Michael Schur

Michael Schur is an American television writer, producer, director and actor whose work has shaped several major network and streaming comedies. Born October 29, 1975, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he attended Harvard University and served as president of the Harvard Lampoon. After graduating, he wrote for Saturday Night Live before joining NBC’s The Office in 2005. On that series, adapted from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s British comedy, Schur wrote episodes including “Christmas Party,” “The Negotiation,” and “Branch Closing.” He also played Dwight Schrute’s eccentric beet-farming cousin, Mose Schrute, appearing in recurring scenes at Schrute Farms.

With Greg Daniels, Schur developed Parks and Recreation for NBC. The sitcom initially centered on Leslie Knope, Amy Poehler’s relentlessly optimistic deputy director of the Pawnee, Indiana, parks department. Its later seasons expanded the ensemble around Ron Swanson, April Ludgate, Andy Dwyer, Tom Haverford, Donna Meagle, and Ben Wyatt. The show ran for seven seasons from 2009 to 2015, and Schur was a central creative force behind its fictional municipal world.

Schur and Dan Goor created Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which premiered on Fox in 2013 and followed detectives at the fictional 99th precinct in Brooklyn. The series starred Andy Samberg as Jake Peralta and Andre Braugher as Captain Raymond Holt; it moved to NBC after Fox canceled it in 2018. Schur later co-created Rutherford Falls with Ed Helms and Sierra Teller Ornelas; the Peacock comedy examined a small town’s conflict over a statue and its Native American history.

As creator of The Good Place, Schur made a four-season NBC fantasy comedy about Eleanor Shellstrop, played by Kristen Bell, arriving after death in an apparently utopian afterlife. Ted Danson played Michael, the neighborhood’s architect, while William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, Manny Jacinto, and D’Arcy Carden completed the core cast. The series used moral philosophy as plot machinery, especially through Chidi Anagonye, a professor of ethics, and repeatedly redefined its premise through revelations about the afterlife. Schur created A Man on the Inside, a Netflix comedy starring Danson as Charles, a retired engineering professor who goes undercover in a San Francisco retirement community to investigate a theft. It premiered in 2024. Beyond television, Schur writes about baseball under the pseudonym Ken Tremendous and co-founded the Fire Joe Morgan blog, a site known for satirical commentary on sports media. His career combines performance and showrunning: he builds comic ensembles while occasionally stepping onscreen, most memorably as the silent Mose.