Zara Reyes: Hey, hi, hello — I have been sitting on this since Saturday and I need to say it out loud to someone.
Cole Bryant: Wait, what happened, what did I miss?
Zara Reyes: Jamie Lee Curtis. August 10th. NBCUniversal Summer Backlot Experience. She called filming New Girl — and I need you to hear this — 'awful.'
Cole Bryant: Awful?! Like she said that word?
Zara Reyes: Verbatim. 'Single-camera comedies, for me, not fun.' Seven seasons, 146 episodes on Fox, a fanbase that is genuinely unhinged about this show — and she's just like, yeah, awful.
Cole Bryant: Okay but dude — wait, why was she even at a NBCUniversal thing? She's not on New Girl anymore.
Zara Reyes: She was promoting Newlyweds. Her new NBC multi-camera sitcom. She was literally there selling the competing format when she torched the other one.
Cole Bryant: No — bro. She said 'awful' about New Girl at an NBC press event for a different show she's on? That's the whole thing right there.
Zara Reyes: But okay — here's the part I keep getting stuck on. Because that's almost too clean, right? Like, is she being honest or is she doing a product demo?
Cole Bryant: Wait, actually — do we even know what she was specifically mad about? Like what is single-camera versus multi-camera in practice?
Zara Reyes: Single-cam is filmed like a movie. Dead quiet between takes, no audience, you're basically acting into a void — and multi-cam has a live crowd in the room laughing at you in real time.
Cole Bryant: Oh so it's like — dude, it's like doing stand-up versus recording a YouTube video alone in your apartment at 2am. One of those gives you energy back.
Zara Reyes: Exactly that. And she said it verbatim — 'for me, awful.' Not the show. She called New Girl 'very funny.' Her issue was purely the format, the silence, no live audience feedback.
Cole Bryant: That's — wait, that's actually a real performer preference. That's not a weird thing to feel. But she said it while promoting Newlyweds, which is multi-cam, which is the thing she's saying she likes better. I mean — she basically demoed the contrast for NBC.
Zara Reyes: Which is why I cannot tell you if that was candor or a press event talking point.
Cole Bryant: No but bro — can it be both? Like, she genuinely hated filming on a silent set, AND that genuine feeling happened to be perfect marketing for Newlyweds. Those two things don't cancel each other out, they just... exist at the same time.
Zara Reyes: No, that's fair — and that's lowkey the most unsettling version. Because if it was calculated you can write it off, but if it was just honest and it landed perfectly for NBC anyway? Nobody can touch that.
Cole Bryant: But wait — the part that's actually wrong is the take that fans have every right to be furious, right? Like that's the version going around. 'She talked trash about New Girl.' She literally did not.
Zara Reyes: No but that's the circulating take and it doesn't survive contact with what she actually said. Curtis called New Girl 'very funny.' Word for word. The 'awful' was the single-camera format, the silence, the no-audience thing — not the show, not the writing, not Zooey Deschanel.
Cole Bryant: Okay but — does that distinction matter if fans literally cannot hear it that way?
Zara Reyes: It matters because the whole moral weight of the backlash depends on it. And here's the part that gets me — she played Joan Day. Guest arcs. Season 2 Episode 8 in 2012, back for the finale in Season 7 in 2018. She was not a series regular. She wasn't Zooey, she wasn't Jake Johnson. The fandom is holding her to Zooey Deschanel standards for a recurring guest.
Cole Bryant: Six years between appearances and they still want full cast loyalty.
Zara Reyes: That's the parasocial IP protectionism thing — you show up in the world of a show that people love, and you inherit the loyalty contract whether you signed up for it or not. Joan Day showed up in someone's breakup era. Someone watched 'Parents' in 2012 crying on their couch. That's not Joan Day's fault or Curtis's, but now it's her debt.
Cole Bryant: Dude — okay, picture a millennial who watched New Girl through, I don't know, a bad year, Joan Day episodes included — and then Curtis's quote just shows up on their feed. The emotional logic of being hurt tracks even if the actual read is completely wrong.
Zara Reyes: Totally. The feeling is real. The take is wrong. Those are both true.
Cole Bryant: And then she went on Instagram to tell everyone to move on — which, like, that response is a whole other conversation because I don't know if that helped or just fed it.
Zara Reyes: The Instagram post is what keeps this alive — that's the thing. 'HEY INTERNET! HI!' — she literally wrote that. Like that's the opening of the post.
Cole Bryant: 'HEY INTERNET! HI!'? That's — bro, that's the whole problem in four words.
Zara Reyes: You can't tell people to stop talking about something and make it a content event at the same time. The post is news. Now there are articles about the post.
Cole Bryant: Okay but — wait, actually the despots line. She brought up despots. In the move-on post. She said there are bigger issues, 'natural disasters and unnatural behaviors of despots,' and we're worried about her flip comment at a press junket. That's — I mean, she's not wrong, but also—
Zara Reyes: No but that's either genuinely frustrated or wildly tone-deaf depending on which second you read it.
Cole Bryant: Right — because if you're the fan who's annoyed, and Jamie Lee Curtis tells you to redirect your energy toward despots, you're not calming down. You're now twice as annoyed.
Zara Reyes: And that's the actual trap of celebrity crisis management on Instagram — the platform structurally rewards the response. Every clarification she posts is another thing to screenshot, caption, and dunk on or defend. She called it a 'flip comment' in a promotional context, which is true, but now the 'flip comment' has a sequel.
Cole Bryant: So what does she actually owe the New Girl fanbase? Like — guest star, a few episodes over six years, she's not Zooey Deschanel, she's not even Rob Reiner-level recurring. What's the actual loyalty contract there?
Zara Reyes: Nothing — that's lowkey the honest answer. She didn't sign up for the fandom. But the fandom doesn't negotiate that contract with you, they just hand it to you, and now every guest star watching this knows: say anything unguarded about a beloved show and you are one press junket answer away from a 'HEY INTERNET!' post of your own.
Cole Bryant: My detail that I cannot drop — she wrote 'HEY INTERNET! HI!' and then in the same post mentioned despots. Like, those two sentences exist in the same paragraph on her Instagram. That's the thing I'm still staring at.
Zara Reyes: Mine is that she came back for the Season 7 finale in 2018. 'The Curse of the Pirate Bride.' She showed up again. She did not have to do that. And then six years later — awful.
Cole Bryant: Wait — she came back for the finale and still hated filming it? Dude. She earned that 'awful.' That's commitment to the job AND to the honest review.
Zara Reyes: Genuinely, I kind of respect it? Like — she did 146 episodes worth of silence-between-takes vicariously, came back for the wedding episode, and then went and made a multi-cam show specifically so she never has to do that again. That's a woman who knows what she wants.
Cole Bryant: Okay. Toast to Jamie Lee Curtis, who filmed Joan Day's scenes in complete silence, returned for a pirate bride finale anyway, and then told the internet to go worry about despots. Iconic.
