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Former New Girl actor Jake Johnson has hinted that the show may return.
Speaking on Slate’s Thirst Aid Kit podcast, Johnson opened up about the show’s abrupt ending in 2018, its continuing popularity on streaming platforms and how he’s been speaking to the show’s creator only recently.
Johnson said: “When we were going away, Fox was being pretty cool and saying like, ‘We don’t want to cancel you, but nobody’s watching.’ So when we did our final season…Zooey Deschanel and I literally wrote an email to the heads [of the Network] asking for more, for the…fans who stayed with us.”
Johnson continued: “You can’t end the way season six ended where it was rushed. I was like, ‘Give [writer] Liz Meriwether the time to finish this right!’
“So now that there’s people following [the show], I’m like, it’s not like you’re 10 years too late, you’re 18 months…it’s a little bittersweet. We were just working!”
Speaking about a possible return, Johnson went on to reveal that he was speaking recently to showrunner Hannah Simone.
He added: “Hannah Simone and I were texting two nights ago… 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.”
Back in 2018, Deschanel explained how Prince came to appear in an episode of New Girl.
Late music icon Prince appeared in episode 14 of the show’s third season in 2014 and his appearance saw US audience numbers jump from an average of between 3 and 4 million to a one-off figure of over 26 million.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Deschanel described how Prince’s cameo happened and what it was like working with the star.
“It was a highlight of my whole life,” she said. “It was amazing just to get to hang out with him. To the very last second, we weren’t sure if he was going to come to set…We were like, ‘I hope he’s the type that shows up’.”
“I got a cold email from his manager, and it was like the most on-brand Prince email ever — like too on-brand. It was like, ‘Hello, I am manager to legendary artist Prince. He is loving the show New Girl. He would like 2 B’ — you know, like, 2 B — ‘on the show.’ And I’m like, ‘This has to be a prank. There’s no way!’”
“But I had several people check it out. It turned out it was his manager…Prince found the show, and he was watching it every week with his band, and they’d watch it on tour, and it was like he couldn’t miss it, and they were really invested in the Nick and Jess relationship. It was just one of those really surreal moments.”
Deschanel continued: “We had no back-up plan, but he showed up. He was awesome. He was such a pro… A good actor and very kind of chill all the time. Such a cool guy.”
New Girl first aired in September 2011.
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