Liz Meriwether thought her Fox sitcom New Girl was “cutting edge”—until she saw the show’s original poster.
Zooey Deschanel as Jessica Day dons a bright green dress and smiles in front of a yellow background. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the catchphrase written above the show title: “Simply adorkable.”
“I do have sort of a visceral hatred of that word,” Meriwether told Obsessed: The Podcast. “But I remember it because, again, I thought I was this cool playwright, and I had written one or two pilots, I think, before the New Girl pilot. But in my mind, the show was cutting edge and cool and whatever. And then I remember walking in and seeing the poster, seeing that word, and seeing the picture of Zooey. And I was like, ‘Oh, no.’”
Meriwether is the creator, writer, and showrunner of the hit Fox sitcom, as well as a variety of prominent shows and movies including The Dropout, Dying for Sex, and No Strings Attached. She’s currently showrunning Hulu’s new crime drama, Furious.
New Girl earned five Emmy nominations over its seven seasons and received widespread critical acclaim; it’s also enjoyed enormous staying power on streaming services since its 2011 release. The show follows three 20-something male roommates in Los Angeles adjusting after Jess (Deschanel), a woman, moves into their loft.
Meriwether said New Girl had a “huge audience” for the first episode, which was “a little bit of a shock” to her. But the ways the press and social media users presented New Girl in relation to feminism—not always favorably—began to eclipse the show’s actual plot, as did the discussion of an increase in women showrunners.
“It was just such a weird time, because all the news stories were about, you know, ‘Oh my God, there’s, like, two women showrunners that have shows on broadcast!’ That was headline news,” she said. “I think it was me and Whitney Cummings, and there was a lot of, ‘What is Zooey wearing? Is this feminism?’ And it got in my head a little bit.”
Meriwether had originally titled the show Chicks and Dicks, but it soon became clear that the network wanted something more appealing to a wide audience. They went with the less crass New Girl. The “adorkable” tagline followed and took off, even becoming an official Collins English Dictionary word after winning an online contest. Its definition is, “Socially inept or unfashionable in a charming or endearing way.”
“Everybody kept calling it ‘Chicks with D---s,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t gonna last,’” Meriwether recalled. “I mean, I’ve always kind of famously been terrible at titling things, so. And my movie F--- Buddies became No Strings Attached, which I think was not really a phrase that anybody was using.”
Meriwether’s current show, Furious, strikes a very different tone. It’s a tense crime drama that follows an FBI agent investigating a female serial killer. Unlike New Girl’s lighthearted and sometimes absurd antics, Furious explores themes of gendered violence and victimhood—while still finding moments of dark humor throughout. For Meriwether, the shift has been a satisfying challenge.
“I’m so happy to get a chance to try different things and use different muscles,” Meriwether said. “But also, at the end of the day, I calm myself down when I get really scared about writing this, realizing that it’s just about these people. It’s about these human beings in a very extreme situation. And that’s my favorite kind of writing. Just human beings, often women, in very extreme situations, making difficult choices.”
“Hollywood tends to make you pick a lane,” she continued. “I feel like I ended up writing comedy for such a long time, but we’re just interested in human beings. And human beings are often very funny and also tragic at the same time.”
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