Jake Johnsonis ready to hang with his old roommates again.
One week after theNew Girlalum’s former costarMax Greenfieldconfirmed the cast—includingZooey Deschanel, Lamorne Morris, Hannah SimoneandDamon Wayans Jr.—will reunite for a charity event in October, the actor revealed how the reunion came to be.
“Here’s the real truth of that: Max is involved in that and he just sent a text to the group,” Johnson told E! News in an exclusive interview at NBCUniversal’s Summer Backlot Experience Aug. 10. “He said, ‘Can you guys do this with me so it could help try to raise money for this organization?’ And we all just said yes.”
Indeed, theNew Girlgang is set to receive the Rising Phoenix Award Oct. 10 at the Chrysalis Butterfly Ball, an event to support Chrysalis’ mission of helping people work toward meaningful employment. Greenfield is returning this year to host the fundraiser for the fifth time.
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And while Johnson is looking forward to hanging out with his castmates again soon, he is hopeful about his move from their Los Angeles loft to the interrogation room on his upcoming showSunset P.I., set to premiere on NBC in 2027.
“What I loved about this script is it felt so different and so unique,” he shared during a panel discussion, as seen in footage captured at the event byEntertainment Weekly. “What I hope is we can bring some of the cast from that show to be part of this show and kind of connect to that universe.”
Still, Johnson recently emphasized that ifNew GirlcreatorLiz Meriwetherwants to reunite the cast for a reboot in the future, he is so down.
“Whenever Liz says, ‘This is what I want to do,’ if we were all in, then I would love to get in there [again],” he toldColliderlast month. “I’ll always love that show and everybody involved in it.”
To look back at all the fun facts you may have forgotten aboutNew Girl, scroll on…
—Reporting by Amanda Champagne-Meadows
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And with the main role sorta kinda fashioned in the writer’s likeness, “It’s funny. My cousin in Florida, who didn’t actually know that I had been working on this show, saw the promo and called my mom and was like, ‘There’s some show on Fox where Zooey Deschanel’s acting like Liz,'” shared Meriwether. “It just feels like that kind of mind meld.”
And, actually, the issue for Meriwether was the use of the word in the first place. She hadn’t seen her creation as a “cute” show, she admitted to Glamour ahead of the 2018 finale. “I think it was sold out of the gate as that,” she noted. “I honestly think because Jess wore glasses, they needed to make this the marketing campaign. If it was my job to market the show, it probably wouldn’t have opened well. It definitely was difficult for me because it wasn’t the show I’d dreamed of. I had always seen the show as just weird people in L.A. living together.”
Enter Veronica Mars alum Max Greenfield who “came in with this amazing take on it,” she continued. “He wanted Schmidt to be a good character, and he played him as someone that was actually insecure. The character got so much deeper and more interesting when he came in to do that audition.”
Then came this crucial tip. Approaching executive producer Jake Kasdan, Greenfield told Entertainment Weekly he said, “‘Let’s just try to make this character as not-douchey as possible.’ And he goes, ‘Well, just don’t play him douchey.'”
4. Greenfield particularly leaned into this character quirk. “I like to pick them specifically,” he told E! News of mispronouncing words like Jay Cut-uh-ler, chut-ta-ney and, of course yooths, a nod to the time he spent working with dialect coaches to shed his native New York accent.
“Every once in a while they’ll come and tell me to mispronounce a word, and I’ll go, ‘I would never mispronounce that word. Why would I ever say that incorrectly?’ But I like to identify them, and then hit them, and they get very upset. Sometimes I’ll do it at the table read, and they’re like, ‘We just want to hear it.'”
On his way to celebrate the booking with wife Erin Payne at a Mexican restaurant, “I was already thinking about what I was going to order,” Johnson told The Advocate. “I was going to get chips and guacamole, a blended margarita, a quesadilla for the table, and a chicken burrito for me. I knew she was going to get tacos, so I figured we’d do a little mix and match on that.” Instead, he shared, “I had chicken salad with no dressing.”
