‘The Office’: Why John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer Cried the First Time They Saw Jim and Pam’s Wedding Episode
Fans of The Office cried when Jim and Pam got married in the season 6 two-part episode “Niagara.” It turns out that John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer, who played the roles, were moved to tears the first time they saw the genius way their private wedding and church ceremony were edited together.
Putting the Jim and Pam wedding elements together was challenging
With these two different elements of Jim and Pam’s wedding, there were decisions to be made about how to perfectly feature both in the episode. During the August 18 episode of An Oral History of the Office podcast, host Brian Baumgartner spoke with the director and editor about how they found the perfect solution that showed everyone dancing down the aisle in the church as well as Jim and Pam’s secret romantic wedding on the Maid of the Mist boat.
Director Paul Feig explained how he and editor Claire Scanlon made it work so perfectly. “It wasn’t until we got in the editing room… when we decided we were going to intermix the dance number with the wedding… and we just burst into tears,” Feig explained.
“I still get so emotional watching that because it’s so beautiful the way that it goes back and forth between the two,” he added.
The editing was so moving, it made John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer cry
Baumgartner explained how “Claire was the perfect person to edit this episode” because of her reality show and documentary experience.
“This was very much like cutting a documentary because they didn’t speak,” Scanlon explained. “So there’s the last scene of ‘Niagara’ where Jim and Pam are on the bow of the boat and he puts his arm around her and he looks right into the camera and he just like… it’s not even like cocky… it’s just like sweet, like ‘I got her.’”
“And John and Jenna came into my bay to see it,” she continued. “They were like, ‘We need to see the show, we need to sign off on this big one.’ And after that, I like turned around and they’re bawling.”
Scanlon added, “That’s all you want to do, is make people cry. For the poignant moments, all you want is to make people cry. It was awesome… it was really a sweet moment to be a part of in their journey and just almost just be a witness to it.”
John Krasinski was really sick during the filming
Krasinski shared another behind-the-scenes secret of filming the wedding episode — he couldn’t actually kiss Fischer because he was sick with the flu.
“I was like, ‘I can’t walk, I’m so sick,’” Krasinski explained of his health during filming. “And so, one of the most romantic moments in the show, I’m not actually kissing Jenna. I’m kissing her cheek because I didn’t want to get her sick.”
He added, “That’s why I did kind of like a big, like Humphrey Bogart like twist-kiss away from the camera.”
Baumgartner thought that Krasinski could have taken a risk for the episode, noting, “I think for that moment, you should have just gotten her sick.”
“Well that’s… that’s an awful thing,” Krasinski responded.
