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'The Office' Actor Lindsey Broad Said She Still Gets Abuse for Playing Cathy

So...remember Season 8 of The Office, in which Pam Beesley (Jenna Fischer) went on maternity leave from Dunder Mifflin, and this woman named Cathy showed up to replace Pam and also tried to seduce Pam’s husband Jim Halpert (John Krasinski)? Well, yeah. The actor who played Cathy, Lindsey Broad, is still catching flak for that character nearly a decade after Season 8 aired. And, uh, that's totally not okay, people.

Since hitting Netflix several years after going off the air in 2013, The Office has become ingrained in the younger generations’ pop culture. It was always a popular sitcom, but the ability to marathon all nine seasons has made the show top-tier, and it’s harder to find someone who hasn’t watched it from beginning to end (at least twice). Sadly, that’s become bad news for some of the “villains” from the show.

“If anyone is wondering what it was like to be on The Office, the best comedy of this century: I just posted something on Instagram about how my dog was murdered and a bunch of people were like “Fuck you, Cathy, she deserved it!” So. There ya go!” Broad tweeted on August 7th.

Related: Amy Ryan says Steve Carell made her break the most on ‘The Office’

She is referencing when her dog was killed by another dog last year, and how on August 6th, she updated her followers on Instagram about still seeing that dog with a walker who "does not have the ability to restrain her."

She posted some of the heinous Office-related comments she received on that post to her Instagram Story.

According to People, she wrote, "If your goal is being told to fuck off by someone associated with a TV show you genuinely love, it is absolutely something you can accomplish but accomplishing it means you are both nasty and profoundly stupid. Enjoy! Fuck off!"

According to Jenna Fischer, fans often fail to recognize that she is not actually Pam Beesley and John Krasinksi is not actually her husband. In April this year, Fischer had to (again) clear up the rumor that she wears the engagement ring Jim gave Pam all those years ago.

“What a terrible rumor!” Fischer wrote back to the fan’s comment on her Instagram post. “Of course not! I wear the ring my actual husband of 10 years gave me!”

Again, on July 28th, Fischer sat down with her former Office costar Brian Baumgartner, who played Kevin Malone, on Baumgartner’s podcast An Oral History of The Office, to set that record *very* straight. The episode is titled “John and I Are Not A Couple.”

"People don't know how John and I are not a couple in real life,” Fischer said. “They don't understand it."

Let’s remember that, when we watch a sitcom, we’re watching actors playing characters. There are real people behind the fictional people we grow to love (and despise), and it’s up to us to not let the line between reality and pretend blur.