Jenna Fischer got to 'see the world' in show where it's ending

If working on NBC's The Office taught Jenna Fischer anything, it's that she needed to get out more.

"I spent 10 years sitting at the same desk, in the same office, on the same soundstage. So I said, 'With my next project, I'd like to get out a little bit, see the world,'" said Fischer in an interview during an NBC party this month.

"So when the opportunity came to live in London for six months," playing an unlikely cyber-terrorist on the run from authorities in You, Me and the Apocalypse, Fischer leapt at the chance to be part of the dramedy about the end of the world.

The schedule was so family-friendly, said the actress, who has a 4-year-old son and 19-month-old daughter with husband Lee Kirk, that "I worked one or two days a week and I would have weeks off at a time." That was enough to allow visits to Paris, Florence, Italy, and Bath, England.

That the show, which premieres Thursday on NBC, also stars Rob Lowe (The Grinder, Parks and Recreation) and Megan Mullally (Will & Grace), and ended up on a network where all three worked before is "just a really weird coincidence," Fischer said.

You, Me and the Apocalypse, made for Britain's Sky 1, wasn't picked up by NBC until it was already in production, she said, "so we were pretty thrilled when we found out we were going to be on network television in the U.S."

The coincidences don't end there.

Filmed in Britain, Malta, and South Africa - which apparently stood in for parts of the United States - You, Me and the Apocalypse focuses on a small number of people scattered across the globe who will eventually end up in the same bunker, watching together as the Earth braces for a direct hit by a comet expected to wipe the rest of us out.

"I think it's kind of ironic that the original Office was set in Slough [a town west of London], and then in this show, I'm stuck in a bunker under Slough," Fischer said. "That felt a little bit like a sign that I should do it."

When another reporter reminded her that Ellie Kemper, who was also in The Office, now stars in Netflix's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt as a woman who's recently emerged from 15 years in an underground bunker, Fischer figured she'd spotted a trend.

Another of their Office mates, Oscar Nunez, "is in that movie [The 33] where he's stuck in the mine in Chile," she said.

"So I guess when you get off The Office, they stick you in a hole in the ground in your next project."