Why David Denman’s Roy Anderson Left The Office

When it comes to the types of characters an actor can play, there are few roles more thankless than the bad choice in a love triangle. The first few seasons of “The Office” focused a lot on Pam having to choose between her sweet coworker Jim and her rude fiancé Roy, but I don’t think any viewer was actually rooting for Roy there. Whereas Jim’s season 3 girlfriend Karen (Rashida Jones) has plenty of defenders in the fandom, there are far fewer essays out there arguing why Pam should’ve picked Roy instead. 

Roy’s actor, David Denman (who also starred in the very underrated “Brightburn”), always sort of knew this was how it’d work out, although NBC briefly tried to convince him otherwise. As the Hollywood Reporter explained in a 2019 profile of Denman:

“Ahead of what would be his final run, it wasn’t totally clear he’d be exiting the show. During contract negotiations ahead of season three, NBC offered the actor a rich deal that would kick in should he be asked to continue for season four. Denman’s then-agent told the actor that the writing was on the wall: NBC was offering big money for a hypothetical season four to keep him under his old contract for one more year. He’d never see that money.”

In hindsight, it seems inevitable that Roy would be written out of the show. He was characterized as kind of a jerk, someone who was rude and inattentive to Pam. He was the annoying obstacle in the way of two star-crossed lovers. But it’s easy to forget that there was a brief moment in season 3 (AKA the second-best season) where he seemed like a viable Jim alternative. In season 3 Roy had cleaned up his act and started making a genuine effort to be a good boyfriend. 

By the season’s halfway point, Pam was back with Roy and Jim seemed happy with Karen, and it wasn’t clear how this could change any time soon. As Denman put it, “We’d been leading that third season, maybe Roy and Pam will get back together.”

But then Pam tells Roy about her kiss with Jim, and Roy responds by vandalizing a bar and trying to assault Jim at the workplace. It was a moment where any hint of a Pam/Roy endgame came crashing down, and Denman knew it the moment he read the script. “All of a sudden, Roy was an idiot again,” he said. “I went, ‘Uh. We’re definitely not going to get back together.'” As he explained further:

“At that same table read, we found out ‘The Office’ has been picked up for three years. Everyone is going, ‘Oh, my God! It’s amazing!’ And I turned to [showrunner] Greg [Daniels] and I go, ‘I’m not going to be on this, am I?’ And he goes, ‘No. It’s not you. Honestly. I need to get Romeo and Juliet together, and I can’t really do that with you lurking around.'”

Understandably, the show wanted Roy out of the picture. After all, they’d go on to do the same thing with Karen in the season 4 premiere, which quickly established that Karen had quit her job at the Scranton branch right after Jim broke up with her. Season 4 was Jim and Pam’s honeymoon period, where their young love seemed as wholesome and carefree as it ever would; having Roy or Karen stick around would’ve killed the vibes. 

Luckily, Roy would return to “The Office” for the occasional one-episode storyline, most of which established him as being in a more stable place from when we last left him. In his season 5 appearance he seemed to be mostly over his relationship with Pam, and in the season 9 episode “Roy’s Wedding” he inexplicably seemed to be thriving. He’d become a sensitive, successful, piano-playing man; after the first three seasons implied that Roy’s presence was holding Pam back, season 9 suddenly raised the idea that maybe Pam was holding Roy back too.

“I found out a lot of the times I came back, [John] Krasinski was fighting to have Roy come around,” Denman explained. “He wanted to mix up things, create more tension and more conflict and stuff.” Sure enough, “Roy’s Wedding” is one of the tenser later-season episodes of the show, one that really seems to be foreshadowing the demise of Jim and Pam’s marriage. Roy may no longer have been the obstacle getting in the way of Jim and Pam’s romance, but he could still cause trouble for them six years down the road.