‘The Office’ Revival: Will Michael Schur Return As Dwight’s Cousin Mose?

With the news that NBC’s planning a revival of its hit sitcom “The Office,” everyone’s wondering which of the original cast members will be returning to reprise their roles. Fans have questions not just about the main actors returning, but also guest stars, including Michael Schur, who played Dwight’s (Rainn Wilson) cousin Mose.

When Schur, the creator of “The Good Place,” held a Reddit AMA on Thursday to discuss new episodes of the series, fans from his “Office” days came out to ask him about the show’s revival.

“Hi Mike Schur, I’m from The Office-isms Discussion Group on FB,” user Definitelynotkd2 stated. “I just wanted to know if Mose will be included with the reboot?”

Schur had a very simple and concrete answer for this question.

“Over my dead body,” he replied.

User yarajaeger decided that Schur was just messing with them and hiding the truth in his response. The Reddit user decoded Schur’s statement to mean that “Mose is dead in the reboot.”

Whether or not that is true will perhaps be seen when the show comes back, or perhaps they won’t ever even mentioned Mose as he was only in a little over 10 episodes. What is true, though, is how Schur feels about playing that character, as implied by his harsh statement.

This can be confirmed by looking back at an interview he did with Entertainment Weekly last year about his role as Mose.

“Playing Mose Schrute was a waking nightmare,” Schur said. “My boss, Greg Daniels, forced me to do it as a way to cause me pain. And it was terrible. The first time I did it, I had to grow a real neck beard. Every time after that, he ‘let’ me use a fake beard, which is maybe worse, because those beards are terrible.”

Schur was a writer on the series, but when his boss asked him to take on the role, he obliged. He didn’t realize then that it was going to cause him “pain” and be something that he’d never want to do again.

“They would give me one line, and then they would always say the same thing, which is, ‘I think it’s funnier if he doesn’t say anything,’ and they would cut my line,” Schur said. “It was brutal.”

Nothing is really ever official in the TV world and perhaps he could be convinced to reprise his role if a lot of the other cast members came back.