‘The Office’ writer criticises ‘SNL’s’ The Japanese Office Parody with Steve Carell

Mike Schur, The Office writer broke silence on Saturday Night Live’s Japanese Office parody.

Schur, known for creating hit comedies like The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Parks and Recreation, recently shared his thoughts on a 2008 Saturday Night Live digital short that parodied The Office, a show he also worked on.

In a conversation on The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast via Entertainment Weekly, Schur admitted that the SNL sketch, titled The Japanese Office, left him “a little bit rankled.” 

The short, which has garnered 17 million views on YouTube, featured Office star Steve Carell during his SNL hosting gig.

Schur explained, “It didn’t scratch the itch of reflecting [The Office] in the way that I was hoping the show would be reflected somehow.” 

He added, “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.”

Introduced by Ricky Gervais, The Japanese Office presents a fictional Japanese version of The Office as the original inspiration for both the British and U.S. versions. 

Schur stated, “It didn’t feel right to me in some way,” and added 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.”

Schur contrasted this with Rainn Wilson’s SNL hosting appearance, noting that his monologue, which humorously addressed the differences between SNL and The Office, was a much more effective parody.