LONDON  –  Jenna Fischer has finally broken her silence on leaving television roles behind. On Thursday episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s on Me podcast, she opened up about her decision to step back from television roles. The 52-year-old American actress and podcast host, who starred as Pam Beesly in the famous NBC sitcom The Office, portrayed Lena in ABC’s short-lived Splitting Up Together from 2018 to 2019, but she parted ways with television, as the roles she was being offered were no longer aligning with her life. Referring to Splitting Up Together, Fischer said she “really loved that cast so much … the hours were so intense, it was like 65, 70 hours a week.”  “It was really, really hard, and my kids were very small,” the Blades of Glory star confessed. Notably, Fisher is the mother of two children, 14-year-old son Weston Lee and 12-year-old daughter Harper Marie, whom she shares with her husband Lee Kirk. “I just decided after that that being the lead of the television show or even a regular on a television show was not going to be a fit for me anymore. So, when that show was canceled, that’s when I pivoted into podcasting,” she said.

Talking about her podcast journey, the Nimrods alum revealed that it “afforded me a lifestyle with both a steady income and also I was now at every school drop-off, every school pickup, every teacher conference, every concert.”  “I didn’t have to beg someone to go to the Halloween parade. It was like I was the agent of my own time, the architect of my own time, so to speak, and that was great,” Jenna Fischer explained.