Zooey Deschanel remembers the reaction when she signed on to play Jess Day in New Girl: “Why would you do that?” and “You’re doing what?” Back then, she told the Zach Sang Show in an interview published July 6, 2026, movie actors and TV actors stayed in their own lanes. “You didn’t cross over.”
Her read on it was simple. “This material is good so I’m gonna do it and I like it,” she said, adding that it would have been “crazy” to pass.
The part was different from anything she’d done, and she liked that not everyone was sure she could handle it. “I know I can nail this but not everybody knows I can nail this.”
The doubt was part of the appeal. She said she enjoys proving people “a little bit wrong or a lot bit wrong,” and that people still underestimate her “so much all the time.”
She uses the same lesson on her kids. When her daughter doesn’t land the theater part she wanted, Deschanel points to her own early roles: “Do you know how many trees I played?” The idea, she said, is that you make the most of whatever you get.
The Fox comedy premiered September 20, 2011, and ran 146 episodes across seven seasons before its 2018 finale.