The OfficeWriter Michael Schur Explains WhySNL’s 2008 ‘Japanese Office’ Parody ‘Didn't Track to Me'

Mar. 15, 2025

Steve Carell in ‘The Japanese Office’ on ‘SNL’.Photo:Saturday Night Live/Youtube

Saturday Night Live/Youtube

Saturday Night Livehas always touched the zeitgeist — but did this parody ofThe Officemiss the mark? One of the show’s writers,Michael Schur, thinks so.

On the Dec. 23 episode ofThe Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, Schur, 49, and CNN anchor Jake Tapper talked toSeth Meyersabout whichSNLDigital Shorts they loved the most. They called their selections the Lonely Island’s “Criterion Collection,” cribbing the name of the popular film distributor that focuses on sharing and preserving “important classic and contemporary films.” Schur — who was a writer and producer ofThe Officeand created series likeParks and Recreation,The Good PlaceandThe Man Inside— also worked atSNLearly in his career.

During the podcast, Meyers, 50, asked his guests if they thought the May 2008 digital short “The Japanese Office” should make the cut. Schur and Tapper both didn’t think so, and the former expanded on what he saw as the issues with the sketch.

“I worked atSNL, but you still feel likeSNLat some point at some level is an arbiter of what matters in the culture,” he explained. “And when [Carell] did ‘The Japanese Office,’ I remember being a little bit rankled.”

Steve Carell (left) and Bill Hader in ‘The Japanese Office’.Saturday Night Live/Youtube

Schur said he “doesn’t quite understand the premise of the sketch.” He explained, “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.”

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Michael Schur (left); Steve Carell in ‘The Office’ (right) in 2005.Todd Williamson/NBC; Justin Lubin/NBCU Photo Bank

Todd Williamson/NBC; Justin Lubin/NBCU Photo Bank

Co-writer John Lutz also shared that Sawyer dictated all the Japanese dialogue to the cast members, who then repeated it back word for word.

SNLalso spoofedThe OfficewhenRainn Wilsonhosted in 2007.In his monologue, Wilson, now 58, finds theSNLcast acting like the characters on the show, and Schur said he thought that monologue “nailed” the show’s actual vibe.

And, in a meta moment,The Officeactually once mimicked a famousSNLsketch. In a season 3 episode, Carell’s Michael Scott and Wilson’s Dwight perform “Lazy Scranton,” itself a parody of The Lonely Island’siconic 2005 short “Lazy Sunday.”

Schur and the Lonely Island’s Andy Samberg ultimately worked together onBrooklyn Nine-Nine, which ran from 2013 to 2021.

source: people.com