Stanley From ‘The Office’ Is Trying To Kickstart His Own Spin-Off

Seven years since it left the air on NBC, The Office continues to be one of the most popular television series on the planet, as it still regularly appears among the top shows on Netflix, week after week (it will move over to The Peacock in 2021, where a spin-off is possible, though unlikely). Viewers never seem to tire of the series, its brilliant cold opens, new revelations about the series (like how Creed was nearly written out), gossip about its stars (like the only time famous nice guy Steve Carell lost his temper), and news about what could have been (like, how close we were to The Office starring Bob Odenkirk as Michael Scott).

We have not, however, heard that much from Leslie David Baker, who played Stanley on the long-running hit sitcom. Recall that, at the end of The Office, Leslie David Baker’s character, Stanley, retired from Dunder Mifflin and moved to Florida, where presumably he has been living grumpily ever after.

Until now.

This week, Leslie David Baker launched a Kickstarter campaign in an effort to bring his character back to the screen in a spin-off project called Uncle Stan: Coming Out of Retirement. “After several years of enjoying a relatively uneventful retirement lifestyle,” Baker’s announcement reads, “Uncle Stan receives an urgent call for help from his favorite nephew, Lucky: a recent widower with two small children and a motorcycle repair/flower shop in Los Angeles. Soon Uncle Stan finds himself dishing out all the support and guidance he has to offer in his new California home.”

Baker is attempting to raise $300,000 to get the project going, although it is unclear if he’s even received permission to use the character in another project, which would otherwise have very little to do with the original The Office. It would not, however, be the first for a project of this ilk. Recently, the Coen Brothers gave John Turturro permission to spin-off his The Big Lebowski character into a stand-alone film, Jesus Rolls, which came out earlier this year.

Meanwhile, here’s Baker, in character as Stan, giving his pitch for the spin-off: