Zooey Deschanel made a name for herself with a stream of offbeat-yet-endearing performances in films like All The Real Girls, (500) Days Of Summer, and Elf. After launching a recording career as one half of She & Him, the performer found her defining role as Jessica Day on Fox’s New Girl. Originally positioned as a showpiece for its “adorkable” star, the show has evolved into one of TV’s most impressive ensemble comedies. New Girl begins its sixth season tonight, with an episode that finds Deschanel following in co-star Jake Johnson’s footsteps by trying her hand at directing for the first time. She recently took some time to speak with The A.V. Club about life both in front of and behind the camera.
The A.V. Club: Some viewers might not be aware that there are some improvisational elements to New Girl. How does that work on set?
Zooey Deschanel: I would say generally we’re kind of loose on set. Some sets are real word-perfect; our set thrives on its looseness. Most of the actors are really good improvisers. Some scenes we stick to on-book, especially if it’s a more dramatic scene, or if it’s perfect as is, or it just works best sometimes. And then a lot of times we’ll just open it up and play a little bit.
AVC: Was that hard for you to take on? Was your acting career in movies not as loose as that?
ZD: No, I actually did a lot of improvised movies or movies that were partially improvised. All The Real Girls was a lot of improvisation. We did rehearsals where we’d also improvise for long periods of time and then write everything down and kind of rework the script around the actors. Most comedies tend to be—unless they’re really old-school. They work better when they’re loose anyway. So I was used to being loose on set with language, and I don’t thrive in a word-perfect environment.
AVC: How was that for you stepping behind the camera for the season opener? When you’re improvising, your actors are improvising, and you’re in the scene—do you do a number of takes? If you have one that’s good, do you then try another one and see where it goes? How did that work for you?
ZD: Yeah, it was a great experience. We’re in our sixth season, so we’ve all been working together a long time. It’s very much a collaborative effort at this point. There are no dictators on set. So it was really fun to be able to take a kind of behind-the-scenes angle on it, and I really enjoyed myself. It was especially fun to help the guest actors coming in create the characters and figure out how to play those characters. Because all the actors are great to work with, but they all know their characters really well, so it’s not a huge amount of adjustment you’re doing. It’s kind of a small range of adjustments.