Fun Details About Phyllis Smith From The Office

You ask any “The Office” fan, and there is a solid chance they keep the folks from the show in a special place in their heart. That couldn’t be more true about Phyllis Smith, the actor who shares a first name with her office counterpart. Of course, she became a household name thanks to her time working for Dunder Mifflin, though we also know Smith as Sadness from Disney/Pixar’s “Inside Out,” Lynn Davies in “Bad Teacher” and Betty from “The OA.” Despite her years in the business and the amount of success she has achieved, Smith seems remarkably humble, particularly when talking about roles that have fallen into her lap.

“When we were doing ‘The Office,’ there was an area backstage where they worked on hair and makeup, and I was sitting there waiting to get ready to go on, and one of the writers went, ‘I want you to audition for “Bad Teacher,”” Smith told Den of Geek. “They had me go read for the casting director, and Cameron [Diaz] came up to me in the table read, and she put her arm around me. I’d never met her before, but she said, ‘I saw the tape, and you are this person.’ Right off the bat, she told me.” This would not be the only time a job came knocking when Smith was not looking.

These fun details about Phyllis Smith’s life show that she not only has had a one-of-a-kind experience in show business, but has personality out the wazoo.

For nearly 20 years, Phyllis Smith worked in casting

Believe it or not, Phyllis Smith wasn’t always seeking auditions. Instead she was working them from the other side of the table. Before she joined Steve Carell and  company in “The Office,” Smith worked in casting for almost two decades. As she recalled to Slate, after her dance career came to an end, she happened to connect with a casting director she met on a commercial audition. Before she knew it, she was part of a casting team. (She really does have a knack for more or less stumbling upon new jobs.) “I really thought that the performing part of my life was over,” she said, clarifying that she embraced the new chapter.

And while she put in the hours as a casting associate, she picked up some skills that would come in handy down the road. “[O]ver the course of those 19 years, I literally had read with thousands of actors, because it’s nothing to have a casting session and have 100-200 people set up within a day or two, back to back,” Smith told Slate. “I was honing a craft I didn’t know I would ever use or need. But when you think about it, when you’re reading with actors on a daily basis, you can see what works and what doesn’t, are they telling the truth, do you believe them?” Smith worked in casting for shows like “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” “Spin City” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

She was supposed to be in The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Every now and again, an actor will crush an audition, land the part, and film a few scenes… only to find out that, for one reason or another, their performance did not make the final product. That is the case for Phyllis Smith. In “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” Smith acted opposite fellow “The Office” star Steve Carell. Per Slate, Smith was cast as Andy’s mom in Judd Apatow’s hit comedy, but her scenes ultimately did not leave the editing room floor. She was originally in two scenes of the film.

As Smith recalled to Slate, in one of the scenes, she showed up in one of Andy’s dreams. “I appeared as Marilyn Monroe, imitating her, and then would break out saying, ‘I’m your mother, you pervert,'” she shared. Despite the scenes not making the final version of the film, some still consider the 2005 movie to be Smith’s cinematic debut.

Smith and Carell are not the only “The Office” actors who were cast in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” The movie’s roster also includes Mindy Kaling and David Koechner.

She didn’t even audition for her Office role

Before she was cast for “The Office,” Phyllis Smith worked in casting for “The Office.” Early on in the audition stage, Smith was asked to read with some of the actors. As she recalled to Slate, she figured she was simply filling in for an actor who had not yet arrived, so she did not think much of the request. It definitely did not dawn on her that the folks in charge thought she’d be a good fit for the show. As Smith and veteran casting director Allison Jones recounted on an episode of “Off the Beat with Brian Baumgartner,” Smith didn’t fully realize she was a Dunder Mifflin employee until the wardrobe department reached out to her.

On their podcast “Office Ladies,” fellow “The Office” alumni Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey remembered reading with Smith during their auditions. Fischer shared that director Ken Kwapis was so charmed by Smith’s work in the auditions that he asked Greg Daniels to come up with a character for her for the pilot episode.

“And after the pilot was over, she went back to being a casting associate,” Fischer said. Of course, the show got picked up, and Smith left the casting department for good.