Rashida Jones says being let go from ‘The Office’ ‘made sense’

Rashida Jones was on The Office for a good time, not a long time. But it maybe wasn’t even a good time, either.

On Tuesday’s episode of the Good Hang podcast, Jones reflected on her brief stint on The Office as Karen Filippelli, an employee of the rival Dunder Mifflin Stamford branch and also rival to Jenna Fischer’s Pam for the affection of John Krasinski’s Jim. “I had done a year on The Office and they let me go, which made sense. It made sense,” Jones told host Amy Poehler, who would go on to costar with Jones on Parks and Recreation for seven years.

“You had such a tough job there, because everybody wanted Jim and Pam, and then guess who shows up? A very likable, cool… and everyone was like, ‘Oh no, wait,” Poehler responded, attempting to bolster Jones critical estimation of her own time on the NBC sitcom.

“It did not feel that way,” Jones quickly cut in. “People did not like me. Like, fans were not about it.”

Karen first appears on the debut episode of the Office‘s third season. Jim has just transferred from the show’s central location, the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch, to the Stamford branch. Anxious to fit in, Jim is relieved when Karen playfully roasts his habit of staring at the camera. The pair’s evident feelings for each other develop into a relationship that nearly takes off, until Jim unceremoniously dumps her in the season’s final episode.

Jones understands now that her character functioned to “create tension for the relationship” between Jim and Pam “to be earned later.”

“So I was the third point in the triangle. It’s fine. I accept it,” she said.

Jones returned as Karen for two episodes of season 4, one episode of season 5, and made a final cameo appearance on the season 7 episode “Threat Level Midnight.” By the time that episode aired in 2011, Parks and Rec was already in its third season.

Parks star Jim O’Heir discussed the fact in his 2024 memoir Welcome to Pawnee that The Office creator Greg Daniels initially conceived of the show that would become Parks as an Office spinoff tentatively titled The Stamford Branch. Jones would have been the link between the series.

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Poehler revealed on Good Hang that when she and Jones, whose friendship precedes both series, learned they were both approached about the potential spinoff, “We both were worried that we had taken each other’s part.” When Poehler was eventually offered the lead role, Jones remembered that Poehler asked her to lunch and said, “‘I’m so sorry, they offered me the part.’ Both of us thinking it was the same part I was on hold for, being created by a friend of ours.”

The confusion was quickly cleared up, and heartbreak averted when Jones was offered the part of Ann, allowing the off screen best friends to play on screen best friends for years to come.

You can watch the rest of Poehler’s interview with Jones on the Good Hang podcast above.