
