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Episode: 'Parks And Rec'& 'Good Place' Creator Michael Schur On His New Show

Author: NPR
Duration: 00:46:10

Episode Shownotes

Michael Schur wrote for the The Office, and created The Good Place, and co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. His new show for Netflix, A Man on the Inside, features Ted Danson as a widowed retiree who goes undercover in a retirement community. He spoke with Terry Gross about

the series, making fun of NPR (lovingly) on Parks, and being a life-long rule-follower. Also, our TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new series and says it's the sweetest show since Ted Lasso. Subscribe to Fresh Air's weekly newsletter for staff recommendations, gems from the archive, and a peek at what's coming next week.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Summary

In this episode, Michael Schur discusses his new Netflix show 'A Man on the Inside,' inspired by the documentary 'The Mole Agent.' He explores themes of human connection and community through the story of Ted Danson's character, Charles, an undercover agent in a nursing home. Schur reflects on ethical dilemmas in storytelling, the importance of character-driven humor, and his experiences in the television industry, including the impact of political changes on series like 'Parks and Recreation.' Also, he addresses the transformation in television storytelling with the advent of streaming services, emphasizing the joy of collaborative creative processes.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page ('Parks And Rec'& 'Good Place' Creator Michael Schur On His New Show) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_12
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00:00:18 Speaker_10
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Michael Schur is one of the people behind some of the most beloved TV comedy series of the recent past. He wrote for The Office, co-created and wrote for Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine,

00:00:34 Speaker_10
and created and wrote for The Good Place. He created the new comedy series, A Man on the Inside. All eight episodes just started streaming on Netflix. Before we hear from him, our TV critic David Bianculli is going to review the series.

00:00:49 Speaker_10
David says there's a couple of things that A Man on the Inside has in common with The Good Place. They both star Ted Danson, who became a star playing the bartender on Cheers, and both shows are entertaining and surprisingly philosophical.

00:01:04 Speaker_10
Here's David's review.

00:01:06 Speaker_00
In The Good Place, series creator Michael Schur put an awful lot of trust in Ted Danson, not only in his audience appeal, but also in his acting ability.

00:01:16 Speaker_00
That series was about a woman, played by Kristen Bell, who awakens in the afterlife with Ted Danson as her guide. Its brilliant twist, revealed after a full season, was that Danson's character wasn't who he pretended to be.

00:01:30 Speaker_00
It required the actor to switch gears significantly in mid-stream, and Danson was great at it. And in A Man on the Inside, the new Netflix TV show re-teaming Shure as series creator with Danson as star, the story starts with him pretending once again.

00:01:48 Speaker_00
Improbably but charmingly, this new eight-episode comedy series is based on a documentary from Chile. Called The Mole Agent, and also available now on Netflix, it was nominated for an Oscar in 2021 and shown on the PBS series POV that same year.

00:02:06 Speaker_00
It told the true story of an elderly man hired by a detective agency to go undercover in a nursing home. The client's mother, a resident of the home, complained of the theft of a family heirloom.

00:02:19 Speaker_00
So the detective agency advertised for an elderly man, hoping to place him in the home temporarily to find the culprit.

00:02:26 Speaker_00
Inspired by this story, Michael Schur starts his version by introducing us to Ted Danson's character of Charles in a home movie flashback from his wedding day many decades ago. Then it cuts to Charles in the present day in Oakland, California.

00:02:42 Speaker_00
He's a widower, a retired professor, and even though his daughter and her husband and kids live nearby, has a rigid and solitary daily routine.

00:02:52 Speaker_00
That routine is interrupted one day by a suggestion from that daughter, Emily, played by Mary Elizabeth Ellis.

00:02:59 Speaker_11
Look, I know that you don't like to talk about mom, so we don't have to, but you know that she would have wanted you to be a person, live your life. Okay, do you remember when I was little and you would give me Charles challenges?

00:03:18 Speaker_11
Like, find 10 out-of-state license plates or read 20 books before Christmas? I'm giving you a Charles challenge. Find a project or a hobby, just something that excites you.

00:03:33 Speaker_00
Okay. It's a good challenge. I accept. To widen his horizons, Charles answers a classified ad in the newspaper, which had been placed by a private investigator named Julie, played by Lila Rich Creek Estrada.

00:03:47 Speaker_00
It listed a job offer for a male between 75 and 85. Because he could use a cell phone, Charles is hired by Julie to infiltrate the nursing home for a month or so. A mission Charles feels more optimistic about than his employer.

00:04:02 Speaker_02
Okay, we are meeting with Debra Santos Cordero. She goes by Dee Dee. She's the executive director. The whole staff reports to her. I am your loving daughter, Emily.

00:04:13 Speaker_04
Why can't you be Julie?

00:04:15 Speaker_02
Well, you're online in a bunch of places as having a daughter named Emily, but there aren't any pictures of her linked to you, so the name is all that matters. Plus, it's just better to keep your cover story as simple as possible.

00:04:25 Speaker_04
Cover story?

00:04:27 Speaker_02
Yes, cover story. Keep it together, man. You ready?

00:04:31 Speaker_04
Well, I don't know, but it hardly matters. What matters is you think I'm ready.

