What To Know
- Parks & Recreation co-creator Mike Schur shared his thoughts on a spinoff, saying the original show fully explored its themes during its run.
- Cast members like Aziz Ansari have expressed interest in returning for a new project.
- A long-running inside joke among the cast about a fake show called “Philly Justice” even led to the creation of mock scripts and filmed scenes.
Prolific writer and producer Mike Schur has weighed in on the possibility of a Parks and Recreation spinoff following the recent debut of The Office spinoff The Paper.
Schur, who co-created Parks & Rec with Greg Daniels, recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter, where he was asked whether the Office spinoff had inspired any ideas for returning to Pawnee, the fictional town at the center of the hit NBC sitcom that ran from 2009 to 2015.
Unfortunately, Schur believes Parks & Rec already said everything it needed to say. “That show had a very specific argument to make about government at a very specific moment in time, the Obama era. We left nothing unsaid,” he told the outlet.
Parks & Rec centered on an underfunded Parks Department headed by mid-level bureaucrat Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler). The show also starred Rashida Jones as Ann Perkins, Aziz Ansari as Tom Haverford, Nick Offerman as Ron Swanson, Aubrey Plaza as April Ludgate, Chris Pratt as Andy Dwyer, Adam Scott as Ben Wyatt, Jim O’Heir as Garry “Jerry” Gergich, Retta as Donna Meagle, and Rob Lowe as Chris Traeger.
Talk of a spinoff increased in September when Ansari said he’d be open to reviving his character, Tom Haverford. “Oh man, if I get to spend time with Jim [O’Heir], I would love to do [a new Parks & Rec project],” Ansari told Entertainment Weekly at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“I would love to spend time with anybody from Parks, even if the show was terrible, and we just got a decent enough check, but we got to spend time together,” he added. “I might just be up for it.”
Meanwhile, Scott told EW he’d be interested in seeing a spinoff based around O’Heir’s character. “When we left the show, he was mayor, still, of Pawnee,” Scott stated. “I’d like to see how that worked out, like, if there were any scandals or if he was able to keep his powder dry and run the town in the way we know it should be run. I feel like Jerry would have done a terrific job.”
Back in May, Poehler spoke with Shur on her Good Hang podcast, where they discussed their upcoming comedy series, Dig, which follows four archaeologists who uncover a secret while working at an excavation site in Greece.
During the conversation, the pair brought up a spinoff idea that originated on the set of Parks & Rec. After Poehler, Jones, and Scott took a group photo with Parks & Rec guest stars Kathryn Hahn and Paul Rudd, an idea sparked for a nineties-set, David Kelley-style procedural show, where the actors would all play Philadelphia law clerks.
“Philly Justice is a fake TV show that a few cast members made up on the set of Parks and Rec one day because we looked at a picture of ourselves and we laughed and we said, ‘Oh, we look like we’re in a TV show called Philly Justice,’” Poehler recalled, per People. “That small inside joke, on set laugh grew into a beast that is still discussed today.”
Jones previously talked about Philly Justice in an interview with The Independent last year, noting that what started as a bit of fun eventually became an obsession. She revealed the Parks & Rec writers even wrote “an entire episode of a different show” based on the group’s idea.
“We became obsessed with it and so did the writers,” she shared. “We shot 15 pages of a show that doesn’t exist with our free time.”
Would you like to see a Parks & Rec spinoff? Or maybe a real attempt at Philly Justice? Let us know your thoughts below.