Jenna Fischer is an uber-planner. "I like things like five-year plans and Excel spreadsheets," she admits to iVillage. But the pregnant actress is preparing to "expect the unexpected" when it comes to motherhood.
And The Office star, who’s expecting her first child -- a boy! -- with husband Lee Kirk (the couple married in July 2010), has had a great sounding board in best pal and iVillage celebrity blogger Angela Kinsey. "I think she’s just really excited because we’ve been best friends for so long and now we’ll have this very big thing in common that we didn’t have in common before," says the 37-year-old actress of her sitcom costar.
Fischer also welcomed the challenge of playing a "hot mess" mother of a 12-year-old son in the indie comedy-drama A Little Help (in theaters July 22), which costars Chris O’Donnell as her philandering husband who dies. "She’s your friend that is calling you every three days with some new drama that you feel like you could have anticipated with just five minutes of thought," she explains about her dental-hygienist character, who gets caught in a web of lies.
iVillage chatted recently with Fischer about why she loved -- and ultimately hated -- letting herself go for A Little Help, how she’s still in denial about Steve Carell leaving The Office and what she can’t wait for about parenthood.
What's getting you most excited about becoming a mom?
I think I’m just excited about becoming a family -- going from just being with me and my husband to being a family together. But everything about it is just so unexpected and daunting. I’ve spent a lot of time with little kids and my friends who have little kids but I think it’s just different when it’s your own, so I’m just expecting the expecting the unexpected, basically.
In A Little Help, you play the mother of a 12-year-old. Did dealing with a surly pre-teen character make you nervous at all about what’s ahead?
We shot this movie two years ago so I wasn’t relating any of my experience on this movie to my real life because my life was in a different place at that time. I will say that when I first read the script, my first thought was, “Oh, no one’s going to believe I have a 12-year-old. I’m too young to have a 12-year-old.” I actually think that my shock at believing that I could have a 12-year-old is similar to my character’s shock at believing she has a 12-year-old. So I kind of played with my lack of knowledge as a mother at the time of shooting this movie because it really fit the character.
The movie is a dramatic departure in a lot of ways for you.
I was most interested in playing this character because she was so different from me personally. I’m very thoughtful about choices I make in my life and this character is very impulsive and she never thinks beyond the moment. She lies to get herself out of trouble, which only gets her into more trouble later. I had to really let go of all of my typical ways of thinking and doing things in order to play this character. It was kind of fun to be impulsive. She’s kind of a trainwreck, she’s kind of a hot mess.
Was it liberating for you to play her?
It really was. Also, they talk about the character has kind of let herself go from the time that her husband met her. One of the things that always annoys me is when you watch these movies with these actresses who are supposed to be frumpy or not in shape, and then they wear a tank top with ripped triceps or something. I thought, “Okay, well I’m going to stop going to the gym,” and I ate a lot of pasta, and I just tried to make my body very soft. I gained about 10 to 15 lbs. for the role. That was really fun at first to not exercise, to eat pasta, to drink as much wine as I wanted with dinner. But by the end of the movie I did not feel good. When we got done shooting, I couldn’t wait to just get back into a fitness routine again. I was telling my friend that at the end of this movie I felt like I had to do the equivalent of wringing out a dirty washcloth. It was just gross.
Your pregnancy is being written into The Office. Can you give us a hint how it’s going to be worked in?
All I know is that the storyline (is) that while Jim (played by John Krasinski) and Pam might be careful at home, they snuck away in the office to have a little office hookup. During the episode titled “PDA” last year, it’s revealed that everyone’s had sex in the office except Jim and Pam. We sort of imply that they got a little frisky. It turns out that that frisky session was successful in conceiving their next baby.
Are you excited for James Spader to join the cast?
I didn’t have any scenes with him, so I haven’t had the opportunity to work with him yet. I’m actually really excited, selfishly, that he’s going to be coming back because I know that here will be some storylines that Pam has with his character going forward. I’m not allowed to reveal but they did tell me a couple things that are in store and it sounds like a lot of fun.
You’ve said in the past that you were kind of in denial about Steve Carell leaving the show.
I think it’s going to have its biggest impact when we go back to work now, because at the end of the season last year, a lot of times Steve would leave early to go do a movie. It was really common for us to do a couple of episodes without him around. I’m not sure if I’m out of my denial quite yet, (so) it will be interesting to see what that will be like. Our schedules were the same in the mornings, so I would see him a lot first thing in the morning and we would talk. I’m going to really miss our morning chat.
Last year when Steve announced that he’d be leaving the show, at iVillage we started a Facebook campaign to get Pam promoted. What do you think of that idea?
Ohhh, amazing! I don’t know if she’s a great candidate for manager right now, but it would be really neat if we could see her excel at something. I’m really hoping that at some point, she finds something that just makes her special because I think her whole life she’s really wanted that.
Serena Kappes is iVillage's Entertainment Editorial Director. Follow her on Twitter: @serenakappes
Source: http://www.ivillage.com/jenna-fischer-interview-little-help/1-a-366437
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