“The Office” star Rainn Wilson recently told Fox News Digital that the beloved NBC sitcom could’ve never been made in today’s cultural climate.
“I do feel like you couldn’t make ‘The Office’ today,” said Wilson. “I think that would be too hard to be as politically incorrect as the show was. And I do kind of miss that.”
He added that there was a lot of “really inappropriate” humor in “The Office,” especially from his character, Dwight Schrute, and Steve Carell’s lead, Michael Scott. Wilson thought, even though Michael and Dwight were portrayed as having no “self-awareness,” their antics wouldn’t fly in 2026.
“We milked that for a lot of great, really inappropriate stuff,” Wilson recalled. “But even with the fact that painting that character as just an idiot, I don’t think you could get away with it today.”
Wilson starred as Schrute across all nine seasons of “The Office,” which aired on NBC for 201 episodes from 2005 to 2013
Despite Wilson’s comments, “The Office” recently received “The Paper,” a sequel series that premiered on Peacock in September 2025. Starring Domhnall Gleeson, Sabrina Impacciatore, Chelsea Frei, Melvin Gregg, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Alex Edelman, Ramona Young, Tim Key and Oscar Nuñez, “The Paper” follows the day-to-day of a struggling Midwestern newspaper. The second season is set to launch later this year.
This isn’t the first time Wilson opened up about how “The Office” pushed boundaries with its humor. He told “The Last Laugh” podcast back in September 2025 that “The Office” could be “jaw-droppingly” offensive, and that if it were released today, it would be a “very, very different” show.
“Listen you know, the Benihana Christmas episode where Michael and Andy draw with a sharpie on one of the Asian women that they’ve brought back to the Christmas party is jaw droppingly kind of horrific,” Wilson said. “And it’s a tricky conversation, you know? 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.”
