The way Carolyn Cassidy describes her job—“I’m responsible for managing the network’s interests”—sounds suspiciously like a censor. But she and other crew members insist creative differences were kept to a minimum. “There has not been any content that has been too risqué for the network,” Cassidy says.
Still, I can’t imagine last week’s “Diversity Day” episode (written by Novak) went over without a hitch. In the episode, the office holds a diversity awareness training session following an “inappropriate incident”—namely, Scott’s re-enactment of a certain Chris Rock routine about different types of black people. “What’s the problem? Is it because I am white and Chris is black?” Scott asks, an innocent, incredulous smile on his face.
The day culminates in Scott’s own hastily constructed seminar, in which workers are given ethnic identities (attached to their foreheads on notecards) and asked to treat each other accordingly. “Stir the melting pot!” Scott yells, before welcoming an Indian co-worker to “my convenience store. Do you want a coo-ookie?” He summarily gets slapped.
“When the character says something that’s outrageous, you have to have another character to refute it or make a joke out of it,” Cassidy says, explaining how the ethnic jokes make it past the censors. “It’s so clear when Michael’s behavior is inappropriate. We actually didn’t have any standards problems with that.”
Cassidy, the daughter of a local television producer, cut her teeth in the entertainment biz at the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, where she co-produced “I Get No Kick From Campaign,” the troupe’s 1999 musical production.
“The Pudding was four years of practice for this job,” she says.
She moved out to Los Angeles right after graduation, finding low-level assistant work at CBS. But she soon jumped ship to the Peacock network, where she was promoted to an executive three years ago.
Cassidy is now a director of current series, a position that makes her privy to what NBC is planning next. She says the Peacock—which suffered the most from the demise of the sitcom, losing heavy-hitters like “Friends” and “Frasier”—may be heading toward the new style of comedy heralded by “The Office.”
“We are encouraged to produce more television shows like [“The Office”], that have awkward pauses and have edgy humor,” Cassidy says, citing “Malcolm in the Middle” and “Scrubs” as precursors to the current crop of Peacock offerings. “Frankly about half of the shows we have in development now are single-camera.”
Which means there may still be hope for the beloved sitcom. As David Brent says, “A good idea is a good idea forever.”
—Staff writer Michael M. Grynbaum can be reached at grynbaum@fas.harvard.edu.