“New Girl” isn’t coming back anytime soon.
Despite recent claims by Max Greenfield, who played Schmidt on the hit Fox sitcom, that he has read “amazing” scripts for a reunion, show creator Liz Meriwether insists, “There are no scripts.”
I caught up with Meriwether at the Season 1 finale screening of her latest hit series “Furious” on Thursday night at the DGA in West Hollywood.
“I don’t even have the scripts written for the things that I need to have scripts written for,” said Meriwether, who is adapting Britney Spears’s memoir “The Woman in Me” for a movie to be directed by Jon M. Chu and produce by Marc Platt.
Greenfield set off speculation about a “New Girl” reunion in late July when he said during an appearance on “Today with Jenna & Sheinelle,” “As far as I know, it’s happening. I’ve seen scripts, they’re amazing.”
Meriwether responded to Greenfield’s claim with a very tongue-in-cheek video on Instagram. “Max told everybody that there’s amazing scripts of a ‘New Girl’ reunion that I’ve written. Um — and just an update on that — the scripts were pretty good until everybody just started giving me notes on every little thing,” she cracked, before listing changes all of the stars of the show requested.
For now, Meriwether told me, “I’ve honestly been enjoying this thing, whatever this is, that’s like this back and forth between the cast and me, and I think this is the show and I feel like maybe in the world of the internet…maybe the show is just this, these little videos, maybe that’s the reunion. I don’t know.”
“New Girl” ran for seven seasons from 2011 to 2018.
Greenfield eventually clarified his remarks exclusively with Variety, joking that he was confused because a reunion of sorts is happening. The cast, including Zooey Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Lamorne Morris, Hannah Simone and Damon Wayans Jr., will reunite at the Chrysalis Butterfly Ball in Los Angeles on Oct. 10 to receive the Rising Phoenix Award. Greenfield serves as host of the gala.
The Rising Phoenix Award will recognize the series’ theme of starting over and people who make starting over possible.
As for the Spears biopic, Meriwether said she can’t say much because it’s too early in the process: “It’s really interesting because I haven’t written a movie in a long time, so that’s been part of the process is just trying to think in a two-hour story as opposed to like an eight-hour story, which is what I’ve been used to doing.”
She has yet to meet the “…Baby One More Time” hitmaker. “I would love to,” Meriwether said.
Scoot McNairy, Emmy Rossum, Quincy Tyler Bernstine and Liz Meriwether at the “Furious” Los Angeles special screening at the DGA Theater on Aug. 27 in Los Angeles.
Variety via Getty Images
