Rashida Jones became so “obsessed” with a fake, legal procedural spin-off of “Parks and Recreation” with costars Amy Poehler, Adam Scott, Paul Rudd and Kathryn Hahn that they went ahead and wrote and filmed 15 pages of the fake — yet now somewhat real — Philadelphia-set project.
In an oral history charting the NBC mockumentary sitcom from creators Greg Daniels and Michael Schur for its 15th anniversary, Jones, who played Ann Perkins in the show, recalled creating and shooting the passion project during the cast’s downtime. They even had “Parks and Rec” writers in on the script.
“During our free time on set, we took a picture of me, Kathryn, Amy, Adam Scott and Rudd and we had this fantasy of being in like a ’90s, David Kelley-style procedural show called ‘Philly Justice,’ where we were all playing law clerks in Philadelphia,” Jones explained.
Jones went on to say the “Parks and Rec” writing team ended becoming just as enamored with the spin-off idea as the actors.
“We became obsessed with it and so did the writers,” she said. “They ended up writing it as an entire episode of a different show which we started to actually shoot. We shot 15 pages of a show that doesn’t exist with our free time.”
After seven seasons and 125 episodes, the political satire series took its final bow in 2015. The lead cast included Poehler, Jones, Scott, Aubrey Plaza, Nick Offerman, Chris Pratt, Retta, Aziz Ansari. Hahn and Rudd were fan-favorite guest stars across several seasons.