Rainn Wilson admitted on “The Last Laugh” podcast that “The Office” could be “jaw-droppingly” offensive at times, which is why it would have to be a “very, very different” show if it were to return in 2025. Wilson played Dwight Schrute on all nine seasons of the NBC sitcom, which ran for 201 episodes between 2005 and 2013.
“Listen you know, the Benihana Christmas episode where Michael and Andy 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,” Wilson said. “And it’s a tricky conversation, you know? They’re clueless and in their cluelessness they’re racist and insensitive, and they’re always saying the wrong thing. And that’s Michael, Dwight and Andy — and Kevin 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.”
“You want to encourage it, because 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 added. “Could it happen today? I think it would have to be very, very different if it were made in this environment.”
“The Office” universe recently returned via streaming courtesy of the Peacock spinoff series “The Paper,” which dropped its entire 10-episode debut season on Sept. 4. But it’s not the first time the franchise has attempted to exist outside the flagship series. Wilson was set to headline a Dwight spinoff titled “The Farm,” which even had a backdoor pilot during a final season episode of “The Office.” Alas, NBC did not pick the spinoff up to series.
“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,” Wilson said about the failed project. “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. 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.”
Wilson added, “But the the history of ‘The Office’ in NBC is, they never really got the show. Honestly, it was like five years after the show was over, when all of a sudden it started being watched in the billions of minutes on Netflix, that NBC was like, wait a minute, this is kind of a cash cow. This is actually a really good show and it’s got some legs.”
Listen to Wilson’s full interview on the “The Last Laugh” podcast here.
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