For seven seasons, New Girl was low-key, goofy, reliable comfort viewing on Fox primetime.
Set in and around a giant loft in downtown Los Angeles, New Girl turned its cast into
stars. Here's what the cast of New Girl looked like before their iconic loft life.
While New Girl evolved into an ensemble show about the de facto family formed out of adult friend
groups, it was at first a TV comedy vehicle for Zooey Deschanel, who over the previous
decade had built up a huge resume playing likable, quirky, "manic pixie dream girls."
Zooey attended the prep school Crossroads alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Kate Hudson,
and went on to attend Northwestern University, but dropped out after less than a year to go back
to Los Angeles to act professionally. Almost immediately, she found work in small parts,
like the Offspring's video for "She's Got Issues." The actress was never
off-screen for long in the 2000s, playing the runaway older sister in Almost Famous,
department store elf Jovie in Elf, wayward earthling Trillian in The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy, and elusive dream girl Summer in (500) Days of Summer.
While New Girl was supposed to be about the quirky Jess Day,
it was equally about the journey of Nick Miller, an odd duck in his own right. Clearly suffering
from arrested development, he's content to be an emotionally distant bartender
with an on-again, off-again relationship with Jess, eventually finding he's got a
talent for writing novels about New Orleans detective Julius Pepperwood.
"Check this out. I'm gonna birth this book. Here you go: It's a baby book."
Initially, Jake Johnson didn't even set out to be an actor — he was a playwright,
studying at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and staging his play,
Cousins, off-Broadway. He then joined a comedy act in New York,
paving the way for his role on the internet-based Derek and Simon: The Show.
According to an interview with The New York Times, the Derek in the title is Derek Waters, who was
inspired to create the popular series Drunk History about a 2007 conversation with Johnson,
in which the latter tried to explain, while drunk, the story of the death of Otis Redding.
"Derek and I got drunk in about 2004, 2005, and I go, 'Oh, boy, do I have a story for you.'"
Besides inspiring Waters to make a hit comedy show,
Johnson also landed small roles in indie movies like Paper Heart
and studio films like Get Him to the Greek before portraying underachieving Nick on New Girl.
Before landing the role of fastidious but fussy, success-driven flatmate Schmidt on New Girl, Max
Greenfield worked regularly in series television. Not long after graduating from high school,
he landed brief guest spots on youth-oriented shows like Greek, Gilmore Girls, and The O.C.
He was most recognizable for two semi-regular parts: fratty, jerky, personal assistant
Nick Pepper on Ugly Betty, and flirtatious sheriff's deputy Leo D'Amato on Veronica Mars.
Unlike the lovelorn, romantically pining Schmidt, Greenfield was already married by
the time New Girl started -- although he did pull from an experience to play a guy with a bunch of
roommates, having been in that kind of situation after he moved to Los Angeles to become an actor.
"Ten years in marketing, three years in fatherhood, and six months of planning
this party...I feel like my entire life has been leading up to this very moment."
After seven seasons of New Girl were produced and aired,
it seems like the real new girl all along might have been Cece.
Her character arc was the most dramatic, beginning the series as a jet-set model
and finishing it up as the owner of a successful modeling agency and a married mother of a toddler.
"We'll be fine. What you see as a life-or-death mission, I see as a week off with my daughter.
Wrong again. Buckle up."
As it turns out, actress Hannah Simone understands the plight of the model, having done that as an
occupation long before she moved into acting. According to an interview with the actress by
Redbook, Simone was raised in Europe, where she was showing others how to look good in clothing
professionally at a young age. Her family then moved to Canada, where she earned degrees from the
University Of British Columbia and from Ryerson University in Toronto. If that's not all, Simone
then moved to London, where she began volunteering at the United Nations.
Eventually, the actress propelled herself into the entertainment industry, appearing
as a newsreader and VJ on MuchMusic, the Canadian equivalent of MTV, and WCG Ultimate Gamer on SyFy.
"Welcome to your first real-life challenge, where we take you beyond the game."
Sometimes Coach is there, and sometimes he isn't. Similar to his commitment-shy character,
actor Damon Wayans Jr. couldn't be locked down to this series because of outside pursuits.
