‘The Office’ Actor Said Maybe This 1 Episode Shouldn’t Have Been Made
The Office remains one of the most popular TV shows of its time, however, it doesn’t always embody modern values. One episode of the show simply could not be made today – at least according to one of the actors who appeared in the episode. This cast member revealed there are outtakes of the episode whose content was very funny.
This episode of ‘The Office’ is well-known today but bombed at the time
In some ways, The Office is pretty timeless. As long as there are workers, people will be able to laugh at jokes about having an incompetent or insensitive boss. On the other hand, The Office was a product of its time. Some of the jokes regarding race in the show might not be acceptable in today’s cultural climate. According to Bustle, even one of the guest stars on the show thinks so.
Today, Larry Wilmore is perhaps best-known for his short-lived comedic news show The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. He also had a part in one of the most well-known episodes of The Office: “Diversity Day.”
The episode revolves around Michael Scott’s botched attempt at sensitivity training. In it, he has his employees wear cards on their heads with the names of various racial and ethnic groups. People are supposed to ask questions about the group named on their heads in the hope they can guess it. This bizarre game leads to jokes about stereotypes and a lot of the awkwardness which was a trademark element of The Office‘s unique brand of humor. It’s one of many, many examples of why Michael Scott is not an exemplary boss.
While the episode is well-known today, it was not a huge hit at the time. According to The Guardian, the episode garnered 5.9 million viewers, a huge drop from the previous episode, which garnered 11.2 million viewers.
Larry Wilmore reveals Steve Carell said some offensive stuff in outtakes
Could this episode be released today? “Absolutely not,” Wilmore said. “There is no way… ‘Diversity Day’ could be produced today, and probably rightly so.”
Wilmore gave fans a tiny glimpse into the creation of the episode. “I have outtakes from that scene with Steve Carell that I can’t even say what they are that were so funny,” Wilmore said. “But you never know, things swing back and forth all the time. The culture is very malleable in that way, the things that we find. It’s not so much the things that we can make fun of, but the things we find we can laugh at, and it’s OK to laugh at.”
While Wilmore thinks “Diversity Day” perhaps should not have been made, he’s not opposed to humor about “tough” topics. “I honestly think that the more we can laugh about tough things I just think the better off we are,” he said.
