If you’ve never watched “Superstore,” the NBC workplace sitcom created by Justin Spitzer that ran for six seasons from 2015 to 2021, you’re really missing out. Not only is this show sweet, funny, and delightfully weird, but it also features some of the best and strangest running gags in recent TV memory. Apparently, one of those three bits wasn’t even really a joke, though; the show’s actual soundstage just inspired it.
During a virtual panel for San Diego Comic-Con in 2020, executive producers Gabe Miller and Jonathan Green sat down with a bunch of the show’s central cast members. Flanked by Ben Feldman, Colton Dunn, Nichole Sakura, Kaliko Kauahi, Nico Santos, Lauren Ash, and Mark McKinney, Miller revealed the secret behind the whole raccoon thing. (Allow him to explain.)
“The running bit in the show that fans would know about — the raccoons infesting the store was partially inspired, as the cast would know, by the actual raccoons that we have on our soundstages,” Miller said. “From time to time, you’ll be shooting a scene and you’ll see, up in the rafters, like, a mama raccoon like peeking over. It’s cute, but you know, it’s a little … It’s taken care of. Don’t worry.”
The cast members did have some understandable concerns, especially because they were on a COVID-mandated break from filming at the time. “Oh, really? They haven’t [taken over] during this time we’ve been down?” Dunn mused, laughing. “Oh, it’s an entire city of raccoons there,” Feldman said, making everyone else laugh, too.
