Zooey Deschanel reflected on the grueling production schedule required for the hit comedy “New Girl,” calling the levels of exhaustion she faced at the time “dangerous.”
The actress, who starred as Jessica Day on all seven seasons of the Fox comedy between 2011 and 2018, recalled the tough schedule during a recent appearance on former co-star Jake Johnson’s “We’re Here to Help” podcast.
“Now the hours were too much,” Johnson remarked during their sit down. Deschanel quickly co-signed the comment, adding, “The hours were insane. I would drive home from work and be almost like, falling asleep.”
Per Deschanel, production didn’t offer rides to and from set, which she found “really crazy.”
“My mom would wake up in the middle of the night because I’d be like, ‘I’m so tired. I can’t drive home,’” she recalled. “And she would wake up to talk to me so I’d stay awake. Isn’t that really sweet?”
As Deschanel went on, she remembered one instance on set, where she cried really easily for a scene due to being overtired.
“I remember that because … we’d have to do press and stuff on our weekend,” she said. “I had to go to the Emmys on a Sunday night, I think. And then I was there at 5 a.m. And I remember I had this puppy in a cup scene and I had like, lost my voice. It was all like raspy.”
She continued: “And then, I really was so tired. I was like, supposed to cry over this puppy in a cup. It really happened pretty easily, ’cause I was so over tired.”
She then quipped that, even though “it was dangerous and there were a lot of things that were kind of crazy,” the intense schedule “did set up some good moments” for her.
Watch Deschanel’s comments above. A representative for 20th Television did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
