‘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’

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Digital News Director 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).