Many viewers today may recognize The Office from its long stint on Netflix, but the mockumentary sitcom about everyday workers originally aired on NBC in 2005. The series was adapted by showrunner Greg Daniels from the British version created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. The British series ran for two seasons with 14 episodes in total, but the American version ran for nine seasons with a staggering 201 episodes. Steve Carrell starred as the bumbling Michael Scott, manager of fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvania. A lesser known character, but no less notorious, was Dwight Schrute’s oddball cousin, Mose.
Mose Schrute only appeared in 13 episodes throughout the series, but Mike Schur’s portrayal left a lasting impression on audiences. Schur served primarily as a writer and producer for the first four seasons after being recruited from Saturday Night Live by Greg Daniels. Blurring the boundaries between writer and actor was an important aim for the showrunner, who similarly hired SNL veterans Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak to play Kelly Kapoor and Ryan Howard.
Who Is Mose Schrute?
Mose Schrute was introduced in Season 2 as Dwight’s cousin and co-owner of their beet farm. Audiences first see Mose in Season 3's "Initiation," when Dwight attempts to pit him against Ryan in a wrestling match to initiate Ryan as a salesman. Mose rarely speaks, but his outlandish antics are the stuff of legend. Some of Mose's most memorable on-screen moments are in Season 4’s “Money,” when Jim and Pam spend the night at Schrute Farms. Mose runs alongside the couple's car when it pulls up to the farm, a scene Schur recounts as being written to make his character "run like a dog." Mose also joins the couple for Dwight's bedtime reading of Harry Potter, rocking back and forth next to them in bed. In the middle of the night, Pam spots him through a window in an outhouse in one of the character's most notorious moments of the show.
Schur revealed that the character was a writer’s room joke on the podcast “The Office Deep Dive” with Brian Baumgartner. The actor who played Kevin Malone interviewed Schur about playing Mose: "I hated every second of it… They would compete with each other to see what was the most humiliating thing they could make me do... The subtext always was, the worse this goes, the funnier it'll be when it happens."
Who Is Mike Schur?
Mike Schur was a writer, producer and actor on The Office. Aside from playing Mose, he co-wrote award-winning episodes like the Season 3 finale “The Job,” where Jim finally asks Pam out on a date. He was also behind Season 2’s “Christmas Party,” where Michael famously gets Ryan an iPod at the office’s Secret Santa party. Schur left shortly after the start of Season 5 to create Parks and Recreation with Greg Daniels. He also went on to create and produce famous comedies like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Master of None and The Good Place. But he always returned to The Office to play Mose when he was written into the show.
The Office left the air in 2013, but the show has seen a massive resurgence thanks to the proliferation of streaming services. As reported by Variety, Nielsen revealed that Americans spent a cumulative 57 billion minutes streaming The Office in 2020, making it the most streamed show of the year by far. The show’s strong enduring power made it a hot commodity. According to The Hollywood Reporter, NBC edged out Netflix with a $500 million deal to release it under its own new streaming service Peacock at the start of last year.