Michael Schur
- In full:
- Michael Herbert Schur
What are some of Michael Schur’s notable TV shows?
Where did Michael Schur start his career?
What role did Michael Schur play on The Office?
What book did Michael Schur publish in 2022?
Who is Michael Schur married to?
Michael Schur (born October 29, 1975, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.) is an American television comedy writer, producer, and director who started his career working on Saturday Night Live (1975– ) and The Office (2005–13). He later established himself as a leading voice of the modern sitcom as creator or cocreator of such popular shows as Parks and Recreation (2009–15), The Good Place (2016–20), and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013–21).
Early life and career
Schur was born to Warren M. Schur, a lawyer, and Anne Herbert, a clothing industry executive. The family moved from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to West Hartford, Connecticut, when Michael Schur was a child. He was president of the drama club as a student at William H. Hall High School. He then attended Harvard University, where he wrote comedic pieces for and served as president of The Harvard Lampoon, the school’s storied humor publication; other notable Lampoon presidents have included William Gaddis, John Updike, and Conan O’Brien. Schur graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1997, having written a thesis on David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest (1996).
In 1998 Schur was hired as a writer for the long-running NBC late night comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live (SNL). Several years later he was promoted to producer of SNL’s “Weekend Update” news segment, which at the time featured Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon as cohosts. His first episode in that new role aired the weekend after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Schur won an Emmy Award for outstanding writing for a variety, music, or comedy program as part of the SNL writing staff in 2002 before leaving the show in 2004.
The Office and Parks and Recreation
Schur then became a producer and writer on the highly regarded NBC workplace mockumentary sitcom The Office, an American version of the acclaimed British comedy series of the same name, which starred Ricky Gervais. Developed by Greg Daniels, a fellow former SNL writer, the show follows boss Michael Scott (Steve Carell) and his colleagues at a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. In 2006 Schur received an individual Emmy nomination for writing the “Christmas Party” episode, and the following year he took home an Emmy for outstanding comedy series in his capacity as producer. He also occasionally acted on The Office, making several appearances as Dwight Schrute’s cousin Mose, a mostly silent, neck-bearded character who lives alone on the Schrute family’s beet farm. During this time Schur also coproduced the first season (2005) of the well-received HBO comedy series The Comeback, starring Lisa Kudrow of Friends fame.
In 2008 Schur and Daniels created Parks and Recreation, a mockumentary sitcom like The Office, this time set in a government department in a small Midwestern town. The show starred former SNL cast member Amy Poehler as sunnily upbeat bureaucrat Leslie Knope, who earnestly seeks to improve her community. Schur told The Believer in 2015 that the show’s two themes were “optimism beats pessimism” and “no one achieves anything alone.” Parks and Recreation first received negative reviews but eventually became a cult favorite and launched the careers of several cast members, including Chris Pratt, Nick Offerman, Aziz Ansari, and Aubrey Plaza.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place
In 2013 Schur launched his next project, the Fox police procedural sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which he created with Dan Goor. The series starred Andy Samberg, another SNL alum, as a New York Police Department detective and featured a diverse ensemble cast. Critics praised its warm, humane tone, with The Guardian stating in 2023 that, like Parks and Recreation, it was “populated by characters who care for each other. Jokes rarely arrive cruelly, cheaply, or at the expense of punchbag characters or specific groups.” Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s first season won the Golden Globe Award for best television musical or comedy series. The series was canceled after airing for five seasons on Fox but was then picked up by NBC, where it ran for three more seasons.
In 2016 Schur created the much-praised comedy series The Good Place, which ran for four seasons on NBC. The high-concept sitcom starred Kristen Bell as Eleanor Shellstrop, a woman who was selfish in her life on earth but after dying is mistakenly sent to the Good Place—a highly exclusive heavenly afterlife setting designed by Michael, played by Ted Danson—instead of the hellish Bad Place. There Eleanor meets Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper), a former philosophy professor who attempts to teach her ethics. Unusually for a mainstream program, the show made frequent references to canonical works of moral philosophy, from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to T.M. Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other. Critics noted a darkening in Schur’s sensibility; in 2017 The New Yorker observed, “If ‘Parks’ was a liberal fantasia, ‘The Good Place’ is a dystopian…comedy about the quest to be moral even when the truth gets bent, bullies thrive, and sadism triumphs.” After the show’s conclusion Schur continued to ponder those ideas, and in 2022 he published How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question, a humorous compendium of philosophical concepts and ethical dilemmas.
Other productions
Schur has served as executive producer on numerous other TV series, most notably Master of None (2015–21), Rutherford Falls (2021–22), Primo (2023), Hacks (2021–24), and A Man on the Inside (2024– ).
Personal life
In 2005 Schur married fellow TV writer and producer J.J. Philbin, daughter of renowned talk-show host Regis Philbin. The pair met when they were both writers at SNL, and they have one son and one daughter.