It’s impossible to fit every starring role an Office cast member has played in a high-quality series before, during or after the landmark sitcom’s run in a list with just 10 spots. Some honorable mentions that haven’t made the cut include Kelly Kapoor actor Mindy Kaling’s main character in her eponymous romcom show The Mindy Project, Jenna Fischer’s turn in the miniseries You, Me and the Apocalypse following her time as The Office’s Pam Beesley, and Amy Ryan’s brilliant recurring role in Only Murders in the Building.
1. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show has become one of American TV’s primary comedic institutions during its 29-year run. Alongside Saturday Night Live, the satirical news show has produced some of the country’s greatest comic talent, the most celebrated of which are Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and Samantha Bee.
Daily Show correspondent Matt Walsh went on to co-star in Parks and Recreation, another sitcom created by Greg Daniels, the developer and showrunner of the American Office.
The Daily Show can also take a lot of credit for honing the comic chops of some of The Office’s biggest stars. Michael Scott actor Steve Carell appeared as a correspondent on The Daily Show from the beginning of Jon Stewart’s run as host in 1999, alongside his future wife and Office co-star, Nancy Walls. Meanwhile, Ed Helms joined The Daily Show’s team of correspondents in 2002, four years before he first appeared in The Office as Andy Bernard.
2. Monk
Melora Hardin is an example of an actor who was already established and successful before she joined the cast of The Office. A year prior to her debut on the show as Michael Scott’s line manager and love interest Jan Levinson, Hardin already had a role in the acclaimed police procedural drama Monk.
Melora Hardin as Trudy Monk in Mr. Monk’s Last Case
Between seasons 3 and 8 of Monk, the actor played eponymous hero Adrian Monk’s wife Trudy, whose unsolved murder haunts the detective throughout the series. Hardin’s role in Monk ended the same year that she left the regular cast of The Office, in 2009, with Tony Shalhoub, who played Adrian Monk, receiving rave reviews for his performance in the show’s two-part finale.
3. The Wire
Although Amy Ryan’s performance as depraved killer Jan Bellows in Only Murders in the Building is hilariously unhinged, the role she’ll always be remembered for came years before her portrayal of Holly Flax in The Office. Ryan stars as police detail Beadie Russell in HBO’s landmark crime series The Wire, which features another of the sitcom’s cast as one of its lead performers.
Idris Elba’s portrayal of Bell, a ruthless drug lord who exudes quiet power, is one of the main reasons for The Wire’s overwhelming success.
Idris Elba was already known for playing The Wire’s gang leader Stringer Bell by the time he briefly joined The Office’s cast as Michael Scott’s nemesis Charles Miner in the show’s fifth season. Elba’s portrayal of Bell, a ruthless drug lord who exudes quiet power, is one of the main reasons for The Wire’s overwhelming success. The series is now remembered as one of when it arrived on Fox in 2013. Both shows are set in seemingly mundane and bureaucratic workplaces, only Brooklyn Nine-Nine has the added element of action sequences involving the police officers whose lives it follows. The sitcom is fronted by Andy Samberg’s character Jake Peralta, a talented but lazy and ill-disciplined police detective who manages to involve his reluctant colleagues in various hijinks.
While not a regular cast member, Office actor Craig Robinson appeared in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, making repeat guest appearances across several seasons. He plays one of Jake Peralta’s main nemeses, the “Pontiac bandit”, a criminal obsessed with stealing Pontiac cars. It’s worth noting that several other cast members of The Office make cameo appearances in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, including Ed Helms, Oscar Nunez, and Meredith Palmer actor Kate Flannery.
5. The Blacklist
The Office had a major void to fill when Steve Carell left the show during its seventh season, so its showrunners called on Hollywood A-lister to provide a fresh spark. He did so in the form of Robert California, an enigmatic and somewhat sinister CEO characteristic of Spader’s cinematic roles. As soon as he was done playing California, Spader began his next major TV role as FBI informant Raymond “Red” Reddington in crime thriller series The Blacklist.
