‘The Office’: Jenna Fischer Attended a Real-Life Nightmare Dinner Party With a ‘Super Famous’ Actor and Fans Have Guesses About Who It Is

Jenna Fischer was a cast member in one of the most brutally hilarious episodes of The Office, “Dinner Party.” Michael (Steve Carrell) and Jan (Melora Hardin) host the dinner party from hell for their coworkers. While it was almost painfully funny to shoot the episode, Fischer said she hosted a real dinner party that was much less comical. While she wouldn’t name the co-star who made the party so uncomfortable, fans have guesses about who it could be.

Jenna Fischer described a nightmare dinner party like one out of ‘The Office’

On her Office Ladies podcast, Fischer shared stories about real-life nightmare dinner parties with co-host Angela Kinsey. Fischer said she became close with a co-star and invited him and his wife to dinner at her house to watch their project. She invited them over at 6:00, but by the time 7:00 rolled around, she and her former husband, James Gunn, still hadn’t heard from them.

“And then six o’clock rolls around and they aren’t there,” she said. “They don’t show up. Call, text, anything. Nothing. Six thirty. It’s almost seven o’clock and they haven’t shown up and James and I are like, what do we do?”

Finally, they heard from the couple, but they didn’t sound excited.

“So finally we get a text and it says ‘on way’. ‘On way,’ that’s it,” she said. “Just, that’s it, no reason, nothing, on way. Right. Finally, they show up. It’s almost eight o’clock, lady. And they don’t apologize when they arrive.”

To add insult to injury, neither of them wanted the dinner Fischer prepared for them.

“Nothing, no excuse, not sorry, no acknowledgment that this evening started two hours ago. They acted like everything was totally normal,” she said. “And then my memory is that one of us said something like, well, do you want to still eat dinner? Yeah, cause now it’s eight o’clock. They said, no, we’re good.”

Fischer said the actor later offered an excuse about problems with a babysitter, though they confirmed on the podcast that he doesn’t have children. She never saw her co-star again after the uncomfortable night.

Fans had guesses about who the actor could be

Fischer declined to name her guest because he was “super famous.” This didn’t stop fans from speculating about who it could be.

“I’m gonna guess Michael C. Hall,” one Reddit commenter wrote. “Famous, no children. She said show, she did two episodes of 6 Feet Under while she was married to James Gunn. Hall was married at the time to his first wife. And nobody from her other TV projects between 2000 and 2007 matches up with all the currently very famous guy, TV actor, no children who was also married that I can tell.”

Others pointed to the fact that because Hall was a series regular on Six Feet Under, it seemed unlikely that he’d watch an episode with a guest star. This led people to believe Chris Pine could have been the actor in question. He appeared on an episode of Six Feet Under with Fischer. 

Reddit users tossed out a number of other names, but could not reach a consensus on the actor’s identity.

Jenna Fischer said shooting the ‘Dinner Party’ episode of ‘The Office’ was a challenge

While the “Dinner Party” of The Office is awkward, the experience of filming it was pure hilarity. Cast members could hardly make it through scenes. 

“I couldn’t stop laughing when we shot the scene where Jan catches me eating,” Fischer told Rolling Stone. “It was insane.”

She said they consistently laughed until they cried while trying to film.

“There’s a scene where they’re giving us a tour of the house, and Steve explains that he sleeps on the little chaise longue at the end of the bed, and we could not get through that scene,” she said. “Every time he went to explain that that’s where he slept, the way he delivered that was so funny, and then he would, like, curl up. . . . We couldn’t get through it. The biggest one was when he’s showing us his flatscreen television. And it’s so tiny. We laughed so hard, like, tears were streaming down our faces.”

“Dinner Party” has become a fan-favorite episode of the series.