The Office author Mike Schur opened up about how Saturday Night Live‘s Japanese parody of the NBC comedy didn’t sit super well with him.
The Man on the Inside creator stopped by The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast for its Criterion Episode to guage different Lonely Island digital shorts. While appearing on the show, Seth Meyers asked Schur and CNN anchor Jake Tapper what their thoughts were in regards to the short, “The Japanese Office,” and each agreed it wasn’t one among the highest ones.
“I worked at SNL, but you continue to feel like SNL in some unspecified time in the future, at some level, is an arbiter of what matters within the culture,” he explained. “And when he did ‘The Japanese Office,’ I remember being somewhat bit rankled.” He added, “It didn’t feel right to me in a roundabout way. It didn’t like, I don’t know, it didn’t like scratch the itch of like reflecting the show in the best way that I used to be hoping the show could be reflected one way or the other.”
Within the pre-recorded sketch, original Office creator Ricky Gervais introduced the clip from a Japanese TV show he claimed was what he based the British sitcom on. The fictional show saw Carell’s Michael, Jason Sudeikis’ Jim, Kristen Wiig’s Pam and Bill Hader’s Dwight taking over traits of their respective characters but entirely in Japanese. Gervais ended the sketch by saying, “It’s funny ’cause it’s racist.”
Schur went on to say he didn’t really understand the premise of the sketch, “since it’s like they stole the show for me, but I stole it from the Japanese version, but then all of the actors within the Japanese version are white people. It form of didn’t track to me one way or the other.”
Nonetheless, The Good Place creator did acknowledge it was an enormous deal for The Office when Carell hosted the show, although the sitcom had already been fairly well-established on the time.
“It was a really big deal that he hosted, an enormous deal that Rainn [Wilson, who plays Dwight Schute in the comedy] hosted,” Schur said. “I loved the primary time when Rainn hosted, and you probably did the like parody of The Office along with his monologue. I used to be like, they’re nailing this. Everyone’s nailing it.”
The sitcom ran for nine seasons from 2005 to 2013 and has gathered a cult following since hitting various streamers over time, including Netflix and Peacock.
A derivative set on the planet of The Office is within the works at Peacock from creators Greg Daniels and Michael Koman but with a set of latest characters. The show’s logline reads, “The documentary crew that immortalized Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch is searching for a brand new subject after they discover a historic Midwestern newspaper and the publisher attempting to revive it.”
Domhnall Gleeson and Sabrina Impacciatore lead the solid of the spinoff, which also includes Melvin Gregg, Chelsea Frei, Ramona Young, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Alex Edelman, Tim Key and Eric Rahill.