But once he was established on the show with his regular, still pretty fit shape, “They made a bunch of jokes,” he said on Thirst Aid Kid. “Once Liz made a joke about it and Max Greenfield hit the joke and everybody laughed. I think everybody at the network could exhale and say, ‘Nick Miller, he could be the chubby guy.’ As soon as that joke happened, I got my two sides, I got my margaritas, I was back to eating the way I should eat.”
He reached the final audition, Morris revealed to E! News, only to get an offer for a CBS pilot called The Assistants. Though he “really wanted to be on New Girl,” he explained, “I had to choose, who was making me the offer. Because I could go and audition for New Girl and do the test and not get it. And then CBS goes and tests for their show and picks someone else and then I’m just s–t out of luck.”
Ultimately, Damon Wayans Jr. was chosen as the confident personal trainer only to find out his series, Happy Endings, which had been in limbo, was picked up for a second season. And with Morris’ pilot not moving forward, creators brought him in again for the new role of lovably goofy Winston Bishop.
“Now that was the grueling part of the audition process,” Morris noted, “because I had to re-audition all over again against the entire town. I mean, you name it, everyone was reading for it. I auditioned a total of 15 times for New Girl.”
While writers lifted a lot from his real life, “Obviously it’s a heightened version,” he said. “I’m not as dense as Winston is. But I just remember after the show ending, me having moments where I had to remind myself that I’m Lamorne, not Winston, so stop behaving this way.”
Morris recalled having “chemistry” with Wayans instantly. “He definitely helped my character a lot,” he told E! News. “There were moments on set where we were doing bits or in a scene and he’d just whisper jokes in my ear. I mean, he’s like one of the funniest people on the planet and his joke-writing ability is top, top, top. So when he pitches a joke, it’s funny. And you use it.”
The questions reached such a fevered pitch on one Golden Globes carpet, that Morris recalled Johnson snapping back, saying, “What are you implying? Damon did one episode of the show! I think we’re a good 20 episodes in with Lamorne. I think it’s safe to say Lamorne is a member of this cast.”
It was warranted, noted Johnson during a panel at 2020’s Vulture Festival. “They were utter dogs–t questions,” he explained. “You don’t just need one Black guy. You can have a bunch of ’em on the show!”
Soon after, Ralph Ahn was cast as the recurring character who popped up in seven episodes only ever uttering two speaking lines.
In the past, she continued, “I’ve had experiences where I wasn’t allowed to change words around at all because you have to say everything, exactly as written on the page. That’s not fun for me. For me, part of being an actor is being able to contribute to a character’s rhythms. If there’s room to explore, you find a happy medium. We almost always get it as written, and then, we throw some improvs in or some alternatives.”
Agreed Morris, “The great thing about our show is that Liz Meriwether and all the writers, Brett Baer, Dave Finkel, they did a great job of blending the bits that we did off camera and who we really were with our characters.”
“We were all reading the script and it said, ‘Now they all play a drinking game,'” Johnson told E! News. “And I think it was Lamorne who finally said, ‘What are the rules to True American?’ And [the writers] go, ‘To be perfectly honest, we’re not sure.’ There’s a lot of flaws in the logic of the game. So in terms of the rules of playing it, you just have to get drunk and yell presidents and throw beer in corners. That’s it.”
Even with 14-hour days in the earlier seasons, “It was like it wasn’t work at times,” he told E! News. “There were times a guest director would come in and just get so frustrated, because all we’re doing is having fun. We’re goofing off. We’re being silly. We’re joking around. And that translates to the camera, when the camera rolls, a lot of times, we’re still doing a bit and then the editor has that tough job of having to cut out where the actor ends and the character beings.”
High on the list was Deschanel’s real-life sister, Bones star Emily Deschanel, but, “We have to pass her soundstage to go to our soundstage and they’re always working,” executive producer Baer told E! News. “But we’d love to work with her and so would Zooey.” Instead they brought in Linda Cardellini as Jess’ wild card little sis. “We needed someone who was beautiful and who can really act but also be funny,” noted Baer. “I think we hit a homerun. Linda is fantastic.”
