“That’s What She Said…”
For any fan of The Office, you are definitely familiar with this phrase uttered by Dunder Mufflin boss Michael Scott any time an innocent statement is mentioned but implied to be lewd or sexual when taken out of context.
But if you’ve ever wondered where the phrase originally came from, we can trace its US roots as a joke to first season of Saturday Night Live in the 1970s but if you went even further back and crossed the pond to England, you’d find its roots at the turn of the 20th century.
SAID THE ACTRESS TO THE BISHOP
The English origin of the phrase comes from the Wellerism, “Said The Actress To The Bishop” a phrase originating in stage plays around 1901-1910 though it didn’t originate in print until 1928 in a novel by Leslie Charteris called “Meet The Tiger ” the third of many novels about his James Bond-esque character, The Saint. In those days of stage play English actresses supplemented their income by doubling as prostitutes. Their presence on the stage actually helped advertise their other job to the men in the audience. Young women working the theaters as servers (called “Orange Girls” since they served fruit) would help arrange meeting time between the actresses and audience members.
Actresses apparently had such loose morals that men of the clergy would often “spend a lot of time” with these women attempting to get them to “confess their sins.” This practice became so commonly known that the phrase, “Said The Actress to the Bishop” would become the quip of choice when something said something that could sexual innuendo behind it.
THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID
It’s unknown how the US translation of the phrase came to be but it’s believed to jump to the United States via Alfred Hitchcock as he used a variation of the phrase in a test reel for his 1929 film Blackmail. When the statement, “‘It will not come out right,’ as the girl said to the soldier” was uttered and is popularly cited as the first TWSS” joke.
By the 1970s, “Said the Actress to the Bishop” had all but gone extinct in popular language. The US interpretation of the phrase, “That’s What She Said” appears in print in the 1973 Edmond Addeo/Robert Burger book EgoSpeak which states the “The cheapest shot of all, of course, is the ancient one-liner, ‘That’s what she said.’ This reply can be used after virtually any remark, however innocent, and the speaker can summon up some hint of double-entendre.” Essentially stating the term is so old and hack it’s beneath someone to use it.
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
Then in 1975 Chevy Chase is credited for first uttering the phrase, “That’s What She Said” on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” sketch. The phrase would exist fairly exclusively in the Saturday Night Live circles through the Mike Meyers/Dana Carvey “Wayne’s World” sketch. When the joke turned up in the 1992 Wayne’s World movie with Garth holding a photo of model Claudia Shiffer, Garth states that he’s “getting tired of holding it,” and Wayne replies, “Yeah, that’s what she said.” And if you weren’t a kid in the 90s quoting all of the lines from Wayne’s World, did you even have a childhood?
THE OFFICE
While the phrase was popularized in the 90s by Wayne’s World one could make the argument that the phrase’s origin for The Office is not tied to SNL but rather back across the pond to England when Ricky Gervais created the sitcom in 2001. Gervais’ character David Brent frequently used the Wellerism of, “Said The Actress To The Bishop” and when that series was developed for the US, Steve Carell adopted the American equivalent of, “That’s What She Said” for his Brent’s corresponding American character of Michael Scott and the phrase reached peak pop culture influence.
And the rest is history.