‘The Good Place’ Creator Mike Schur Confronts America’s Genocidal Past

After creating Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn 99 and The Good Place, Mike Schur has decided to dive head-first into the culture wars with his Rutherford Falls. The new show, now streaming on Peacock, stars The Office’s Ed Helms as a well-intentioned but problematic descendant of colonizers who finds himself in a battle over historical statues and everything they represent with the nearby Native American tribe.

Schur returns to The Last Laugh podcast this week to get into all of the controversial issues raised in his new series, explain why Native American representation was so important on-screen and off, and share some hilarious stories from his early days writing for SNL and The Office.

“Sometimes people in this country froth at the mouth because the idea that history might be updated at any moment is like an existential threat,” Schur says. “And I don’t understand why. Who cares?”

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“This is the hill I’ll die on,” he continues. “Whenever someone says, ‘But this is the way it’s always been,’ my answer is always, ‘So what?’ That’s not in and of itself a good reason to keep doing it. So I have zero patience for anyone who is making an argument that something can’t change because it has always been done this way.”

Listen to the episode now and subscribe to ‘The Last Laugh’ on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts and be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Tuesday.

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