00:04:35 Speaker_02
Oh, I don't think that at all. You're not remotely ready, but we ran out of time.

00:04:40 Speaker_04
Be that as it may, you put your faith in me, and that gives me confidence.

00:04:45 Speaker_02
I think you are the best option in a sea of not very good options.

00:04:49 Speaker_00
That's all I needed to hear. Once Charles crosses into San Francisco and moves into the nursing home, a man on the inside really comes alive. Stephanie Beatrice plays Dee Dee, the director who oversees things, and she's as clever as she is caring.

00:05:05 Speaker_00
The roles of some of the residents are filled by some long familiar actors. Sally Struthers from All in the Family is one, and Susan Rattan from L.A. Law is another.

00:05:16 Speaker_00
It's nice to see so many older actors given so much to do in a TV comedy, and it may be the first time it's been done, at least so successfully, since The Golden Girls. But a man on the inside isn't just in it for the laughs.

00:05:31 Speaker_00
It's a comedy, but it's also much more. It uses music very poetically, and poetry too. And as with The Good Place, there's a lot of talk about life and death, and the importance and difficulties and treasures along the way.

00:05:47 Speaker_00
Alzheimer's is treated here at length and with dignity. And one reason it all works so well is because Ted Danson is as good at drama as he is at comedy.

00:05:59 Speaker_00
You can watch all of A Man on the Inside in one self-contained binge, and that's not a bad way to go. It's one of the sweetest TV series since Ted Lasso. And the mystery Danson's Charles is hired to crack is neatly wrapped up by the end.

00:06:15 Speaker_00
But there's a hint that as with Sherlock Holmes or those podcasters of Only Murders in the Building, there may soon be other cases afoot.

00:06:23 Speaker_10
David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the new series, A Man on the Inside. All eight episodes just started streaming on Netflix.

00:06:35 Speaker_10
Here's the interview I recorded a few days ago with the series creator, Michael Schur. Michael Schur, welcome to Fresh Air.

00:06:42 Speaker_05
Thank you.

00:06:43 Speaker_10
This series is based in part on a documentary from Chile about a man who goes undercover to solve a crime in an assisted living facility. What did you find moving about the Chilean documentary and why did you see it as having comic potential?

00:07:00 Speaker_05
So in the documentary, the man who answers the ad is named Sergio, and he, like Charles in the show, is suffering from the fairly recent death of his wife.

00:07:12 Speaker_05
And he answers this ad, and it ends up really not only transforming his life, but the lives of all the people that he meets. He makes friends, and he is part of a community, and he finds a certain kind of purpose in just being around other people.

00:07:27 Speaker_05
And what was remarkable to me about the documentary, among other things, is that everyone I know who saw it had the same exact feeling, which was, I should call my mom, or I need to call my grandpa, or I should hang out with my kids more.

00:07:42 Speaker_05
Like, it really had this universal effect on people of making them want to reach out to people that they love. And it, you know, it's a rare piece of art, I think, that can cause everyone to have such a warm and positive feeling.

00:07:58 Speaker_05
So, you know, my longtime producing partner, Morgan Sackett, said, we should remake that and have Ted play the main part.

00:08:04 Speaker_05
And as soon as he said it, I just knew he was right and that there was a very good, slightly fictionalized show that could hopefully sort of give people that same feeling. That was the objective.

00:08:17 Speaker_10
Did you do research going into an assisted living facility?

00:08:21 Speaker_05
Yes, we did a lot of it. We went into a number of them in the California area, talked to a lot of people toward the memory care units and the rooms, and met a lot of really wonderful people whose job it is to look after folks when they check in.

00:08:36 Speaker_05
And it was eye-opening, I have to say. It was not maybe what you would expect, which is to say, I think your instinct would be that these are sad places because it's folks who are nearing the end of their lives.

00:08:51 Speaker_05
A lot of them are suffering from various ailments, physical or mental. But they were places of happiness and joy, largely. They were sort of flourishing communities of people who were very happy to be with each other and to be part of a community.

00:09:08 Speaker_05
And that sort of matched up with what I was hoping for.

00:09:11 Speaker_10
I'm glad that was your experience. I apologize in advance for being Ms. Buzzkill, but my father was in assisted living for, you know, a few years toward the end of his life. And I helped him move in. I visited a lot.

00:09:25 Speaker_10
But he told me on the phone at the beginning, you know, there's no one I can talk to here. Everybody's like in cognitive decline. And then I felt like, oh, come on, you know, I'm sure it's not that bad.

00:09:35 Speaker_10
And so the next time I visited him, a woman came up to me and said, hi, nice to meet you. My name is, and I was a school librarian for many years. And I thought, see, you know, she has a school librarian. She's got to be, you know, pretty smart.

00:09:51 Speaker_10
And then I met her a few minutes later again, and she said, hi, my name is, and I was a school librarian for many years. And every time I ran into her, that's exactly what she said. And I realized, oh, she's having serious cognitive issues.

00:10:03 Speaker_05
Yeah, well, that is 100% a huge part of the experience of being in these facilities, no question. Like, there are folks who have moved in for a very, you know, a wide range of reasons, and one of them is cognitive decline.

00:10:17 Speaker_05
But at least in the facilities that we toured, there is another part of it that's just folks who maybe they had a physical ailment, or maybe they just were tired of living alone. and they wanted to be around other people.

