New Girl


New Girl is an American television sitcom created by Elizabeth Meriwether and produced by 20th Century Fox Television for Fox that aired from September 20, 2011, to May 15, 2018. The series revolves around quirky teacher Jessica Day after she moves into a Los Angeles loft with three men, Nick Miller, Schmidt, and Winston Bishop. Former roommate Coach and Jess's best friend Cece Parekh later join the characters. The show combines comedy and drama elements as the characters, who are in their late 20s and early 30s, deal with relationship issues and career choices. New Girl is a joint production between Elizabeth Meriwether Pictures and 20th Century Fox Television and is syndicated by 20th Television.
Produced in Los Angeles as a single-camera comedy, New Girl is an ensemble show aimed at a general audience. New Girl received acclaim from critics and was named one of the best new comedies of the 2011 fall season. The pilot episode drew 10.28 million U.S. viewers and a 4.8 adults 18–49 demo rating, making it the highest-rated fall debut for a Fox scripted show since 2001. Particular praise has been given to the performances of Deschanel, Greenfield, Simone, Johnson and Morris. The show has garnered increased mainstream viewership following its inclusion on Netflix, becoming one of the most popular shows on the platform. The series concluded its seven season run in May 2018.

Plot

, a bubbly and quirky teacher, comes home from vacation to find her boyfriend, Spencer, with another woman and leaves him immediately to look for somewhere else to live. After Jess answers an ad for a new roommate on Craigslist, she moves into a loft in Los Angeles with three men around her own age: Nick, Schmidt, and Coach. After the pilot episode, Winston, a former roommate and Nick's childhood friend, replaces Coach, who leaves the apartment to live with his girlfriend. Jess's childhood best friend, Cece, is a fashion model who frequently visits Jess and the guys.
The series follows the group's interactions with each other as they become closer friends and develop romantic relationships. Midway through season 1, Schmidt and Cece become involved in a mostly sexual relationship but break up at the end of the season. In Season 2, Jess is laid off from her teaching job; she and the others get involved in mostly temporary relationships however, Cece enters an arranged marriage engagement with Shivrang that is broken up at their wedding in the season 2 finale when Cece realizes she loves Schmidt. Schmidt had recently started dating his old college girlfriend Elizabeth and has to choose between Elizabeth and Cece. Meanwhile, Nick and Jess develop feelings and start dating at Cece's wedding, making their relationship official at the end of season 2,and it lasts through most of season 3 until they realize that ultimately, they want different things in life.
Coach returns to the loft in season 3, revealing that he had broken up with his girlfriend and rejoins the gang, and even has a short fling with Cece after ending the short relationship with Schmidt. He stays through season 4 until he moves out to be with another girl, May and moves to New York. At the end of season 4, Schmidt proposes to Cece, and they marry at the end of season 5. Meanwhile, after bouncing around several random jobs and several dating choices throughout the series, Winston works to become a police officer with the LAPD, and falls in love with his partner Aly. At the beginning of season 5, Jess is called away to jury duty resulting in the group bringing in a temporary roommate Reagan Lucas, who becomes Nick's love interest for the rest of the season. Shortly after returning from jury duty, Jess realizes that she loves Nick and wants to be with him.
At the end of season 6, Nick and Reagan break up and shortly after, Nick and Jess get together, Cece and Schmidt are pregnant, and Winston is engaged to Aly and is trying to meet his father. Season 7 advances the storyline three years later where Schmidt and Cece have a three-year-old daughter named Ruth, Winston and Aly are expecting their first baby, and Nick proposes to Jess. The story advances further to a timeline where Nick and Jess have a child.

Cast and characters

  • Zooey Deschanel as Jessica "Jess" Day: a bubbly, offbeat teacher in her early thirties who is originally from Portland, Oregon. In the premiere episode, she moves into the guys' apartment where Nick, Schmidt, and Coach help her move on from a painful break-up with her boyfriend, Spencer. She later dates Nick on-and-off eventually becoming engaged in the final season. Jess was not specifically written for Zooey Deschanel but the producers found her a great match to the character. Deschanel became a producer on New Girl and helped build Jess's character, specifically concentrating on not making her the classic wife character being ignored by the men and trying to keep out of trouble.
  • Jake Johnson as Nick Miller: Jess's roommate who works as a bartender at a nearby bar. At the start of the series, he struggles with a break-up with his long-term girlfriend Caroline. He and Jess have an on-and-off relationship but ultimately end up together.
  • Max Greenfield as Schmidt: Jess's roommate, a seemingly confident ladies' man. He is a successful marketing associate in a female-dominated office. Schmidt dates Cece in the earlier seasons, but this ends after he cheats on her. However, they later reconcile, marry, and have a child, Ruth.
  • Lamorne Morris as Winston Bishop: a former basketball player and Nick's childhood friend from Chicago. Returns to the loft after playing for the Latvian Basketball League, in the second episode. He later becomes a cop and meets his wife on the force. He is very close to his cat, Furguson, and sometimes is mocked for this.
  • Hannah Simone as Cece Parikh: a fashion model and Jess's best friend since childhood. In spite of their differences, Cece is a very loyal and protective friend to Jess. Initially skeptical of Jess's new roommates, Cece becomes interested in Schmidt and integrates herself more and more socially with the others as time progresses.
  • Damon Wayans Jr. as Ernie "Coach" Tagliaboo : a cocky and driven former athlete who works as a personal trainer. He appears briefly in the "Pilot" episode as a roommate but leaves in the second episode. After a break-up with his girlfriend, Coach returns to the loft two years later and reintegrates himself back into the lives of his former roommates, becoming a coach at the middle school Jess teaches at.
  • Megan Fox as Reagan Lucas : is an attractive, no-nonsense bisexual pharmaceutical sales rep, first appearing in season 5 when she comes to town on business and rents out Jess's room while the latter is sequestered on jury duty. She knows Cece from a previous gig they did together.
  • Danielle and Rhiannon Rockoff as Ruth Parikh-Schmidt : Schmidt and Cece's three-year-old daughter.

