The original post: /r/television by /u/saltonthewound on 2024-08-09 22:31:29.
Currently doing a re-watch of Parks and Recreation. One thing I noticed during this re-watch is that so much of the cast went on to have very successful careers, while in contrast much of the cast of the US version of The Office did not.
Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, Nick Offerman & Aziz Ansari were mostly unknown when the show premiered.
Chris Pratt went on to become Starlord in the MCU. Aubrey Plaza is incredibly famous these days and starred in the second season of The White Lotus. Nick Offerman had the iconic role in that one episode of The Last Of Us, also having a very well sold book and a few stand up specials. Aziz Ansari had a Netflix series and a decent amount of comedy specials that, not sure if they have critical acclaim, but seeing some of them he was a pretty big name in stand up based off the arenas he filmed them in (not sure if that still holds true after the controversy regarding him).
In contrast, the US version of The Office pretty much only had John Krasinski and Steve Carrell to have very successful careers (perhaps you can include Ed Helms in this from the Hangover movies if you will).
I won’t talk much about which show is better, I love both of them and have seen them both multiple times over, what I can say objectively is that they are highly regarded as stand ups and have a huge fanbase.
Both were created by Michael Shur and Greg Daniels (not exactly created with The Office but you get my point). I believe both Rainn Wilson and Brian Baumgartner have made comments about not being able to get work after The Office ended. So what made so much of the P&R cast go on to be massively successful while barely any of The Office’s cast went on to do anything else?