00:10:31 Speaker_05
And that's at least the part of it that we mainly focused on, although we didn't shy away from the actual realities of assisted living.

00:10:39 Speaker_05
If we had pretended like that wasn't a part of it, I don't think we would have been giving an honest portrayal of what it's really like.

00:10:47 Speaker_10
You've done so much about ethical decisions, especially like on The Good Place and the book that was almost like a companion to it.

00:10:56 Speaker_10
And one of the questions in the series is, is it okay for the Ted Danson character to go in and video and audio record people without their knowledge? Because he's there to spy. I mean, he's the John le Carre of assisted living.

00:11:12 Speaker_10
And I mean, he's even reading a John le Carré book in bed before the plot kicks in before he knows about this job.

00:11:18 Speaker_10
Yeah, so Yeah, and the episode's called Tinkered Taylor Older Spy Yeah, a great title But but anyway, so so he's you know, one of the questions is is it ethical to record people without their knowledge? Did you think about that a lot?

00:11:34 Speaker_05
Oh, we did ask ourselves as writers over the course of the show whether what Charles was doing was strictly speaking ethical. It's a question that the documentary asks too.

00:11:45 Speaker_05
You're creating a pretense, a false pretense and you're getting to know folks without them really knowing who you are. In the documentary, Sergio, the main character, ends up moving out without anyone learning what he was really there for.

00:11:59 Speaker_05
He doesn't get caught. And we decided that what was important was for Charles to suffer the consequences of having been essentially dishonest to his family. the folks that he was interacting with. And so, that is a part of our show.

00:12:15 Speaker_05
In the final episodes, he does have to confront the reality of what he did and the circumstances under which he entered the facility.

00:12:24 Speaker_10
You work with Ted Danson on two series. On The Good Place and now on your new series, A Man on the Inside. I love watching him. I think he's, like, fantastic. What is great about working with him?

00:12:40 Speaker_05
Oh man, this is going to sound like a strange thing to say. He loves acting. And that you would think would be true of any actor, but it's more true for him. He just loves it. He's so passionate about it that even now, you know, decades after

00:13:00 Speaker_05
he had to seek anyone's approval for anything he's done, he still wants to be good. And he's constantly asking you, is there something else I should do? Did I get this right? Can I try that again?

00:13:13 Speaker_05
He just has this unrelenting desire to be as good as he can be, even now, after how many successful series and shows and movies and everything else.

00:13:25 Speaker_05
When you work with someone like that, it just makes everything better because it feels like a real collaboration. It doesn't feel like you're writing a script and then just hoping that the actor will want to do it more than once.

00:13:39 Speaker_05
It's a constant dialogue with him. It's a constant discussion and experimentation and poking and prodding at the script to make sure we're getting it right. There's just no substitute for that. And it's one of the many reasons I love him.

00:13:52 Speaker_10
Your previous series, The Good Place, was all about ethical dilemmas and who gets to go to the equivalent of heaven and who gets sent to the equivalent of hell, and how your character and your decisions and your actions are measured to determine that.

00:14:11 Speaker_10
And you wrote a whole book that's part funny, part serious, about philosophy and the great philosophers.

00:14:19 Speaker_10
What made you want to do something like a comedy series that's really about, you know, judging behavior and judging, you know, moral and ethical decisions?

00:14:31 Speaker_05
Well, it's simply a question that I've been asking myself for a really long time.

00:14:37 Speaker_05
I used to play this game as I drove around in traffic in LA where someone would cut me off on the freeway or we would be in traffic and someone would pull onto the shoulder and speed past me and cut the line.

00:14:54 Speaker_05
And as a way of trying to stem off what you would call road rage, I would play a game in my head where I would say, that guy just lost 10 points.

00:15:03 Speaker_05
Like I was imagining a scenario in which there was some kind of omniscient observer of human behavior and I satisfied my own anger or displeasure with other people by imagining that that cost them in some cosmic way.

00:15:18 Speaker_05
And so after Parks and Recreation ended and Brooklyn Nine-Nine was up and running and my friend Dan Gore who created with me was running that show every day.

00:15:26 Speaker_05
NBC very kindly said, you can sort of do whatever you want and we'll give you at least one season on the air.

00:15:33 Speaker_05
So I had been thinking about that game I played in my head about other people and about myself and judging my own behavior and doing things that I knew were maybe slightly iffy and how many points I lost or how many points I gained when I did certain things.

00:15:49 Speaker_05
And so that became the idea that I just liked the most of the ideas that I had and I I just pursued that and thought, all right, this is going to be weird.

00:15:58 Speaker_05
I'm going to do a half hour comedy show about moral philosophy, but I don't know, maybe it'll work. I just sort of rolled the dice and I'm glad I did because the experience of working on it was wonderful. And I- That was a big hit. Yeah.

00:16:12 Speaker_05
I mean, as far as you can determine anything these days is a big hit. It was at least a show that people watched and seemed to enjoy and it seemed to resonate with people.

00:16:21 Speaker_10
Which played a bigger role in your life, religion or philosophy when you were coming of age?

