The Office actor Rainn Wilson has reflected on a 2006 episode of the classic NBC sitcom, and said its “jaw-droppingly, kind of horrific” humor would have to be “very, very different” if it were made today.
Speaking on The Last Laugh podcast, via EW, Wilson said he had cringed while rewatching “A Benihana Christmas,” the show’s third season festive episode where Steve Carell’s character Michael Scott invites Asian American waitresses back to the office Christmas party. Scott is then shown marking one of the women with a Sharpie pen — with the joke being that this is necessary for him to tell the difference between them.
“It’s a tricky conversation,” Wilson said. “It’s like 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.”
In addition to this, Scott’s character is shown to be oblivious to the fact that the women who join him at the party (including the one he marks) are entirely different people from the waitress Scott originally invited back — with the actual joke being that Scott, and perhaps some members of the episode’s audience, don’t notice.
“You want to encourage it, because it’s funny as hell, and it also kind of skewers a particular American sensibility,” Wilson continued. “But it definitely goes pretty far if you dig deep. Could it happen today? I think it would have to be very, very different if it were made in this environment.”
This isn’t the first time that the plotline has received scrutiny in recent years. Fellow The Office actors Jenna Fischer and Angela Kingsley, who played Pam and Angela, previously stated on their podcast The Office Ladies that “the storyline would [not] have been written today.”
Kat Ahn, who played the waitress that Michael Scott marks with pen, also previously criticised the episode, and said she had not originally realised her character was written as a joke featuring Asian American stereotypes.
“The storyline with myself and the other Asian American actress is that we were the uglier versions of the actresses at the Benihana,” Ahn said, via USA Today. “Also that all Asian people look alike. We’re one big monolith and just one big walking stereotype without any personality or any individuality, which is problematic. The whole joke was that all Asians look alike and that’s why Michael Scott couldn’t tell us apart.”
The Office ended in 2013 after a hugely-successful nine seasons on NBC. A new spin-off, The Paper, has just released its first season to positive reviews, and has been renewed for a second run.
Image credit: Lloyd Bishop/NBC via Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
