The Office’s Jenna Fischer reveals Jim’s proposal to Pam was most expensive scene in the series
Jenna Fischer has revealed that the most expensive scene in all of The Office was Jim Halpert’s gas station proposal to Pam Beesly.
The actor, who portrayed Pam throughout the sitcom’s nine seasons, discussed the scene in the latest episode of the podcast Office Ladies, which she co-hosts with Angela Kinsey (her former co-star, who portrayed Angela Martin on the show).
Jim proposes to Pam in the season five premiere, “Weight Loss”. The unexpected moment comes as the pair meet at a gas station between New York City, where Pam is completing a graphic design class, and Scranton, where Jim still works at Dunder Mifflin.
The scene is pretty simple in appearance, with Jim kneeling down in front of the rest stop under pouring rain. But according to Fischer, the production costs were much higher than one might expect after watching the clip.
“In the end, this was the single most expensive scene ever shot during the entire run of the show,” Fischer told Kinsey on the podcast. “It lasts 52 seconds, and it cost $250,000 (£176,242).”
Both actors discussed the production of the scene in more detail. The scene, it turns out, required a custom set, fake rain, drivers, and some work in post-production.
“We did not actually fly to this location. This is the insane part. They built this in the parking lot of a Best Buy that I have been to many times, actually,” Fischer said. “What they did was they used Google Street View to capture images of a real gas station along the Merritt Parkway, and then using those images, they built it to match in this parking lot. It took them about nine days to build it.”
According to Fischer, the show’s team “built a four-lane circular racetrack around the gas station set” in order to create the illusion of highway traffic around Jim and Pam.
“They set up cameras on the other side of this raceway and they had cars drive around it at 55 miles an hour,” she said. “Then they added rain pouring down on us, these giant rain machines.
“Our production manager, Randy Cordray, said they had about 35 precision drivers. They were driving not just cars, but like semi trucks. When we were standing there on that set, you could feel the wind like of these cars speeding past you. It was so, so bonkers.”
Since the scene was shot in California, as opposed to the East Coast, where Jim and Pam are supposed to be, the team had to “hire a special effects company to paint out the background,” replacing the real-life California mountains with some East Coast trees.
Office Ladies is available online.
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