Star of the FOX sitcom New Girl Lamorne Morris fully supports reviving the sitcom in some capacity, but also knows that the success of the series was based on the writing team and creator Liz Meriwether. In this sense, he admits that, while he would love to reprise his role of Winston for a new adventure, or even a spinoff sitcom, he would get to just “play and perform” on the project as opposed to investing in developing it from scratch. While New Girl was a hit with critics when it was originally airing, it was its arrival on streaming platforms that really grew its popularity with audiences tremendously, arguably making it more popular now than it was when it was airing.
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“There have been talks about it. I’m not sure how serious those talks were,” Morris revealed to Variety about a possible reboot or revival. “It is such a fun thing to do for us as performers, but the writing was so great, I’m not sure how easy it was for [creator] Liz Meriwether and her squad to create it. I feel they had fun in the writers’ room, but I’m assuming it was also a tough job because I feel like every episode was on point. It takes brilliant writers and a lot of hard work to accomplish that. And so, it’s easy for me as a cast member to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I would love to do another,’ because I just get to play and perform, but someone’s got to create that atmosphere.”
He added, “Listen, I would totally be down. Hell, someone write a spinoff. If you’re reading this article, write a Winston spinoff! I am totally down to do it.”
Winston was a key member of the series’ ensemble throughout its entire run, though was absent from the pilot. Damon Wayans Jr. starred in the pilot, but scheduling conflicts saw his character Coach written out of the show while the second episode introduced Morris’ Winston.
The actor also expressed how much fun it was to embody the figure and how it took a few seasons to really find his groove.
“The way I got to perform when I was playing Winston was a dream come true. I find it incredibly enjoyable,” the actor expressed. “Right now, New Girl has a new audience where it feels like it’s just as big now as it was when we first debuted. I would say Season 3 in New Girl is where I found my stride of like, ‘Oh, my God, this is what I like to do, this style of performance, this character, these choices that are very left of center.’ I thoroughly missed that style of performance and silliness and the whimsical nature of it all.”
He continued, “And not to say I don’t enjoy things like Fargo or some other projects and movies I’ve done, but Fargo you have to be a certain type of invested, and there’s a stillness to it. There’s this gravitas to the stakes that even in your downtime, I’m keeping myself on edge. With New Girl, it was just free for all, loose, improvising every scene. I definitely miss doing that.”
One of Morris’ costars in the sitcom, Jake Johnson, similarly cited the series’ success to Meriwether, though was more doubtful about any type of reunion.
“I don’t like the idea of all of us sitting on a couch and hugging in front of cameras and then getting sincere and being like, ‘What Max Greenfield means to me…’ with him right there,” Johnson recently shared with ComicBook.com. “All that feels really bizarre to me, as well as the idea of doing a, ‘Let’s get the gang back together.’ And now it’s like, ‘Nick Miller’s definitely fatter.’ I’m thinking that we’re all with our fake kids. I don’t know.”
He continued, “But it’s the same thing in terms of the Peter B. Parker thing. Liz Meriwether is the creator behind it all. It’s her vision, it’s her show. Liz was such a great partner in that she allowed us all control of our own characters with her, so we could improvise, we could move around and she would write to us, but it’s her baby. So if Liz texted me in the middle of the night and said, ‘I have a great idea for New Girl,’ that’s very different than if Netflix or whatever, Hulu tried to put something together just to make money on it. But I don’t think Liz is doing that because I think she’s slammed and doing new stuff, and I think it’s hard to get everyone. But if it came from her, I think we would all for sure listen. She’s really talented and she gave us all the biggest jobs of our lives.”
Stay tuned for updates on a possible future for New Girl.
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