Blackstone Group President Jon Gray has channeled his inner Michael Scott in the latest of the alternative giant's annual holiday videos.
Mr. Gray is billed as "Mr. Sunshine" in the nine-minute video on YouTube, modeled after an episode of the NBC sitcom "The Office."
Blackstone employees in the humorous video relate their experiences dealing with Mr. Sunshine's desperate attempts to boost morale over the past year of Zoom meetings.
Those attempts include the weekly Blackstone Group photo contest, in which we see Joseph Baratta, global head of private equity, astonishing the easily fooled Mr. Sunshine with a clearly photoshopped portrait of him with his arm around his pet tiger, and Wayne Berman, senior managing director and head of global government affairs, posing proudly with his extraordinarily kitschy needlepoint.
Even Stephen A. Schwarzman, co-founder, chairman and CEO, gets into the act, revealing to the audience he has simply propped up a cardboard cutout of himself for every Zoom meeting and Mr. Sunshine hasn't even noticed.
All display infinite patience with their overenthusiastic president. And for the holidays, Mr. Sunshine does a Secret Santa gift exchange in which he's the Santa for everyone, dispensing spectacularly awful gifts like a CVS receipt, a broken snow globe, and 8-month-old sourdough starter, among others.
The video ends with employees lip-syncing "Walking on Sunshine" and offering heartfelt thanks to first responders, essential workers and teachers.
The video is available on YouTube.