00:16:26 Speaker_05
Oh, philosophy by far. I say that only because I had no religion really to speak of. My father's side of the family are Jewish, but my grandfather, his father renounced Judaism when he was very young and became a devout atheist.

00:16:45 Speaker_05
My mother's side of the family was raised vaguely Methodist, I would say, but I had no religious upbringing at all.

00:16:55 Speaker_05
When I got to college, I took a couple of philosophy classes and really liked the way that philosophy was able to talk about ethics and morality and other topics without

00:17:09 Speaker_05
limiting them in many cases without limiting them to who can apply for this, right? Like that was always one of my problems with organized religion was that it was like this is the way the world works, but it's only for this group of people.

00:17:22 Speaker_05
It's not for that group of people. It's only for you over here if you believe these sets of things. We told the marketing team When we were coming up with posters and advertising materials for the show, no harps, no puffy white clouds, no halos.

00:17:42 Speaker_05
This is not a show about Christianity. This is a show about philosophy.

00:17:47 Speaker_10
Oh, one thing I thought was very clever. In the good place, when you're in the part that people think is heaven, you're not allowed to use four-letter words. You're not allowed to use expletives.

00:17:59 Speaker_10
So if you want to use the F word, you end up saying fork. Now, since you can't use the F word on network television,

00:18:06 Speaker_10
I thought, like, that is so clever, because everybody will know the intent of the word, because it's explained to you why somebody's using a word, and then they just keep using it, you know, as necessary.

00:18:16 Speaker_10
So you're not saying the word, but everybody knows the word that you intend. Like, for instance, when you say fork, everybody knows exactly what you mean. So is that, in part, a way of using the language that you wanted to use without having to use it?

00:18:29 Speaker_05
Yeah, absolutely. This show is appearing on NBC at probably 830 on Thursday or something. And, you know, you can't say those words. So let's come up with a reason why you can't say them within the context of the show.

00:18:42 Speaker_05
It wasn't just that it was on NBC like I wanted that show. ideally to be able to be watched by people of all ages.

00:18:51 Speaker_05
And it was – I'm happy that that show was on NBC and not behind a paywall on a streaming service because I think that ultimately – my bet, which was just a conjecture at the time, but my bet was that kids would like it.

00:19:08 Speaker_05
And it turned out to be true when we entered the COVID era and everybody was having to go to school from home. My wife said, you know, everyone in William, my son's class is watching The Good Place right now.

00:19:24 Speaker_05
Like you should do like a fun extra curricular like Zoom class where you watch episodes of The Good Place and talk about philosophy. And I was like, I don't know.

00:19:35 Speaker_05
Like, it feels – those kids are on – poor kids are on Zoom like six hours, eight hours a day. And she was like, I think they would like it.

00:19:42 Speaker_05
So I sent an email to the parents and we're like, if your kids would be interested in this, is this like a thing that, you know, we're all desperate for ways to occupy our kids' time these days. And immediately like 30 kids showed up.

00:19:53 Speaker_05
And so I ended up teaching this kind of like fun sixth grade class on philosophy where we watched episodes of the show and then I talked about, you know, Aristotle or Kant or something. And it was really fun.

00:20:06 Speaker_05
And the kids were really into the show and they really liked talking about that stuff. The conjecture I had that kids would like it too, even though it was about a pretty arcane subject, turned out at least, again, anecdotally, to be somewhat true.

00:20:18 Speaker_10
Well, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Michael Schur.

00:20:23 Speaker_10
After writing for The Office and co-creating Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, he created The Good Place and the new series, A Man on the Inside, which is now streaming on Netflix. We'll be back after a short break.

00:20:37 Speaker_10
I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. Hi, this is Mollie C.V. Nuspert, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan.

00:20:50 Speaker_10
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00:22:35 Speaker_10
This is Fresh Air. I am Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Michael Schur, one of the people behind several beloved TV shows. After writing for The Office, he co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

00:22:48 Speaker_10
He created The Good Place and the new series, A Man on the Inside, starring Ted Danson, who also starred in The Good Place. So many comics when they're young like they're the class clown.

00:22:59 Speaker_10
They're the ones who's always getting punished for acting up they're the ones whose parents have to come and Explain their child's behavior And they're misfits and then they find comedy and you know often become celebrities and are very well rewarded for it But it sounds like you through your life.

00:23:16 Speaker_10
You're always like playing within the rules, and that that was always important to you. So as perhaps one of the minority members of comedy who played by the rules, how do you explain yourself?

00:23:31 Speaker_05
Man, what a question. As far as I'm concerned, I, for whatever reason, and I don't know if it's nature or nurture or combo platter or what. I was always an extreme rule follower my whole life.

00:23:46 Speaker_05
Like I have a very specific memory of being in kindergarten and being on the playground like at recess I think or maybe before school. And the teacher came out and went like, okay, everybody line up.

00:23:59 Speaker_05
And I immediately walked over and stood right in front of her. And the other kids were like still milling around and goofing around and laughing and playing, you know, with four square balls and stuff. And I remember thinking like, what are they doing?

00:24:13 Speaker_05
The teacher just said line up and they're not lining up. And I remember actually getting kind of nervous of like, did they not hear her? Did they not understand English somehow? Like I, it was unfathomable to me that when

00:24:25 Speaker_05
a teacher said, okay, it's time to do this thing that you wouldn't immediately do that thing. I was like that my whole life. And so, that's actually been a problem for me, as you can imagine.