James Spader hasn’t played a major role in any movie or TV show since starring in The Office and The Blacklist.
Reddington’s hunt for fellow criminals on the FBI’s most wanted list gradually picked up a head of steam with each new season of The Blacklist. By its final episodes, the series was one of the most acclaimed shows on television and a major global streaming hit for Netflix.
6. Mom
Another show that grew in stature during its lengthy stint on TV was the CBS sitcom Mom, which starred The Office’s Rainn Wilson. For many fans, it will be difficult to imagine Wilson playing any character other than The Office’s inimitable “assistant to the regional manager” Dwight Schrute. However, Wilson excelled as Trevor Wells, the downtrodden therapist in Mom’s final three seasons, who helps one of the show’s protagonists, Bonnie Plunkett, cope with her mental health condition.
Mom is a sitcom fundamentally about the relationship between Bonnie and her daughter, Christy, who decide to return to each other’s lives after years of estrangement and work through their addictions together. Anna Faris and Alison Fanney are superb in the show’s main roles, turning a dark and difficult theme into a funny, warm and compassionate look at the importance of family.
7. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
One of the biggest shows to feature a former Office actor in its lead role, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt has Erin Hannon actor Ellie Kemper in its title role as a former cult member recovering from her traumas in New York. The show feels as though it was made for Kemper, who adapts Erin’s sunny sincerity and emotional naivety to Kimmy Schmidt’s life situation as though the two are kindred spirits.
Actors Will Arnett and Rob Huebel have also appeared in both The Office and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt in brief cameo roles.
With 30 Rock’s Tina Fey and Robert Carlock at its helm and Jon Hamm as its ghoulish villain, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt went from strength to strength across its four seasons. It’s one of the post-Office sitcoms that’s truest to the spirit of the show which provided its lead actor.
8. The OA
Out of all the actors to have established themselves via their part in The Office, Phyllis Smith was hardly the most likely to follow up her sitcom role with one of the best mystery TV shows of all time. Yet that’s exactly what happened in 2016, when the actor, who plays Phyllis Vance in The Office, became a main cast member of The OA.
The OA follows the story of Prairie Johnson, a girl who was missing for seven years before showing up with mysterious scars on her body. She refuses to reveal what’s happened to her, except to a few close confidantes, one of whom is Phyllis Smith’s character, school teacher Betty Broderick-Allen. It feels like the progeny of David Lynch’s crime horror TV show, Twin Peaks, blending fantasy and realism, the banal and the surreal, with the kind of narrative dexterity that Lynch himself would have been proud of.
9. Mr. Iglesias
Following his bow as The Office’s accountant Oscar Martinez, Oscar Nunez found another sitcom role right up his street in 2019, playing Carlos Hernandez in Mr. Iglesias. The show is an old-fashioned high-school comedy except with the roles cleverly reversed, as its story centers on the bad behavior of teachers like protagonist Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias, rather than their students.
Nunez portrays one of Gabriel’s chief antagonists, the uptight assistant principal of the school where he works. This is another great example of the glove fitting perfectly for an actor’s former role in The Office, as it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Oscar Martinez turning into Carlos Hernandez in later life.
10. Never Have I Ever
Co-created by Kelly Kapoor Actor Mindy Kaling, & Guest-Starring Angela Kinsey, Who Plays The Office’s Angela Martin
Never Have I Ever is one of the biggest sitcom successes of the past five years, thanks to its warts-and-all portrayal of high school life from an Indian-American perspective, and its sparkling performances across the board. The show is the brainchild of Office actor Mindy Kaling, who based its story on her own adolescent experiences, alongside co-creator Lang Fisher.
Devi Vishwakumar got the happy ending she deserved in Never Have I Ever and the landscape of American TV comedy would never be the same again.
The sitcom features a sublime cameo from another star of The Office, Angela Kinsey, who plays Ben Gross’ moronically pretentious and painfully uncaring mother, Vivian, in its first season. Three years later, Devi Vishwakumar got the happy ending she deserved in Never Have I Ever, and the landscape of American TV comedy would never be the same again.
