Mike Schur, who worked as a writer and producer on The Office, said the 2008 “The Japanese Office” Saturday Night Live short “didn’t feel right” to him. Per the Hollywood Reporter, Schur, who worked on 71 episodes of the iconic NBC series, talked about the Office-inspired SNL skit during a visit with The Lonely Island and Seth Meyer Podcast.
“I worked at SNL, but you still feel like SNL at some level, is an arbiter of what matters in the culture,” said Schur, who worked as a producer on the weekly show from 2002-2004, according to IMDb. “And when he did ‘The Japanese Office,’ I remember being a little bit rankled. It didn’t feel right to me in some way. It didn’t like, I don’t know, it didn’t like scratch the itch of like reflecting the show in the way that I was hoping the show would be reflected somehow,” Schur said.
Ricky Gervais said “The Japanese Office” Inspired His Show
In the 2008 pre-recorded SNL sketch, Ricky Gervais, creator of the British Office, introduces a clip of a Japanese TV show he claimed inspired his original Office. Steve Carell, who starred in The Office as Dunder Mifflin Paper Company Regional Manager Michael Scott, played a version of himself in the skit. SNL cast members Jason Sudeikis, Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader were also in the sketch playing versions of their respective characters, Jim, Pam, and Dwight, but speaking in Japanese. The clip ends with Gervais saying, “It’s funny ‘cause it’s racist.”
It “Didn’t Track” Schur Said of the SNL Skit
Schur, who also co-created Parks and Recreation and created The Good Place, added that he didn’t totally get what the sketch was trying to do, “because it’s like they stole the show for me, but I stole it from the Japanese version, but then all the actors in the Japanese version are white people. It sort of didn’t track somehow.”
It sort of didn’t track somehow.
However, Schur did say it was an achievement for The Office when Carell was asked to host SNL. “It was a very big deal that he hosted, a big deal that Rainn (Wilson) hosted. I loved the first time when Rainn hosted, and you did like the parody of The Office with his monologue. I was like, they’re nailing this. Everyone’s nailing it.
An Office Spinoff is Coming
The Office ran on NBC for nine seasons from 2005 to 2013, and a spinoff, reportedly called The Paper, is currently in the works. In November, Justin Spitzer, who worked as a producer on The Office, told Screen Rant that he was “excited” for the new series, which would focus on the lives of reporters at a declining newspaper.
“I haven’t had anything to do with The Office reboot or spinoff or whatever they’re calling it, so all I know about it is what I’ve read in the press. But, I’m very excited to see it,” Spitzer said. “I remember when I heard they were going to do an American remake of the British Office, and I thought, ‘There’s no way anyone can do justice to the BBC original.’ But, then Greg Daniels pulled it off. So if there’s any writer up to the challenge of bringing back everything that made the American Office great, while also finding a new perspective and ways to make it relevant, it’s Greg,” Spitzer added.
The logline for the new show, which would air on Peacock, reads: “The documentary crew that immortalized Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch is in search of a new subject when they discover a historic Midwestern newspaper and the publisher trying to revive it.”
