According to Deadline, Zooey Deschanel (Failure to Launch, 500 Days of Summer) talks about how she and her fellow cast members had to fight for actor Lamorne Morris on Fox’s sitcom New Girl. During an appearance on the Zach Sang Show, Deschanel spoke about how. Morris had initially auditioned for the role of Coach, but he never advanced due to taking a role on another series that failed. The series created the role of Winston, a former basketball player who was a childhood friend of Nick’s, and Deschanel knew that Morris was perfect for the role.
“What about Lamorne? That guy is so good,” Deschanel remembers via Deadline saying after reading with “so many” guys for the role of Winston. “Jake loved him. Max loved him. They all knew him because they had all been in the audition process together originally.”
He was the one that “everybody was like, oh, I don’t know,” continued Deschanel via Deadline. “So we kind of did this thing where I wrote to the heads of the studio and the network. Everyone was writing to somebody different. So we were all like, ‘Just putting my two cents in, you know… we think Lamorne is the best, best, best for this character, and would be such a great addition. I was like, I can’t see anyone else playing this part.”
New Girl is a sitcom created by Elizabeth Meriwether (Single Parents, Bless This Mess) that ran from 2011 to 2018 on Fox. The series followed Jessica Day, a quirky, bubbly teacher who moves into a Los Angeles loft with three single men after a bad breakup. The series showcases the lives of each character through their comedic actions to make it through every day.
The series cast included Deschanel, Morris, Jake Johnson (Let’s Be Cops, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), Max Greenfield (The Neighborhood, A Man on the Inside) and Hannah Simone (Not Dead Yet, Super Troopers 3).
New Girl is available to stream on Hulu.