“That’s the end of my career”: the early setback John Krasinski didn’t think he could recover from
Credit: NBC
Fri 24 April 2026 7:00, UK
John Krasinski has had a fascinating career arc unlike anyone else in his generation, being launched as a potential leading man in several films that didn’t take off, but ending up becoming a popular sitcom star thanks to the dedicated viewership of The Office.
While he wasn’t immediately successful (as he famously lost the role of Steve Rogers to Chris Evans), he eventually transformed into a compelling action film star when Michael Bay enlisted him for 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, but possibly the most shocking development in his career is that he turned out to be a great director, even if his first few films landed with little impact.
It was after the emotional conclusion to The Office that Krasinski began to take directing more seriously and developed a modern horror masterpiece with A Quiet Place.
The film was a sensation that proved original sci-fi films still had a place with audiences, and he returned to direct the sequel, as well as is set to return for the third entry in the series coming next summer.
While all this success spiralled out from The Office, the actor earned the role of Jim after an upsetting experience with a different show, where he had won the opportunity to be in a pilot and was devastated when it was not picked up as a series.
“I remember when it failed, I was like, ‘Oh my god, how does someone survive this?’” Krasinski recalled, “’That’s it, that’s the end of my career, it’s over’. I was waiting tables in New York. I only flew out to LA to do the one week of the pilot, and then came right back to waiting tables. I worked at like nine different restaurants because it turns out, I don’t know why, people aren’t super keen on having you leave during the day to go to an audition and expect that your job is going to be there when you come back.”
The production of a television show is always a challenge, something that is unique compared to that of a film, and being part of an unsuccessful pilot is a very difficult experience for any actor, but it’s particularly rough for those who don’t have other work to fall back on. Krasinski had come close to experiencing the fulfilment of getting to be part of a show that he was excited about, only for that dream to be cut short, sending him back to his life before.
Even his time at The Office wasn’t all that rosy, as the show faced a dip in quality towards the latter end of its run, with many citing Steve Carell’s exit as the point where it officially declined. However, it experienced an unexpected bump when it became available on Netflix and was accepted by an entirely newer, younger generation of viewers who hadn’t seen it when it was first airing, earmarking it as a ‘comfort show’.
Regardless of big-screen success, Krasinski hasn’t abandoned television entirely, as the same year that A Quiet Place was released, he took on the titular role in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, stepping into the shoes donned by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine, which makes it seem that toggling between the two media is what he ends up doing for the rest of his career.
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