Prior to New Girl, he co-starred on ABC's funny but low-rated Happy Endings. According to Variety,
he assumed it would be canceled after its first season in 2011 when he joined the New Girl pilot,
only for Happy Endings to earn the first of two renewals, necessitating Coach's exit
after episode one. Wayans Jr. headed back to the loft after Happy Endings’ 2013 cancelation, and
he remained until the end of season four in 2015 when Coach followed his girlfriend to New York.
If Wayans Jr. looked familiar, it's because he looks almost exactly like his famous father,
Damon Wayans. The younger Wayans got his start in entertainment thanks to his dad,
who cast him in a small role in his movie Blankman at age 12,
giving him a recurring role on My Wife and Kids as goofy family friend John, and adding him to
the troupe of sketch comedy players on his short-lived Showtime series The Underground.
Showing up in the second episode, Winston Bishop filled the room and void left by the
departure of Coach. Lamorne Morris brought both straight-faced silliness and sympathy to Winston,
not to mention a hilarious obsession with Ferguson, his exotic house cat.
"FYI, you guys live with the cat , too. But at least I get to reap the benefits."
Morris didn't have a ton of acting experience before landing a major role on a network sitcom.
Apart from bit parts in episodes of shows like The Guild and appearing in a handful of movies and
short films, Morris was best known for his work as a TV host. In the years preceding New Girl, Morris
was a consistent presence on the BET channel and hosted the Cartoon Network game show Brain Rush.
Nasim Pedrad was more or less a regular cast member of New Girl,
joining the show midway through its fourth season as Aly Nelson,
Winston's first partner in the Los Angeles Police Department. Over 28 episodes,
Aly went from hostile coworker to friend to eventually Winston's girlfriend and wife.
Pedrad pretty much made her career in 2009 when she won a spot in the cast of Saturday Night Live.
Prior to that, however, she credits a certain classic sitcom for pushing her
towards comedy. As the Iranian-born starlet revealed in an interview with Refinery29,
"I grew up, borderline learned English, watching I Love Lucy. So, that was my example of just a funny
person. She happened to be a woman, and was doing things that no one else had done at that time."
In her five seasons on SNL, Pedrad made a name
for herself with savage impressions of Kim Kardashian and Arianna Huffington,
and original characters like the nerdy teen Bedelia. Pedrad left SNL to play Jane on John
Mulaney's short-lived sitcom Mulaney, which ended in 2015, freeing her up for New Girl.
In the grand tradition of sitcom stunt casting of characters' parents with famous people,
New Girl producers brought in veteran TV star, writer,
and director Rob Reiner to portray Jess's jubilant cheerleader of a father, Bob Day.
"Look, look, I better get a phone call tonight with
the news that my daughter has a fiance. I don't even care if it's not you."
He first showed up in the second-season Thanksgiving episode,
the subject of Jess's attempt to "parent trap" her divorced mom
and dad into getting back together, the first of 11 appearances throughout the run of the show.
Like his TV daughter, Zooey Deschanel, Reiner is a second-generation Hollywood denizen,
son of legendary comedian and The Dick Van Dyke Show creator Carl Reiner.
After striking out in his own right as an actor, Reiner landed one of the most
iconic television roles of his generation for eight seasons on All in the Family.
The other fictional contributor of Jess Day's DNA is Joan Day, who appeared in six episodes
across the run of New Girl. Like Rob Reiner, Jamie Lee Curtis is also a very recognizable,
second-generation Hollywood veteran with many successful and distinct career periods.
She's the daughter of matinee idol Tony Curtis, star of Spartacus,
Some Like it Hot, and The Defiant Ones, and his first wife, Janet Leigh,
who will forever be best known for her role as Marion Crane in Psycho.
Jamie Lee followed in her mother's footsteps as a scream queen,
portraying the seemingly unstoppable Laurie Strode in the Halloween franchise.
After a couple more scary flicks like The Fog and Prom Night, Curtis moved into comedy,
becoming one of the most reliable and frequently working actresses in the '80s and '90s.
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