Skip to main content

The Daily Beast: "The Woman Behind New Girl"

As the first season of Fox’s breakout comedy New Girl comes to a close, creator Liz Meriwether talks to me about the blowback over star Zooey Deschanel and her character Jess’s “adorkable” qualities, the show's handling of sexuality, and girl-on-girl snark.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Woman Behind New Girl," in which I sit down with New Girl creator Liz Meriwether to discuss the show's first season as a whole, reactions to Jess and her "adorkable" qualities, the show's handling of sexuality, girl-on-girl snark (particularly surrounding New Girl and Girls), and more.

One of the few comedy hits of the season, Fox’s New Girl, wraps its first season Tuesday night.

Created by Elizabeth Meriwether (No Strings Attached), New Girl revolves around a socially awkward teacher, Jess (Zooey Deschanel), who—after discovering her boyfriend has cheated on her—moves in with three guys (Max Greenfield, Lamorne Morris, and Jake Johnson) and discovers that they are just as neurotic as she is.

At 30, Meriwether might be one of the youngest television show creators in Hollywood. Arriving fresh from a dental cleaning, she was sporting similar eyeglasses to the ones Zooey Deschanel’s Jess dons on the show. Meriwether’s been known to spend the night at the office and says coffee is her fuel. “Honestly, other people’s brilliance and creativity gets me through the day and pushes me to keep thinking about the show,” she said, sitting in her office on the Fox lot in Los Angeles. “Because there are definitely times that I want to curl up with Upstairs, Downstairs and disappear.”

The Daily Beast caught up with Meriwether to discuss the evolution of the show, its handling of Jess’s sexuality, girl-on-girl snark, the breakout character of Schmidt (Greenfield), and more.

“The characters don’t have to be symbols of a bigger movement. I feel like we are really past that.”

One of the things the show has done so well is transform the notion of an awkward girl moving in with three guys into a study of group neuroses, gender, and the ways in which makeshift families are constructed. Was this always the goal?

That makes it sound really smart. The show was always about this ensemble. The way that I had always pictured it was four or five weirdos living together and trying to figure stuff out. Zooey [Deschanel] is such an amazing presence and such a great ensemble member herself. The show is growing towards everybody having their own stories and people being interested in all of the characters, which I think is great. For our show to work, you need to see it as an ensemble and not just one person’s show.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.
253 comments
Continue reading full story...

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season ...
135 comments
Continue reading full story...

In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj...
55 comments
Continue reading full story...