00:24:35 Speaker_05
Like, imagine how annoying it must be to be married to someone who has that kind of ethos. Like, I have – it's something I've had to really work on of being a little more flexible, a little more relaxed about.

00:24:48 Speaker_05
following rules because no one – no one loves a scold.

00:24:52 Speaker_05
No one wants to have their finger wagged at them and I recognize this thing in myself a long time ago and I've really tried hard to not be a nuisance to other people while still kind of being true to what I see as the way that like the social order is kept.

00:25:07 Speaker_10
how has that code worked for you working at networks?

00:25:10 Speaker_10
Because the new series is on Netflix, but most of your shows were on network TV, on broadcast TV, where there's standards and practices and rules you have to obey and executives you have to answer to.

00:25:23 Speaker_10
And your creative instincts might not be their instincts, especially if what they're going for is the biggest hit possible, and what you're going for is a vision that you have.

00:25:35 Speaker_05
My first job was at Saturday Night Live. Saturday Night Live is a big, messy swirl of craziness. It's a big, rambling, 90-minute-long live variety show where part of the fun is that people are making mistakes and coloring outside the lines.

00:25:54 Speaker_05
you know, like the actors start laughing in the middle of sketches sometimes if they're funny enough. So that was actually really good for me to be in a place at the beginning of my career where it was like, this is not rigid, right?

00:26:07 Speaker_05
This world is not about following rules so much. And I'm just very glad that I became a comedy writer and not an insurance claims adjuster.

00:26:17 Speaker_05
Because I think if I were an insurance claims adjuster, I would be among the most insufferable people on the face of the earth, given my proclivities.

00:26:24 Speaker_10
You've worked very closely with Greg Daniels, who created the American version of The Office, and you co-created Parks and Rec with him.

00:26:32 Speaker_10
What are some of the things that you learned from him, from watching him work, and from working with him, that have stayed with you and helped guide you in your independent projects?

00:26:43 Speaker_05
I mean, he's very professorial, and he has a lot of lessons. And there were times, and I say this lovingly and positively, but there were times in the early going, Mindy Kaling and BJ Novak and I had never really written on TV shows before.

00:26:59 Speaker_05
And he was sort of a professor who was giving lectures in some way about TV writing and you know, he used to say that there's like a hierarchy of importance in a story.

00:27:13 Speaker_05
And like the lowest level of importance is like one person who comes in for one line and says one thing and makes one joke and then leaves. And then the next level is like a minor character who has like a little scene here and there.

00:27:27 Speaker_05
And you keep going up like a pyramid and you get to like side characters who have B and C stories. And then you get to main characters and their love interests.

00:27:35 Speaker_05
And you have to always be thinking about how much real estate you give different characters and people. And also, you have to think about there might be some really funny joke that you come up with that's really wacky and wild.

00:27:47 Speaker_05
And if you give that joke to a character you've never seen before who pops in and says the joke and leaves, it doesn't really affect the show.

00:27:54 Speaker_05
But if you give that same joke to the main character on the show, the person who the audience is the most invested in, now,

00:28:02 Speaker_05
That joke might have an outsized effect on the fabric of the show because it's just a much more important statement coming from a much more important person.

00:28:11 Speaker_05
And you have to be really careful when you come up with jokes that sort of stretch the tone of the show or alter the themes of the show. You have to be really careful who says them and when and why.

00:28:22 Speaker_05
He just thinks so carefully and so studiously about what he's doing. He treats writing, specifically TV writing, with such care and consideration. I just can't say enough good things about him as an instructor in the world of writing.

00:28:38 Speaker_10
If you're just joining us, my guest is Michael Schur. He wrote for The Office and co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and created The Good Place, as well as a new Netflix comedy series called A Man on the Inside.

00:28:51 Speaker_10
We'll talk more after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

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00:30:11 Speaker_10
This is fresh air. Let's get back to my interview with Michael Schur. He wrote for The Office, co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and created The Good Place.

00:30:20 Speaker_10
He also created the new Netflix comedy series A Man on the Inside, starring Ted Danson, who's hired by a private investigator to go undercover as a new resident in an assisted living facility to investigate what's happened to a ruby necklace and heirloom that was presumably stolen from one of the residents.

00:30:40 Speaker_10
So after The Office, when you and Greg Daniels decided to do another show together, and you came up with Parks and Recreation, why did you want to set the show with a backdrop of a small town, Pawnee, Indiana, and their Parks and Recreation department, and have the main character start off as the assistant director of the department?

00:31:01 Speaker_05
Well, there were a couple things. One of them was that the financial crisis was happening, and it became clear that government, in some way, was going to just be much more involved in people's lives on a day-to-day basis than it had been for a while.

00:31:16 Speaker_05
And so it seemed like a natural kind of setting for a show for what became sort of the Obama era. But the other thing was that I grew up in a pretty sleepy suburban town in the Northeast. And like the government was great.

00:31:31 Speaker_05
Like the government was what filled the swimming pool and the public park that I swam in and organized the little league and, you know, my public school was great and my teachers were great.

