Rainn Wilson believes “The Office” would have to be different today.
During a recent appearance on “The Last Laugh” podcast, the actor, who played Dwight Schrute on the hit NBC comedy, talked about how cringey parts of the series could be.
Wilson cited “the Benihana Christmas episode” in which “Michael [Steve Carell] and Andy [Ed Helms] draw with a Sharpie on one of the Asian women that they’ve brought back to the Christmas party is jaw-droppingly, kind of horrific.”
“And it’s a tricky conversation. It’s like they’re clueless, and in their cluelessness, they’re racist and insensitive, and they’re always saying the wrong thing,” Wilson said. “And that’s Michael, Dwight, and Andy…and Kevin [Brian Baumgartner] for that matter. So it’s a show based around clueless, insensitive, racist, sexist people that kind of mirrors the United States in a lot of ways.”
He gets that as humor it’s “funny as hell and it also kind of skewers a particular American sensibility.”
“But it definitely goes pretty far if you dig deep,” Wilson said. “Could it happen today? I think it would have to be very, very different if it were made in this environment.
The mockumentary about a fictitious paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania aired from 2005 to 2013. There had been a planned spinoff, potentially called “The Farm,” that followed Wilson’s character but was never made.
The Emmy-nominated actor explained during the podcast that “NBC at that time had a new regime that came in and they wanted to do big, bright, flashy, splashy shows that were multi-cams and going back to ‘Friends’ kind of thing.”
“And they were just not interested at all in ‘Office’ spinoffs at the time. Had they taken ‘The Farm,’ they’d probably have another billion dollars in the bank. Even now, all the people that have seen ‘The Office’ 20 times, they’re going to watch ‘The Farm’ at least once or twice,” Wilson said. “Would it have been as good as ‘The Office?’ No. No way. Not even close. Would it have been good? Would it have been solid? Would it have been a good solid comedy? Yeah, it would have, and we would’ve done some really cool stuff.”
“And I think they really missed out,” he added.
Peacock, NBC’s streaming service, recently debuted “The Paper” which is a spinoff of “The Office” which features the fictional documentary crew from that show.
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