Wendi McLendon-Covey was only on The Office for one episode but it was a memorable experience, nonetheless.
The 55-year-old actress starred as a fleeting love interest for Steve Carell in a season 5 episode of the hit sitcom, and she’s lifting the lid on what it was like to work on the show.
During a segment on Watch What Happens Live on Nov. 14, McLendon-Covey was asked to describe several of her previous costars. When Carell, 62, was mentioned, she admitted he’s a “good kisser.”
Andy Cohen then asked when she’d worked with him, and she recalled playing “concierge Marie” on The Office in 2008. Her character was a fleeting love interest of Carell’s Michael Scott after his devastating breakup with Holly Flax (Amy Ryan).
“It was a one-off…and it was after I was fired from another job for being too ‘ugly.’ I flew home and there was an offer for me to be on The Office the next day,” she said. “And it was like, ‘Gee, I think I just fell in a pile of blessings.'”
She said “no one ever saw” the other job she was fired from, and even when Cohen pushed her to name it, she said, “You would never have known what it was — and it ruined careers.”
Wendi McLendon-Covey, Steve Carell kiss on ‘The Office’.
NBC
McLendon-Covey is now starring in St. Denis Medical, a new NBC workplace mockumentary series that is already reminding fans of The Office.
She told PEOPLE earlier this month that she’s “never played a person like Joyce,” her character on the show, who is the executive director of the hospital.
“I love Joyce. She’s a bit of a mess,” the actress said of the “former oncologist,” who is now “a hospital administrator, which means she works her butt off more than 40 hours a week trying to drum up funds.”
“She’s in constant fundraising mode, and she’s just bubbling under the surface. She’s going to explode at some point, and so I love playing people like that who are trying to hide their real emotions.”
Wendi McLendon-Covey as Joyce in ‘St. Denis Medical’.
Ron Batzdorff/NBC
It was a hard transition, though, after she spent 10 years on The Goldbergs, which wrapped up just as she was coming onboard to St. Denis Medical.
“It was so hard because while I was in negotiations for this and filming this pilot, I was also on a goodbye tour of shutting down The Goldbergs, and that was heartbreaking for me,” she said of the series’ end in May 2023. “I loved that show. I loved all those people, and it did feel really, really strange.”
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The Office can be streamed in full on Peacock, and St. Denis Medical airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
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