Michael Schur weighs in on 30 Rock's blackface episodes, Brooklyn Nine-Nine's response to Black Lives Matter protests and Megan Amram's past offensive tweets

Vulture

Schur also discussed The Good Place series finale in a wide-ranging conversation with Vulture. Regarding the 30 Rock's blackface episodes, Schur said he thinks Tina Fey made the right decision to pull the episodes rather than add a disclaimer, but he isn't totally sure how he feels. "The show is very obviously, plainly, not using blackface the way blackface had been used in minstrel shows and in systemic, oppressive ways in this country for hundreds and hundreds of years," said Schur. "It was making a very, very specific point, and it was doing it through the lens of two total dopes. It’s obvious the show is not saying in any way, shape, or form that blackface is acceptable...I think there’s probably, long-term, more benefit to that episode still being up and to people being able to watch it and think about it, but only if there is some kind of context provided. In things like this, there are no easy answers. Everybody is just fumbling around trying as hard as we can to try to do better." As for Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Schur emphasized that the NBC comedy is fellow co-creator "Dan Goor’s show," so he's not really involved. "I don’t 100 percent know what they’re planning to do," said Schur. "I know they’re being incredibly thoughtful about it. It’s a tricky thing. They want to address it more than anything, and they’re going to. But also the show has a very specific tone and it’s very silly and fun, and you can’t just turn on a dime and make the show into something it isn’t. The show is not designed to be a vehicle for the intense and drama-filled discussion of social justice. So if you suddenly make it that, it’s not going to work. Whatever message you’re trying to get across won’t be received, because people will be like, 'What the hell is this? This isn’t the show that I know.' At the same time, if you don’t address it at all, then it’s absurd — you’re doing a show about police officers in New York City who are completely, utterly failing to address the dominant issue of the day that has to do exactly with them and their behavior. So it’s a really dicey thing." Schur also addressed the controversy over his former Good Place producer Amram's past offensive tweets about gays, Asian-Americans and the disabled. Amram hasn't tweeted since apologizing on June 17. "I’ve talked to her multiple times because I love her, and it’s sad when your friend is going through something painful," said Schur. "It is thematic, certainly. The theme of the show is, 'Look, you’re going to blow it sometimes. You’re going to make mistakes. Everybody does.' So the question isn’t how to avoid making mistakes. The question is, once you make mistakes, how do you go about improving yourself? In this case, those things she tweeted were, I don’t know, eight, nine years ago. So I knew her not as that person but the person who came after that. And that person has spent pretty much every waking moment of her life fighting for LGBTQ rights and radical equality among all people in the world, especially marginalized people, women, and gay people. So when it came out, it was like, 'Well, the advice that I would give you is the advice that you’ve not only already taken but have actually been acting on for the last nine years, which is to be a better person than that.'"