‘The Office’: Why Michael Schur Said Playing Mose Was ‘Brutal’
The goal of most scenes on The Office is to make the audience laugh. But just because a scene is funny doesn’t mean it was easy to make. Michael Schur, who played Mose, said the role was brutal. Find out the reason why and more about the role.
Michael Schur wrote on ‘The Office’ and played Mose Schrute
Schur was a writer on the show. Some of the writers had a clause in their contracts that they might have to act too.
Mindy Kaling played Kelly Kapoor, B.J. Novak played Ryan Howard, Paul Lieberstein played Toby Flenderson, and Schur played Mose Scrute.
Mose was Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson)’s cousin. You mostly saw him helping out on the farm. But Dwight would also call on his cousin for help in his work life too.
There was almost a Schrute spinoff
Dwight Schrute is a very popular character so it’s not surprising he almost got his own show. It would have followed his family, which means more Mose.
“Rainn is a great, great screen presence and I think it made a lot of sense to try him,” Schur said in an interview. “When Greg [Daniels] and I were first thinking about potential spinoffs, Rainn was an obvious person to think about because he’s a comedy force.”
They made a backdoor pilot with the episode “Schrute Farms.” It shows Dwight dealing with the passing of his Aunt Shirley. He then meets up with more of his family members to talk about taking over her farm.
Fans met his brother Jeb (Thomas Middleditch) and his sister Fannie (Majandra Delfino.) But the show didn’t take off. This is probably a good thing because Schur said playing Mose was brutal.
He said the role was brutal
The actor didn’t hold back when talking about his role on the show. He talked to People Entertainment about how it was unexpectedly uncomfortable to play the farmer.
“Whatever my favorite The Office moment is not onscreen because playing Mose Schrute was a waking nightmare,” he said. Schur added, “My boss, Greg Daniels forced me to do it as a way to cause me pain [laughs.]”
What was so bad about being Mose? He explained that he grew a neck beard for the role, then was later allowed to wear a fake one. However, Schur said that was worse.
“Every episode we shot was in like August or September in the middle of like central valley in California, which was like 130 degrees,” he said. “I was wearing work boots and like wool clothes and I had to do stupid things.”
Schur added that his character would usually have just one line that would be cut to make the scene funnier. “It was brutal,” he said. At least some people found his character funny after all of that work.