00:31:42 Speaker_05
And I grew up kind of not understanding this weird demonization of the government that I, you know, I was a Reagan kid.

00:31:48 Speaker_05
So like I grew up in a world where he was saying things like the scariest words in the English language where I'm from the federal government, I'm here to help you.

00:31:57 Speaker_05
And all I saw was like, you know, we got hit by a hurricane once and like the federal government showed up and the local government showed up and like help people clear trees from the street.

00:32:05 Speaker_05
And I was like, what is everyone's problem with the government? Now, I'm older now and I understand that the government has a lot of problems, but I just never understood why it was like this demonized force in the in America.

00:32:20 Speaker_05
And so I kind of thought like, you know, we could create an entirely fictional town and talk about it through the world of the public sector.

00:32:27 Speaker_05
and just show what I have always believed, which is like, the government is just a bunch of people in an office who like, try to do stuff that will make the town better. And it, you know, just seemed like the right message for a TV show.

00:32:41 Speaker_05
And so that's what we went with.

00:32:44 Speaker_10
The series ended in February of 2015. In June of 2015, Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower and announced he was running for president. And of course, he won. Do you feel like you saw that coming in any way?

00:32:58 Speaker_10
Do you feel like the show reflected the possibility of that?

00:33:04 Speaker_05
No to both. I think that that show is very much of a time and place and, you know, there are people who, you know, like to, you know, use revisionist history to claim that it was always hopelessly naive. or something.

00:33:21 Speaker_05
But that was the mood of the country at the time we were making that show was this sort of optimism, this careful optimism. It wasn't wide eyed optimism.

00:33:30 Speaker_05
It was careful, like Leslie Knope was extremely optimistic about the possibility for making people's lives better. But she was also constantly confronted with the impossibility of that because people are grouchy.

00:33:43 Speaker_05
They didn't want her to do whatever she was doing. They were throwing obstacles in her way.

00:33:48 Speaker_05
We did whole seasons where there was a city council person played by John Glazer who basically essentially lived to stop her from doing whatever she wanted to do.

00:34:00 Speaker_05
pretending that everything was rosy and great, what we were trying to say was, it's a better way to go through life to be hopeful and optimistic than it is to be pessimistic.

00:34:10 Speaker_05
Now, if that show had started after June of 2015, when Trump came down the escalator, would it have been different? Probably, significantly different. Like the world shifts drastically all the time in terms of who's running the show.

00:34:26 Speaker_05
So, I don't think we would have made the same show if it had started after that moment.

00:34:30 Speaker_05
But at the time that it was on, I think it's a message that I genuinely believed in and sort of hoped was what was happening, was that there were just people who were kind of gritting their teeth and rolling up their sleeves and trying to make everything a third of a percent better than it was the day before.

00:34:47 Speaker_10
Coincidentally, I happen to have a clip that illustrates one of the points that you just made about how when she's in city council and is in the process of getting recalled, that the John Glaser character, a fellow member of city council, stands in her way.

00:35:04 Speaker_10
So here's Amy Poehler presiding over a city council meeting.

00:35:09 Speaker_08
Next on the docket is a vote to approve the Pawnee-Eagleton Reservoir merger.

00:35:14 Speaker_06
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're just goosing our water supply with fluoride? I mean, come on, are we really going to force every Pawnee resident to ingest a chemical we know nothing about?

00:35:25 Speaker_07
Fluoride is used by the communists to control our minds.

00:35:28 Speaker_08
No, it's not.

00:35:29 Speaker_07
Fluoride can control minds? Like you can use it to make ladies do stuff?

00:35:34 Speaker_08
How am I the one that is getting booted off of the city council? Okay, fluoride is safe, it is good for you, and almost every town in America uses it.

00:35:44 Speaker_06
Alright, you got me. I don't want fluoride in the water because I'm a dentist and I like cavities.

00:35:50 Speaker_08
Yeah, that is not a valid reason.

00:35:51 Speaker_06
Pawnee's cavity problem is why a small town dentist, like me, can afford such a boss ride.

00:35:59 Speaker_10
All right, now that Trump is likely to appoint Robert Kennedy Jr. in charge of all things health-related, and has advised him, like, go crazy on health, and RFK Jr. wants to do away with fluoride in the water, did you think back to this episode?

00:36:19 Speaker_05
I did. Yes, it has occurred to me. The character Jeremy Jam, played by John Glazer, is a dentist.

00:36:26 Speaker_05
And he literally moved to the town where the show takes place because there's no fluoride in the drinking water and the number one industry is a candy factory. And he was like, cha-ching, right? And, you know, I have to say this.

00:36:39 Speaker_05
We did not think at the time. that these – that the people that she encountered and their worldviews were particularly exaggerated.

00:36:51 Speaker_05
Like even then in the Obama era, as you well remember, there were plenty of people who believed in conspiracy theories, who were utterly and completely self-interested, who voted against things that were plainly good and then even if they passed, took credit for them, even if they voted against them.

00:37:07 Speaker_05
Like all that stuff has always happened, right? That's not new to the Trump era. But in that particular case, yes, when RFK Jr.

00:37:16 Speaker_05
was put in charge or in theory will be put in charge of our drinking water and may remove fluoride like this is a public health issue.

