The Office Alum Leslie David Baker Refunds Fan Donations to Produce Stanley Spinoff After Years of Delays

Hoping to see The Office‘s Stanley get his own spinoff? Well, you’re going to have to wait a while longer, at least.

Actor Leslie David Baker, who played Stanley on the long-running NBC sitcom, is refunding fans who donated to a Kickstarter campaign to produce a half-hour pilot for a spinoff centered on Stanley, our sister site Variety reports. The campaign, which launched more than three years ago and has yet to produce a pilot, collected more than $330,000 from 1,640 backers, but Baker now says he’s returning more than $110,000 of that money.

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Baker posted an explanation on Instagram this week from himself and campaign creator Sardar Khan, saying that “the project took longer than anticipated due to circumstances beyond our control,” citing COVID lockdowns and the WGA and SAG strikes as reasons for the delay. “After careful consideration, we have decided to refund our backers,” Baker added, noting that all backer rewards will still be fulfilled and insisting that the project will still continue once the strikes are resolved.

He noted that the $330,000 donated by backers was not the full amount received by the campaign, due to backers lowering their pledges or dropping them completely, and the $110,000 being refunded is “the final amount we received from Kickstarter.” Some of the campaign’s backers have been complaining on social media and in the Kickstarter comment section about the years of delays with no apparent progress.

The pilot, titled Uncle Stan, was to see Baker reprise his Office role as Stanley, who leaves his cushy retirement in Florida when he “gets a call from his nephew Lucky in Los Angeles asking for help with his two kids and running his motorcycle/flower shop,” per the official description. It’s not clear if Baker has the rights to produce a series based on his Office character. (TVLine has reached out to Baker’s representatives for clarification.)

Baker played paper sales rep Stanley Hudson for nine seasons on The Office, with Stanley known as a grumpy curmudgeon who was unamused by boss Michael Scott’s goofy antics. Baker recurred in the show’s first season before being promoted to series regular for the final eight seasons, which wrapped up in 2013. Since then, Baker has appeared in episodes of Raven’s Home, Life in Pieces and Scorpion, among other shows.

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