Although he’s worked steadily since the years the show went off the air—including supporting roles in The Happytime Murders and the Captain Underpants movie—Leslie David Baker is still probably best known to most TV fans as implacable crossword-doer Stanley Hudson from The Office. Appearing on all nine seasons of the NBC show, Stanley was a man of simple tastes: He liked doing very little, and did it very well. In the end, he was rewarded for this life of thoughtful lethargy with his ultimate dream: Ditching his job and wife to go do nothing in Florida for the foreseeable future.
Or…did he? That’s the question raised by Baker’s new Kickstarter project, Uncle Stan, a proposed fund-raising effort that assiduously avoids words like “Office” “Hudson,” or “the clearly owned intellectual property of the NBCUniversal corporation,” but which does have a whole bunch of footage of the actor playing a grouchy Florida retiree named Stan. It’s not actually totally clear what the money being raised for the project is going toward—whether the $300,000 being raised is intended to fuel an entire series, or just a handful of episodes with which to attract investors. (The Backer rewards reference both episode and episode(s), so it’s not at all clear how much Baker and his collaborators expect to do.) The premise at least, is clear: “Uncle Stan” is forced to leave his Florida retirement in order to help his nephew run a combination motorcycle repair shop/florist business, as one does. There’s nothing in the promotional copy about wacky hijinx ensuing, but god damn if it doesn’t sound like they probably will.