00:37:26 Speaker_05
maneuver that's considered one of the great successes in the history of public health, just the simple addition of fluoride in terms of what it meant for kids specifically, and tooth strength, and all that sort of stuff.

00:37:39 Speaker_05
And so, yeah, I have thought about that many times, that we wrote what seemed to be like a fun, slight parody of a self-interested politician, and now we're sort of heading, we're careening toward that as a reality nationwide. Not ideal, I would say.

00:37:57 Speaker_05
That's my official stance on this, Terry, is that it's not ideal.

00:38:01 Speaker_10
So a very popular moment on Parks and Recreation is when two fresh air critics were name-checked. Our TV critic David Bianculli and one of our music critics, Ken Tucker. And I want to play that clip, and I'll just set it up briefly.

00:38:17 Speaker_10
So Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler, is on the local public radio or community radio station getting interviewed by one of the hosts. And here he is promoing what's coming up.

00:38:33 Speaker_07
Coming up after the break, movie reviews with Ken Tucker, who is filling in for David Bianculli, who is in New York filling in for Ken Tucker. Leslie, would you like to introduce the next segment?

00:38:46 Speaker_08
Okay. Now it's time for Jazz Plus Jazz Equals Jazz. Today we have a recording of Benny Goodman played over a separate recording of Miles Davis.

00:39:01 Speaker_10
Research shows that our listeners love jazz So do you remember who came up with that and and why and also I want to know like didn't you think like no one's gonna get this Like 1% of your audience is going to get the joke.

00:39:21 Speaker_05
It's a little rarefied, but I'll bet if you did a Venn diagram of Parks and Recreation watchers and NPR listeners, it's a pretty big intersection. It's not the craziest thing in the world, right?

00:39:34 Speaker_05
And also, the joke works whether you know who those people are or not. If you've never heard their names, it still is funny. It's a funny little MC Escher logic loop that we wrote out there.

00:39:44 Speaker_05
But, you know, there were a number of times that Leslie went on the local NPR station over the years and it was just our chance to like make little jokes about the reality of listening to NPR.

00:39:55 Speaker_05
And that one, I don't remember who, I wish I remembered who pitched that. My guess would be that it was Aisha Muharra, who was a writer on the show the whole time.

00:40:02 Speaker_05
who loved NPR and she always loved writing those scenes and pitching jokes for those scenes. She's a wonderful writer. She writes on Hacks Now, which is another show that I executive produce. But it was always fun to do NPR jokes.

00:40:19 Speaker_05
It was always a favorite exercise. We had to kind of stop ourselves from having her go on too much because if we could have done it in every episode and had plenty to make fun of. Lovingly, lovingly, I should add.

00:40:33 Speaker_10
I should mention the voice of the public radio host was Dan Castellanada. Am I saying his name right?

00:40:38 Speaker_05
Castellanada, yeah, from The Simpsons, yes.

00:40:40 Speaker_10
Yeah, I see his name in credits all the time, but I never knew how to pronounce it because he's the voice of Homer on The Simpsons. Anyways, thank you for that.

00:40:47 Speaker_05
You're quite welcome.

00:40:49 Speaker_10
So we need to take another break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Michael Schur.

00:40:53 Speaker_10
He wrote for The Office and co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and created The Good Place, as well as a new Netflix comedy series called A Man on the Inside. We'll talk more after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

00:41:08 Speaker_12
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00:42:11 Speaker_10
This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Michael Schur. He wrote for The Office and co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He created The Good Place and the new Netflix series, A Man on the Inside.

00:42:24 Speaker_10
What's the TV that meant the most to you when you were growing up?

00:42:28 Speaker_05
Monty Python and Monty Python's Flying Circus, Saturday Night Live, Letterman, Cheers. So, you know, early to mid-80s comedy shows were the ones that I was raised on.

00:42:44 Speaker_05
My mom only let us watch – when we were kids, only let us watch an hour of TV a week. So I had to really choose carefully. And then as I got older, obviously those rules were lessened in severity. So I started watching more and more and more comedy.

00:42:57 Speaker_05
But those are the main influences on me were Letterman, Monty Python, SNL, Cheers, and then later Conan, I think, as I got into high school.

00:43:07 Speaker_10
Do you think TV meant even more to you than it otherwise might have because it was kind of taboo at home?

00:43:14 Speaker_05
I don't know. It's a good question. I mean, possibly. I mean, I kind of respected the choice to limit the amount of TV that we watched.

00:43:23 Speaker_05
You know, it's funny to think about now when everyone is carrying a phone in their pocket that can show them any piece of video that has ever been created anywhere in the globe.

00:43:32 Speaker_05
But at the time, there was still this kind of vague sense for people in my parents generation that like TV rots your brain.

00:43:38 Speaker_05
And I've had this conversation with a lot of folks my age is like a lot of writers my age is like some people gorge themselves on TV and watch, you know, hours and hours and hours a day.

00:43:47 Speaker_05
And some people were like me were like their parents are very restrictive. I don't think.

00:43:52 Speaker_05
there's any discernible difference in how people turned out, you know, which kind of gives me a little bit of hope when, you know, my son is watching TikTok all day and my daughter is, you know, watching YouTube tutorials about how to apply makeup or whatever.

