‘The Office’ Intended to Make a Famous Athlete the Father of Jan’s Baby

If you’re a fan of The Office, you should be listening to the Office Ladies podcast hosted by the series stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, who played Pam Beesley and Angela Martin throughout the entire run of the show. Every episode divulges some interesting stories from behind the scenes, revealing fascinating trivia and details about the show that we never knew. For example, this week’s new episode revealed who the series almost named as the father of Jan Levinson’s baby in the show’s fourth season.

The May 5 episode of Office Ladies (via Nerdist) focuses on “Goodbye Tobey,” the fourth season finale. Aside from Dunder-Mifflin sending off the despised human resources employee Tobey Flenderson (Paul Lieberstein) and introducing Michael’s love interest Holly Flax, the episode reveals that Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin) is pregnant with a baby that was conceived through artificial insemination. However, the episode never provides any details about the identity of the donor/father of the child. But now that information has been revealed.

Though it would have made more sense for Jan to have gotten pregnant after helping her assistant Hunter become a man (that one night!), instead the writers came up with the idea that the father of Jan’s baby was Andy Roddick. That’s right, former tennis champion Andy Roddick was written as the father of Jan’s baby, and she had to pay top dollar for his little swimmers. Angela Kinsey explained Michael’s unimpressed reaction on the podcast. She recalled:

“Michael says, ‘The tennis player?’ And Jan says, ‘Well, it’s a little more than that. He’s the sixth-ranked player in the world and he’s won four Grand Slams.’ And Michael says, ‘That’s a lot of Grand Slams, I guess.’ And Jan says, ‘And he’s a humanitarian — something with orphans.’ And Michael is quiet and Jan goes, ‘Michael?’ And Michael says, ‘Can I just sit here for a minute without more things coming into my head?”

Why Andy Roddick? Apparently The Office co-star Rainn Wilson is friends with the tennis champ in real life, and the writers thought it would be an amusing nod to have in the series, even if it makes an already flimsy ongoing arc even more ridiculous. Thankfully, the additional details is not included in the final cut of the episode. In fact, you won’t even see this in the deleted scenes, because it didn’t make it in front of the camera, because the writers were smart enough to cut it before shooting.

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