“The Office ”writer Mike Schur admits “SNL”'s Japanese parody 'rankled' him: 'It didn't feel right to me in some way'

Writer-producer Mike Schur won Emmys for his work on both Saturday Night Live and The Office, but when the legendary sketch show took on a parody version of the workplace sitcom, it left him a "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," he said of a digital short called "The Japanese Office" that aired when Steve Carell hosted SNL on May 17, 2008.

The revelation came during a recent episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, in which  Seth Meyers invited Schur — a former SNL writer who left to work on the sitcom — and CNN anchor Jake Tapper to help evaluate which Lonely Island digital shorts best stand the test of time to be categorized as "Criterion Collection." When Meyers asked if either thought "The Japanese Office" short should make that top tier, it was a quick no from Schur, which Tapper agreed with while questioning whether his fellow guest was "bringing any of his Office baggage with him" in making that call.

Related: The Lonely Island share story behind SNL digital short so bad they couldn't believe it aired

"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," Schur admitted, noting that "it was a very big deal" for the sitcom when its stars hosted.

"I loved the first time when Rainn [Wilson] hosted and you did the parody of The Office with his monologue. I was like, 'They're nailing this. Everyone's nailing it,'" he recalled of the Dwight Schrute actor's 2007 host turn. However, the feeling differed when it came to the digital parody featuring the Dunder Mifflin boss. "This, I was a little bit like, oh, okay. Like, it didn't feel right to me in some way," he explained.

The pre-recorded SNL sketch begins with original Office creator Ricky Gervais presenting a clip from a Japanese TV show that he says was the basis of his British sitcom, which in turn inspired the American version. The fictional East Asian show stars likenesses of beloved characters Michael (Carell), Dwight (Bill Hader), Jim (Jason Sudeikis), and Pam (Kristen Wiig), taking on familiar traits like glancing at the camera, but spoken entirely in Japanese and featuring the characters bowing, eating ramen noodles, doing calisthenics, and singing karaoke. To end the clip, Gervais declares, "It's funny 'cause it's racist."

Schur confessed he "doesn't quite understand the premise" of the sketch. "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," he explained. "It sort of didn't track to me somehow."

Related: The Office stars reveal Christmas episode scene that made everyone break: 'No one could get through it'

On a previous podcast episode, Lonely Island member Akiva Schaffer, who directed the short, noted that he was "concerned at the time" about making it with mostly white cast members, but wanted to support the vision of the sketch's 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.... 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."

On that same episode, co-writer John Lutz explained that Sawyer took effort to make sure all the dialogue spoken in the sketch was real Japanese, not gibberish, which was achieved by the writer dictating the non-English dialogue to each cast member who then repeated it back word for word. He also revealed an Easter egg in the faux show's credits dedicated to Schur himself.

"All the credits too were in Japanese, and they were all like Marika's cousins' names and sister, and also, she said that Jason's credit in the episode was 'Mike Schur,'" Lutz said. "So Jason's character was played by Mike Schur in Japanese."

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Two years before SNL's "Japanese Office" digital short, The Office did a spoof of its own with Michael and Dwight rapping "Lazy Scranton," inspired by the Lonely Island's iconic "Lazy Sunday" video. In a bit of a role reversal, Andy Samberg, who starred in the sketch and later worked with Schur on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, has admitted he initially wasn't sure if he should take offense at the parody.

"I remember having to go through the feelings of, like, 'Are they making fun of it? Or are they making fun of people doing their version of it?'" Samberg recalled on an earlier podcast episode. "And slowly coming to realize that [Schur] was our friend and liked what we were making and stuff and being like, 'Oh, I see.'" 

Related: Mike Schur says it was 'a no-brainer' to cast Ted Danson as a nursing home spy in A Man on the Inside

Since his time at SNL and The Office, Schur, who also appeared as Dwight's cousin Mose several times throughout the series' run, went on to create or co-create Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place, and A Man on the Inside. He's been nominated for more than 20 Emmys, winning three times for SNL, The Office, and Hacks, on which he serves as an executive producer.

Watch "The Japanese Office" sketch above, and check out the full episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast below to see which shorts were deemed "Criterion" status.

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