    Production

Development

first approached playwright Elizabeth Meriwether in 2008 to develop a pilot that was eventually shelved. After Meriwether's success with the 2011 romantic comedy film No Strings Attached, 20th Century Fox approached her once more, and she pitched an idea for a TV sitcom about an "offbeat girl moving in with three single guys", inspired by her experience of "bouncing from Craigslist sublet to Craigslist sublet, for four years in L.A." when she was in her twenties. This show was initially called Chicks and Dicks with two of the characters similar to the final characters of Jess and Schmidt. The initial idea was a Will & Grace-style comedy inspired by Meriwether's close friendship with a guy after their exes started dating each other. The Fox network liked the script and pursued Zooey Deschanel for the role of Jess, to whose story Meriwether felt most connected. As the script developed, the plot moved on from being about the sexual endeavors of the roommates and became more socially oriented, so the title was changed to New Girl.
The show attempts to combine "comedy and drama as the five characters explore the difficulties of the decade between 30 and 40, which is when many people take their biggest steps toward maturity" with regard to relationships and careers, which, unlike Friends, is giving the show a "built-in biological clock". Producer Jake Kasdan said that "Their lives are moving forward, they're still trying to hang on to some kind of crazy youth" although he does not "want them ever to seem pathetic."
On April 9, 2012, New Girl was officially renewed for a second season of 24 episodes; Fox ordered one more episode during the second half of the season.

Casting

Movie actress and singer-songwriter Zooey Deschanel was in the process of developing an HBO show when she read the New Girl pilot script and responded to the material. The character of Jess was not specifically written for Deschanel, but the producers found it a great match and adjusted it to better fit the actress. With the support from Fox, Meriwether wanted to make Jess a unique, interesting and funny female character that would have been the side character on other shows. Deschanel became a producer on the show and helped build the character, requesting to not play the classic wife character who would be ignored by the guys she tries to keep out of trouble. Meriwether's goal was to write about herself from an honest perspective, with Jess mirroring her at the start and later Deschanel until Jess turned into a "hybrid of me and Zooey, the writers, and the editor". Deschanel described Jess as a part of her, especially with regard to "the sort of enthusiasm and optimism" of her youth. She does not shy away from playing embarrassing scenes or being unattractive. As Kasdan said, "This show advocates for the attractive dork." Although Meriwether had always imagined the show as an ensemble show, Fox would later focus its first marketing push on Zooey Deschanel and gave the show the promotional tagline "Simply Adorkable." The show's tone evolved after critiques of Jess’s “adorkable” persona. Creator Elizabeth Meriwether addressed these concerns with episodes like “Jess and Julia,” which depicted Jess defending her quirky identity, deepening the character's development and the show's humor.
File:Flickr - Genevieve719 - Zooey Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, Lamorne Morris, Hannah Simone.jpg|thumb|The show's main cast: Zooey Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, Lamorne Morris, and Hannah Simone at Paley Fest 2012.
Basing Nick Miller on a friend also surnamed Miller, she originally imagined Nick as the smartest one of the group who doesn't need to say that and thought of him as "the everyman one, who's stepping away and commenting on what all the crazy people are doing around him." She sent the New Girl pilot script to movie actor Jake Johnson, with whom she had enjoyed working on No Strings Attached and guided him through the audition process. Johnson auditioned with Max Greenfield, who impressed the producers in his first audition as Schmidt. The actors auditioning for Schmidt were more varied in appearance than those auditioning for Nick, and Johnson and Greenfield were initially worried that they looked too much alike. However, both men were cast the same day.
Meriwether originally envisioned Coach as "a fat Jewish guy, like a manchild" and later as "this dumb jock crazy rage problems". David Neher was among the 400 actors auditioning for Coach before the producers settled on Damon Wayans Jr. who was expecting his show, the ABC sitcom Happy Endings, to be cancelled. When that show was renewed for a second season, Wayans' spot was replaced with Lamorne Morris, who had also read for Coach but had been unavailable for filming the pilot. Meriwether estimated that about 80 percent of the pilot would have needed to be re-shot in order to remove Wayans from the episode, since he was in one of the leading roles of the show. As the producers also liked reflecting the frequent apartment changes in young people's lives, Meriwether, 20th Century Fox and the studio decided to keep the characters and the plot of the pilot episode as they were. Morris joined the show in the second episode of the series when the producers had already broken seven episodes without knowing what the actor was going to be able to do. Wayans returned to New Girl in season 3 for a season-long arc after Happy Endings had been cancelled, and was officially added as a regular for season 4.