Real Jim Halpert 'Nothing Like' His Office Counterpart

Actual Jim is a lawyer and friend of show's developer
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 5, 2015 2:45 PM CST
Real Jim Halpert 'Nothing Like' His Office Counterpart
ohn Krasinski as Jim and Jenna Fischer as Pam in the NBC comedy series "The Office."   (AP Photo/NBC, Chris Haston)

On The Office, Jim Halpert is a likable slacker who sells paper and plays pranks. In real life, Jim Halpert is a corporate lawyer who's never lacked motivation, though he admits to not being "as tall or good-looking" as his TV counterpart. The real Halpert, 51, is a friend of Greg Daniels, a writer-producer who developed the show for US TV. Daniels and Halpert have known each other since they were kids, and they still vacation together, the Washington Post reports. Though he's the namesake for the show's Jim character, Halpert says he's "nothing at all like Jim."

"The Jim character in the beginning has a Gen-Y lack of career direction. I was not like that. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I wasn’t a slacker at the job," Halpert says. But the two do have some things in common: "Jim has basic common sense in terms of human relationships and has an emotional intelligence that I’d like to think I have." (The two also appear to have vaguely similar hair.) As for Daniels' decision to name the character after Halpert, "It was a very nice present, actually. It was a lot of fun to follow the show and have a personal connection with it." His favorite episode, he says, is the third one, "Health Care," in part because he's a privacy lawyer—and the episode focuses on Dwight Schrute violating workers' privacy. (More The Office stories.)

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