The Office writer says SNL parody sketch rankled him: ‘All actors are white people’

The Office writer Michael Schur has said the 2008 Saturday Night Live parody of the series, The Japanese Office, ended up leaving him “a little bit rankled”.

Schur, a former SNL writer who left the sketch comedy show in 2005 to write for The Office, said the 2008 digital short “didn’t feel right to me in some way”.

“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,” Schur said on The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, where they were discussing which of the several Lonely Island digital shorts on SNL could be categorised as the best.

When Steve Carell did The Japanese Office, Schur said when asked if the short belonged in the best list, “I remember being a little bit rankled”.

The Office, based on a BBC series of the same name, ran for nine seasons from 2005 to 2013.

The pre-recorded SNL sketch in question was introduced by the original creator of The Office, Ricky Gervais, who “presented” a clip from a Japanese TV show that he said formed the basis for his own British sitcom, which in turn served as the inspiration for the American version.

The fictional Japanese show starred white SNL cast members like Jason Sudeikis playing Jim, Kristen Wiig playing Pam, Bill Hader as Dwight, and episode host Steve Carell reprising his role as Michael — but everyone spoke Japanese, and the sketch included no subtitles.

At the end, Gervais appeared on screen again and said: “It’s funny ‘cause it’s racist.”

“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,” added Schur. “It sort of didn’t track to me somehow.”

Schur said he thought it was “a very big deal” when any stars from The Office hosted SNL. He “loved the first time” Rainn Wilson hosted in 2007 when the workplace mockumentary was parodied in his opening monologue.

“I was like, ‘They’re nailing this. Everyone’s nailing it,’” he said.

The Japanese Office was discussed on the podcast previously as well with director Akiva Schaffer, who admitted he was “concerned at the time” about white actors playing Japanese characters, but trusted the co-writer Marika Sawyer, who is Japanese-American.

“I would just keep looking to her and go, okay, I’m here to bring your dreams to life,” he 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, who went on to co-create hit TV shows like Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and The Good Place, has been nominated for at least 20 Emmys and won three times for his writing on SNL, The Office, and Hacks.