Why Jenna Fischer fought to cut a storyline from the ‘Mafia’ episode of ‘The Office’

The series finale of The Office was an absolute tearjerker, but the show’s final moments might not have been as sweet had Jenna Fischer not fought to cut a controversial storyline from Season 6.

The last five minutes of the series finale include a montage of Dunder Mifflin employees leaving the office, saying farewell to each other, and recording their final talking heads with the documentary crew. In a particularly touching moment, Pam removes her famous watercolor painting of their office building from the wall. We later see a flashback to the Season 3 scene in which Michael proudly hangs the painting, which he bought from Pam’s art show. Pam says, “There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point?” and the show masterfully transitions from the watercolor painting of the building to an image of the actual building. And then it’s over.

OK! Now that we’re all crying, let’s find out what deleted Season 6 storyline would have completely changed the end of the series, shall we? On the latest episode of the Office Ladies podcast, former co-stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey chatted all about the Season 6 episode, “Mafia,” and called out a deleted scene involving Pam’s sentimental watercolor painting that Fischer fought hard to get cut.

“Erin was supposed to be cleaning Pam’s watercolor, her famous watercolor that Michael bought from her art show. She sprays the glass with this cleaner, and then Creed kind of distracts her by chatting her up, and the spray seeps under the glass and the watercolor is ruined,” Fischer explained. “Erin destroys Pam’s watercolor while she’s on her honeymoon was the storyline.”

“If you watch the deleted scenes, you watch it melt. Like all the colors slide down to the bottom of the frame,” Kinsey said. “And I literally [gasped]. Like, I forgot it was in the story at one point.”

(You can watch part of the painful watercolor destruction scene here.)

Fischer said that in another watercolor-related deleted scene, Erin asked Kelly to help her save the painting. As you can imagine, that didn’t go well.

“There’s another deleted scene where [Erin] asks Kelly to help her fix it, and Kelly is like, ‘Oh yeah, I can do watercolor.’ But what Kelly does is she like adds a rainbow and a sunshine. But the painting is still totally melty. And then in the end, Erin calls Pam on her honeymoon and says she ruined it. And Pam has this line where she says, ‘You know what? I will be mad at you about ruining my painting when I get back. Stop calling me. Tell people to stop calling us,'” Fischer recalled.

Fischer went on to explain that during the table read for this episode she felt outraged when she first read the watercolor scenes. She decided to speak up, and after her concerns were shot down, she didn’t give up the fight.

“I was like, ‘Listen, you cannot destroy Pam’s painting. You can’t do it. It’s the heartbeat of the show. It’s on the wall. It’s her relationship with Michael. It’s hope. It’s so many things you don’t understand. You can’t make this a gag,'” Fischer said. “And Paul Lieberstein was like, ‘I think it’s funny. What are you talking about?’ And it was a battle.'”

“It’s the heartbeat of the show. It’s on the wall. It’s her relationship with Michael. It’s hope.”

After Lieberstein rejected the cut, Fischer called showrunner Greg Daniels, who also shot her request down.

“They were like, ‘I’m sorry, it’s staying in. We really like this gag. We think it’s great. We like it,'” she said. But she wasn’t ready to give up.

After they fully shot the scene, Fischer went into the edit bay and asked everyone there to remove the scene.

“I appealed to [editor] Dave Rogers. I appealed to [writer and producer] Brent Forrester. I would not shut up about it,” she said. “Finally, in the end, they took it out. They took it out, and I was so relieved. But you’ll see next week Pam’s watercolor [isn’t] on the wall because that was the week they were editing and still deciding. So if you look, Pam’s watercolor is missing for a couple of episodes and we just sneakily put it back on the wall without saying anything.” 

“I would not shut up about it. Finally, in the end, they took it out.”

Fischer and Kinsey acknowledged that the entire series ends on Pam’s watercolor painting, and they can’t imagine it ending any other way. For those wondering if Fischer brought up her heroic Season 6 efforts after the series ended, of course she did. As she should have!

“You better believe that I marched right up to Paul Lieberstein when I read that ending of the finale and I was like, ‘Paul, do you see now why Erin couldn’t destroy the watercolor? Do you see?'” she said. “There were two things in the series that I fought hard for. I would consistently fight that there be no infidelity in Jim and Pam’s relationship… And this was the other thing. Don’t destroy the painting.”

Be sure to listen to the full podcast episode for behind-the-scenes stories about filming “Mafia” and those deleted watercolor scenes. But before you go, we’ll leave you with one final intriguing tidbit.

Fischer says that at 20:49 in “Mafia” you can see proof of the deleted watercolor scene over Michael’s shoulder.

“As he’s bragging to the bullpen about standing up to this mobster, you can see that there is a replacement painting on the wall where Pam’s watercolor would have been. It says, ‘Being Cleaned,’ and it has stars and smiley faces all around it,” she said. “This is something that Erin put up on the wall. Now, in the next episode, that’s going to be replaced with something else. But we’ll get to it.”

You can stream episodes of The Office on Peacock and follow along with the podcast every week on Earwolf, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.