‘The Office’ Writer Says ‘SNL’s’ Japanese Office Parody With Steve Carell ‘Didn’t Feel Right’ and Left Him ‘Rankled’: ‘All the Actors Are White People’
Before Mike Schur helped create beloved comedy series like “The Good Place,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “Parks and Recreation,” he won Emmys as a writer on “Saturday Night Live” and “The Office.” The two series collided in May 2008 when “The Office” star Steve Carell hosted “SNL” and participated in a viral digital short titled “The Japanese Office,” which has since earned 17 million views on YouTube. Schur, however, recently said on “The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast” (via Entertainment Weekly) that the parody left him “a little bit rankled.”
“It didn’t scratch the itch of reflecting [‘The Office’] in the way that I was hoping the show would be reflected somehow,” Schur said. “I worked at ‘SNL,’ but you still feel like ‘SNL’ at some point at some level is an arbiter of what matters in the culture. And when [Carell] did ‘The Japanese Office,’ I remember being a little bit rankled.”
“The Japanese Office” digital short is introduced by Ricky Gervais, who says the Japanese version of “The Office” is what served as the inspiration behind his British sitcom that was the inspiration for the Carell-headlined U.S. version of “The Office.” The short that shows scenes from the show with “Japanese” versions of Michael (Carell), Dwight (Bill Hader), Jim (Jason Sudeikis) and Pam (Kristen Wiig). The characters speak Japanese, eat ramen noodles and more. Gervais ends the short with the punchline: “It’s funny ’cause it’s racist.”
“It didn’t feel right to me in some way,” Schur now said about the sketch, adding that he still doesn’t “quite understand the premise” of the parody. “It’s like, ‘They stole the show from 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 to me somehow.”
Loney Island member Akiva Schaffer directed “The Japanese Office” and explained on a previous podcast episode of “The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast” that he was “concerned at the time” about doing the sketch since the “SNL” cast was full of white actors. According to Shaffer, it was “SNL” writer Marika Sawyer who had the vision for the sketch and he followed her lead. Sawyer is Japanese American.
“I would just keep looking to her and go, ‘Okay, I’m here to bring your dreams to life,’” Schaffer said. “I think everyone was looking to Marika being like, ‘This is your baby. Let’s go. We’re gonna support it.’ But it was her thing.”
Schur said “SNL” was much more successful in parodying “The Office” when Rainn Wilson hosted, as his monologue humorously spoke about the differences between the two comedy series.
