'The Office' writer criticizes 'SNL's The Japanese Office Parody featuring Steve Carell

 

Mike Schur, the Office writer, broke his silence over Saturday Night Live's Japanese Office spoof.

Schur, who has created blockbuster sitcoms such as The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Parks and Recreation, recently expressed his opinions on a 2008 Saturday Night Live digital short that mimicked The Office, which he also worked on.

In a chat on The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast via Entertainment Weekly, Schur said that the SNL comedy, The Japanese Office, left him "a little bit rankled."

The video, which has received 17 million views on YouTube, features Office actor Steve Carell on his SNL hosting role.

explains Schur: "It didn't scratch the itch of reflecting [The Office] in the way that I was hoping the show would be reflected somehow."

He went on to say, "I worked at SNL, but you still feel like SNL is an arbiter of what matters in culture at some point." And when [Carell] performed The Japanese Office, I remember feeling irritated."

The Japanese Office, introduced by Ricky Gervais, depicts a fictional Japanese version of The Office that served as the source of inspiration for both the British and American versions.

Schur said, "It didn't feel right to me in some way," and that he still doesn't "quite understand the premise" of the spoof.

"It's like, 'They took the show from me, but I stole it from the Japanese version,' except that all the performers in the Japanese version are white. It didn't seem to track back to me."

Schur compared this with Rainn Wilson's SNL hosting performance, pointing out that his monologue, which hilariously highlighted the distinctions between SNL and The Office, was a far more effective parody.