The Good Place's Mike Schur is still down to work with Aziz Ansari
Mike Schur spoke with The Daily Beast about The Good Place, shirtless Chidi, and the “Doug Forcett fiasco,” but the mind behind Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine also offered a compelling response to a tough question: Would he work with Parks and Rec’s Aziz Ansari again after the actor was hit with allegations of sexual misconduct earlier this year?
“The Good Place is one of few shows that explicitly asks how to live a good life, how to be kind to each other, what we owe to one another, even with all the messiness and difficulty of adult life,” the interviewer began before bringing up Schur’s recent apology for casting Louis C.K. in Parks and Rec despite having heard the rumors. “It’s a very different, less black-and-white situation with Aziz Ansari,” they continued. “How do you handle each? Would you work with Aziz again?”
Schur begins by saying that, yes, he would work with Ansari again. He goes on, then, to offer a long, thoughtful take on what he calls “phase two” of the #MeToo movement, in which he says it’s time to “get specific” and recognize the prevailing behaviors that need to be condemned. “Phase one was like, just an apocalypse of ‘holy shit, look at everything that’s been happening,’” he said. Phase two, he said, involves an articulation. “What are the behaviors that are more prevalent than others?” he asked. “What are the differences and similarities between them? What are the patterns?”
He doesn’t mention Ansari or the intricacies of his particular situation directly, saying that “my personal feelings about all of these people are not really super relevant.” He does, however, say that cases like his and those of C.K. and others implicated need to stay rooted in the cultural consciousness. “That’s what we all need to do in every one of these cases is keep talking about it, don’t ignore it, confront it, deal with it, cope with it, root it out where it needs to be rooted out,” he said. “That’s the cure for this, ultimately, I think. The cure for any bad behavior, any systematic bad behavior, any calcified bad behavior, is to be like, sorry! We just gotta keep talking about it. I know it’s exhausting. But think about how exhausting it was for people when no one would talk about it. That’s how I feel about all of this stuff.”