Other requests from the cast included Greenfield wanting Ray Romano to portray his dad (“He’s my hero. He’s as good as it gets”), Johnson throwing out the idea of NFL great Peyton Manning coming in as his boss at the bar and Morris requesting, “Beyoncé and Rihanna at the same time.”
Turning down a season two episode called “Virgins,” (“Obviously, in hindsight: The episode was too racy,” Meriwether told Vulture) he said he’d be interested in something else. And with the post-Super Bowl time slot, said Baer, “It was perfect timing.”
He was down to have the crew end up at his party, with one caveat: He wanted to play a role in the central romance. Said Baer, “He’s a Nick and Jess shipper!”
16. And, yes, he had other demands. “He wanted to choose the name of the non-speaking chef character, the chef’s wardrobe, the paintings on the walls, the linens in the bedroom set, his wardrobe, Zooey’s wardrobe, the music, the pancakes, the hairstyles,” Meriwether told Vulture, “he had a piece of art, a poem written out in the shape of an egg, flown from Minnesota to hang on the wall of the set.”
Midway through the nighttime shoot, he approached Meriwether with another suggestion: Set to surprise Jess in a dark closet, he asked “Isn’t this funnier?” if he flicked on a lighter under his chin rather than a flashlight. “I tried to stay cool,” she recalled. “‘Yeah, that’s funnier. Let’s do that.’ As if there were ever a world where doing exactly what was inside Prince’s head wasn’t one of the greatest privileges of my life.”
In fact, Swift was so good, it was “a little bit frustrating,” Johnson admitted. “She came in and is really nice. It’s not an easy scene. There were probably 70 extras there—though I’m sure she performs to so much bigger [crowds] than that on a regular basis. She had, like, a little monologue and delivered it perfectly. Liz gave her alternative jokes and lines, she delivered them all perfectly. It was frustrating!”
Of course, it wouldn’t be a successful series if they simply rode off into the sunset problem-free. “I think that now they are in a relationship with each other, I don’t think that those problems or dilemmas change,” Baer continued. “I think that those are the dynamic of anybody being in a relationship, is that you’re always confronted with big questions about that person that you have from the time you met them.”
So he and Deschanel “literally wrote an email to the heads [of Fox and 20th Century TV] asking for more, for the few OG fans who stayed with us,” he revealed. “You can’t end the way season six ended where it was rushed. I was like, ‘Give Liz Meriwether the time to finish this right!'” The answer was to flash-forward to the year 2020 with satisfying endings for all.
“There’s so many things I’d do differently, but when we were putting together a clip reel for our wrap party, I went back and watched old episodes, and it was the first time I could really enjoy them,” Meriwether told Glamour ahead of the 2018 finale. “At the time, you’re tired and feeling every mistake or joke that got cut. But going back I was like, ‘Oh, these are pretty funny!’ I couldn’t remember all the craziness to get there.”
Throughout those seven seasons of filming, “You’re closer to the cast and crew than you are with your own family at home, because you spend more time with them,” he continued. “And that never goes away. We all genuinely get along.”
“Liz Meriwether would have to crack a great story, and if she does that, it would be really fun to get everybody back,” Johnson told E! News in 2020. And it wouldn’t be hard to round up the troops. “Hannah Simone and I were texting two nights ago,” he shared. “Zooey and I still text. All the guys and I are on a text chain. Everybody’s still linked up, so I would be surprised if there’s not some sort of a thing at some point where everybody comes back.”
Morris would actually take it one step further. “I’ll put it to you like this,” he told E! News. “Dexter is coming back. It’s one of the greatest shows in my opinion and I think it’s going to do gangbusters. New Girl will be even bigger. Obviously there are a lot of things that would have to make sense, but for sure, that’s something I would love to do. And I think I’ve spoken to other castmates as well that feel the exact same way: Do one final season or, hell, a New Girl movie. Who knows?”
No matter what, he teased, “There is something coming. We will return. Stay tuned to our social channels and we will be dropping little hints.”
