Zooey Deschanel Reveals ‘New Girl’ Cast Member She Had ‘Too Much Chemistry’ With on Show

Every show needs an episode-by-episode re-watch podcast, and New Girl finally scored its with Welcome to Our Show, featuring Zooey Deschanel, Lamorne Morris, and Hannah Simone. In the second episode, Deschanel revealed that the writers were concerned that she had too much chemistry with Jake Johnson, who played Jessica Day’s love interest Nick Miller, at the start of the series. Deschanel admitted to being a little confused by this at the time.

Morris, who played Winston Bishop, asked Deschanel if it was true that the writers thought she and Johnson had too much chemistry to make it believable that they wouldn’t instantly fall in love. “I remember them saying that. They were like, ‘Listen, you guys have such great chemistry. This is a series. We have to play this out over time, and we don’t want to put you guys in the same storylines together,’” Deschanel recalled.

Deschanel thought this was actually a good thing, but the writers did not want to show their chemistry immediately. This was a show that would go on to last seven seasons after all, and Jessica and Nick didn’t even kiss until Season 2. “I think we all had good chemistry together from the get-go, in different ways,” she recalled. “They did say they wanted to play out that storyline, that our chemistry was really good.”

While promoting the new podcast, Morris and Simone told E! News that the late Kobe Bryant was surprisingly a big fan of New Girl. They found out when Bryant stopped by the set himself. “As I’m coming out of my trailer, I see this tall dude in a Nike track suit walking up to the stage with one of the executives,” Morris recalled. “I was like, what actor is 6’6″? Like, this is silly, who is that? And up comes Kobe Bryant.”

Morris was left star-struck. “I genuinely felt like I was about to have a heart attack. I didn’t know what to say. If anyone knows me, they know that I’m a huge basketball fan,” he told E! News. It was even more stunning to learn that Bryant was at the studio just to see the New Girl cast. He watched them tape and episode and “he sat back and he chatted us up,” Morris recalled.

Simone remembered they were filming the Season 2 episode “Table 34” when Bryant stopped by. She said her male co-stars were left “dumbstruck” when they saw Bryant. “We just sat and talked about his childhood growing up, and how he started in basketball, and what kind of drove him to it and his relationship with his parents,” Simone recalled.

New episodes of Welcome to Our Show are released thought the iHeartRadio podcast network on Mondays. All seven seasons of New Girl are available to stream on Netflix. The show was created by Elizabeth Meriwether and originally aired from 2011 to 2018.