Rainn Wilson admitted in the “The Last Laugh” podcast that “The Office” can sometimes be “surprisingly” offensive. So, coming back in 2025 must be a “very different” show.
“Listen, the Christmas episode of Benihana, depicting in sharp form on one of the Asian women Michael and Andy bring back to a Christmas party is surprisingly frightening,” Wilson said. “And that’s a tricky conversation, do you know? They’re ignorant, they’re racist, they’re insensitive, they’re always saying the wrong thing. And it’s Michael, Dwight, Andy. And it’s ignorant, insensitive, racist, sexist people about that.
“You want to encourage it, because it’s as funny as hell and it also skewers a certain American sensibility. But if you dig deep, it definitely goes quite far,” Wilson added. “Does this happen today? I think it must be very different if it’s made in this environment.”
The “The Office” universe has recently returned on stream, courtesy of the Peacock Spinoff series “The Paper,” which dropped the entire 10-episode debut season on September 4th. Wilson was set to headline the Dwight spinoff titled “The Farm.” This even had a backdoor pilot in the episode of the final season of “The Office.” Alas, NBC did not choose to spin-offs up to the series.
“NBC had a new administration at the time, and they wanted to do a big, bright, flashy, flashy show that was back to being something like ‘friends’,” Wilson said of the failed project. “And they weren’t interested at the time as a ‘Office’ spinoff. Did they take the farm to the “farm”? They probably had another billion dollars in the bank. Having it, we would have done something really cool.
“But the history of NBC’s “office” means they never actually got a show,” Wilson said. Honestly, it seemed like five years after the show ended.
Listen to Wilson’s full interview with the “The Last Laugh” podcast here.