00:44:05 Speaker_05
And my wife and I get worried, but it's like, well, this is the same stuff that people said about TV when we were kids. And the truth is, you know, I've talked to Amy Poehler about this. Amy Poehler watched tons of TV and was obsessed with TV.

00:44:16 Speaker_05
And I know a lot of writers and performers who felt like that and watched a ton of it. I don't sense any real difference in the way that people's personality is developed based on how much TV they watch.

00:44:27 Speaker_05
So I'm kind of hoping the same applies to the modern era.

00:44:31 Speaker_10
What are some of the most consequential changes you've seen in the world of creating television series? And I think in some ways you came in just on the cusp of a big change. Because The Office is really a game changer in terms of TV sitcoms.

00:44:49 Speaker_05
Yeah, I mean, the biggest change, obviously, is just the shift to the streaming model. You know, The Office, we did 28 episodes one year, I think, or maybe 30.

00:44:58 Speaker_05
You know, the typical season was 22 episodes or 24 episodes, and now a season of TV is eight half hours, usually. And that just completely changes the way you tell stories, right?

00:45:12 Speaker_05
The advantage TV always had over movies was you could, in success, watch a set of characters live and change and grow over many, many, many years. And now you're talking about, you know, maybe two seasons of eight episodes and then you're done.

00:45:30 Speaker_05
TV writing is much closer to movie writing, I think, than it was when I was first breaking in. Those shows are rare.

00:45:37 Speaker_05
There are shows like Abbott Elementary, certainly, and Ghosts that are on networks and still do 22-episode seasons, but, you know, that's the exception.

00:45:45 Speaker_05
The norm is you might get two seasons, maybe three, and you might get 10 episodes, but more likely eight, and that just completely alters the process of creating an idea and of executing the idea. And there's nothing you can do about it.

00:46:02 Speaker_05
That's the world we live in. But I do mourn a little bit the loss of the old system. I think during COVID, people revisited old shows that had 200 episodes, like Friends and Cheers and whatever.

00:46:15 Speaker_10
The Office.

00:46:16 Speaker_05
Yeah, and The Office, right, because- It's still on Comedy Central. Yeah, and you could sit during COVID and watch an episode every night for five or six months, and that was incredibly valuable and I think brought people a lot of comfort.

00:46:30 Speaker_05
That's what we're losing, and that's what I mourn the most about the new system, is we're just sort of losing what, to my mind, was the inherent advantage that TV storytelling had over movies or anything else.

00:46:45 Speaker_10
I would imagine you have a lot of money.

00:46:49 Speaker_09
No, I'm not going to ask the question you think I'm going to ask. At least I don't think it's the question you think I'm going to ask.

00:46:54 Speaker_05
Oh, the timing of that was so perfect, though. Terry, comedic timing was A plus on that statement.

00:47:00 Speaker_10
Thank you very much. So a lot of people might be wondering, why are you still working? You have money. You don't have to work. So what is the meaning of work to you? What does work mean in your life?

00:47:13 Speaker_05
Well, just by asking the question, you're sort of answering it, right? Because the work that I do is incredibly fun. Like, why wouldn't I work? It's sitting in a room with a dozen really funny people writing stories and making jokes.

00:47:29 Speaker_05
Like, that barely counts as work to me. It's not that it's not hard, and it's not that it doesn't come frequently with anxiety or disappointment in the way that any job would.

00:47:39 Speaker_05
But my goodness, if you can't enjoy yourself with the job I have, there's something deeply wrong with you. And by the way, there are many people who can't enjoy themselves with the job I do, and there are things that are deeply wrong with them.

00:47:50 Speaker_05
And that's why, you know, that's why there are a lot of therapists in Los Angeles. But I can't believe I get to do this. It's a miracle. It's incredible. I do it because I love it and because it's so fun.

00:48:04 Speaker_05
And not doing it, it's not like you're saying, you've dug a lot of ditches in your life. Why do you keep going back and digging more ditches? It's like the things I do are inherently enjoyable and collaborative and wonderful.

00:48:19 Speaker_05
So why wouldn't I keep doing it? It wouldn't make any sense to stop.

00:48:24 Speaker_10
Michael Schur, it's been great to talk with you. Thank you so much for this interview and for your shows.

00:48:30 Speaker_05
Thank you, it was a pleasure to be here.

00:48:31 Speaker_10
It was forking great. Michael Schur created the new series, A Man on the Inside. All eight episodes just started streaming on Netflix.

00:48:45 Speaker_10
If you'd like to catch up on fresh air interviews you missed, like this week's interviews with Selena Gomez or Jimmy O. Yang, and our conversation with New Yorker editor David Remnick and former Washington Post editor Marty Barron about the ways in which Trump might carry out his threats against the media, check out our podcast.

00:49:03 Speaker_10
You'll find lots of fresh air interviews. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org slash fresh air.

00:49:36 Speaker_10
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Sam Brigger. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski.

00:49:46 Speaker_10
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberto Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakunde, and Anna Baumann.

00:49:58 Speaker_10
Our digital media producers are Molly CV Nesper and Sabrina Seaworth. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

00:50:10 Speaker_12
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00:50:20 Speaker_12
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00:50:33 Speaker_12
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