The Game-Changing Word New Girl Was Finally Allowed To Use In Later Seasons
"New Girl" may have aired on Fox, but it managed to get away with quite a bit during its run. The show regularly dealt with the housemates trying to hook up with beautiful people, which often led to a fair share of double entendres and innuendos. Just to give you a sense of how much further the show wanted to push the envelope, the working title for the series was "Chicks & D***s" (via Glamour). It's a good thing they decided to go in a different direction with something that could reasonably air on primetime.
For seven seasons, "New Girl" provided an amazing showcase for its wonderfully funny cast led by Zooey Deschanel, providing years of laughter to all those who watched. But behind the scenes, things weren't always easy as the sitcom had to adhere to strict rules about what could and couldn't happen or be said. The show's creator, Elizabeth Meriwether, recently chatted with The Hollywood Reporter about one specific challenge and how they managed to overcome it.
The show could say 'd***' for only the last couple of seasons
The longer a show's been on the air, the more it tends to get away with more risque elements. It makes sense; a new show on the block still needs to prove itself before a network allows it to go off the reins. And that's apparently what happened with "New Girl," as Meriwether explained during a recent roundtable for The Hollywood Reporter.
She sat down with other talented showrunners to discuss the creative process, and when asked about having to consult with a bunch of lawyers for her most recent show, "The Dropout," Meriwether explained, "I compare it to standards and practices when I was working on 'New Girl.' They are so intense, and they were worse back then. We were finally allowed to say the word 'd***' in the last couple of seasons, and that was a game-changer."
However, not being allowed to say certain words wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Meriwether went on to describe the process of writing one thing, being told you can't do it, and then having to come up with a different way of getting the information across. She concluded, "In real life, there are a lot of gray areas and things that don't make sense. I appreciated moments when the lawyers were like, 'Well, you can't do that.' I had to go back and figure out a different way in, which helped me a couple of times."
They may not say "d***" too many times on "New Girl," but at least when they do, it's impactful.