How a Rejected Pilot With Natasha Lyonne Changed John Krasinski’s Life
What To Know
- In 2003, John Krasinski, Natasha Lyonne, and other future stars filmed an unaired pilot.
- The pilot was never picked up, and Krasinski worried he would never work again.
- During its filming, Krasinski made an important connection with a casting director. This connection led to Krasinski landing his breakout role in The Office.
In the wonderful world of TV land, so many pilots are made that never make it to series, and every year, countless would-be shows quietly disappear after a single episode, shelved by networks as trends shift, schedules tighten, and executives gamble on what they think audiences want. In the end, it leaves behind a graveyard of unrealized concepts and, occasionally, a few shocking near-misses that featured future stars long before anyone knew their names.
Such is the case for a show called True Originals, an unaired pilot developed in 2003, which was never picked up and later repurposed as a TV movie called Old School. In a clip shared by the Pop Culture Historian, the pilot starred Natasha Lyonne as Sara, John Krasinski as Brian, Ken Marino as Josh, a pre-Lost Jorge Garcia as Jorge, Tessie Santiago as Jennifer, the occasional Judah Friedlander as a fan of action figures, and The Big Bang Theory‘s John Ross Bowie as Teddy.
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This was before Jim ever placed a stapler in a block of Jell-O on The Office, and before Lyonne became a critical darling thanks to Orange Is the New Black and Poker Face. It was before Lost turned Garcia into a globally recognized star, and before Marino suited up for Party Down or Friedlander donned a trucker hat on 30 Rock. In the pilot, the gang is a group of comic-book-store employees and die-hard enthusiasts trying to navigate their twenties, friendship, and adulthood.
Part The Big Bang Theory, part Friends, and very much a snapshot of a moment when all of these future stars were still just one casting call away from their breakouts.
And sadly, this wasn’t it. Well, for most of the cast. As it turned out, it was a big break for one of the stars.
Almost 10 years after the pilot failed to spark interest, Krasinski talked about this work on the show with Gus Van Sant in 2012. “I had done one failed pilot. I remember when it failed, I was like, Oh my god, how does someone survive this? That’s it, that’s the end of my career, it’s over,” Krasinski said in V Magazine. “I only flew out to L.A. to do the one week of the pilot and then came right back to waiting tables.”
Ron Tom / NBC / Courtesy Everett Collection
But that pilot ended up changing the course of Krasinski’s life for the better. “When I was out here filming [that failed] pilot, I went on a couple of general meetings, and one of the meetings was with this amazing woman, Allison Jones, who has cast anything good that you’ve ever seen,” said Krasinski. “She said, ‘I really want you to look out for the thing I’m going to call you about, it’s called The Office.‘ And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ And then three weeks later, I was going in for the show, and a couple of weeks after that, I got it.”
So, because this ill-fated pilot never moved forward, Krasinski was free to nab the role of Jim Halpert, and history did the rest. And don’t worry: the rest of the cast landed on their feet just fine.
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