Top 20 Unscripted New Girl Moments That Were Kept in the Show

After several “New Girl” rewatches, you may notice how different season one Nick Miller is compared to the guy we say goodbye to in season seven. Likewise, Winston starts as a “man-baby” after taking over for Coach following Damon Wayans Jr.’s exit, but he grows into one of the most stable members of the loft. Series creator Elizabeth Meriwether explained that they prioritized casting talented actors and then developed the characters based on their chemistry rather than forcing them into fixed roles. Once they saw how the cast clicked, they decided Nick was best as the group’s lovable hot mess, while Winston became the more put-together one. Of course, there’s still always room for Prank Sinatra.

In this episode, Jess is shocked to discover that Schmidt and Cece have been secretly hooking up for months. Determined to end secrecy in the loft, she starts spilling everyone’s secrets. Unfortunately for her, the guys have some secrets about her, especially regarding what they do in their… alone time. During one reveal, Nick blurts out a dream Winston had about Jess shortly after they met, which makes her reconsider her no-secrets rule. But the guys aren't done discussing Winston’s dream quite yet. Interestingly, in the original script, the line supposedly read, “She was dressed like a lollipop.” Given Jess’s colorful and bold style, maybe “lollipop” just didn’t seem surreal enough!

The multi-talented Rob Reiner played Jess’ dad, Bob, in multiple “New Girl” episodes. As Jess’s father, he provides a grounded counterpoint to the often chaotic loft life. That’s not to say he didn’t add his own wild moments, especially whenever he was with Nick. In a chat with Huffington Post, Reiner said he loved being on the show because the cast had so much freedom to play around with the dialogue. “They let you try anything, and that’s fun for me,” he shared. While he didn’t mention specific moments he ad-libbed, it’s a lot of fun to rewatch his episodes and try to spot which lines were his spontaneous creations.

The guys plan for a friendly game of football in the park, with Jess in toe. As Schmidt shares the game plan with everyone, he comes up with a very specific set of instructions for her. The sincerity with which Schmidt delivers his orders makes the moment that much funnier. Maybe if Jess had followed his advice, she might have saved Nick from a lot of physical and emotional pain. The original script seemingly had Schmidt telling Jess, “See if you can find a shamrock in the grass.” To be fair, that sounds like something Jess might do. Still, we think the line they went with really drives home the comedy.

Winston loves puzzles, but let’s be honest—they’re not his strong suit, and they tend to make him a bit intense. On top of that, Schmidt has just unceremoniously dragged him into his love triangle with Cece and Elizabeth. Things hilariously escalate when Schmidt gets frustrated with Winston’s puzzle skills. Winston gets up and starts circling Schmidt as an intimidation tactic of sorts; it’s just too bad he didn’t move that chair out of his way first. Actor Lamorne Morris revealed that he really did stub his toe in that scene, and it hurt quite a bit. He attributes his “Second City” training for helping him stay funny despite the accident.

To paraphrase Nick, Schmidt is way more into their bromance than Nick is and isn’t shy about showing it, whether Nick likes it or not. Schmidt tries to kiss Nick more times than we can remember, and it turns out this dynamic isn’t all that far from reality. Max Greenfield, who plays Schmidt, would occasionally lean in for spontaneous kisses, knowing that, like his character, Jake Johnson isn’t big on physical affection. After several unscripted kisses, the writers decided to make it part of Schmidt’s character. It took a bit longer for Johnson to fully embrace it, but it became a hilarious running gag on the show.

In the series’ first Thanksgiving episode, Jess invites her crush for dinner, overriding the guys’ holiday plans, and it turns out to be one disaster after another. Rewinding to the start, Nick reminds Jess they’d already said there’d be no festive feast that year. Morris revealed on the “New Girl” podcast “Welcome to Our Show” that he ad-libbed his extra line about Black Friday. He added that this was one of his first realizations that it’s perfectly fine and even encouraged to goof around on set, as it might make it to air! He also shared that guest star Justin Long was so skilled at improvising that he could make him break before even saying a word.

By season seven, Nick is an established author, but now he’s run out of ideas for his Pepperwood Chronicles. He turns to his friends with fresh ideas, but they’re not exactly hits. Greenfield mentioned that some of the improvisations in this scene had him “crying laughing.” In Winston’s defense, a porcupine trying to tie a knot is a pretty bizarre image. If you’re wondering what that might look and sound like, Johnson’s Nick gives a little demonstration. Greenfield added that Johnson asked them to stop ad-libbing because “they’re gonna put it in the show,” and, as we know, they certainly did! Greenfield said when he watched the episode later, he thought it was “one of the funniest things [he’d] ever seen.”

When Schmidt’s control issues get out of hand, Nick and Winston take over the grocery shopping while Schmidt tries to learn to relax. However, it turns out that there’s a reason Schmidt is the one who keeps the apartment afloat. At the store, Nick and Winston can’t agree on what to buy, which rehashes their old argument about money. The fight escalates into a physical slap fight right at the checkout. Apparently, Winston was originally supposed to shove Nick into the counter, with Nick retaliating by wielding a shopping divider, and Winston holding Nick’s face on the “wet” conveyor belt. We think the childish slap fight better captures Nick and Winston’s friendship and makes the scene even funnier.

If you used to watch actors mumble or whisper their lines on “New Girl” and think, “shouldn’t they have used a better take?” you aren’t alone. There were some TV veterans working on the show who felt the same way at first. This new technique that the actors used to get through some longer passages, while still keeping the energy up, went against all the old-school ideas of comedy and performance. However, show creator and EP, Liz Meriwether loved how real it felt. And it didn’t take long for everyone to see how funny it was, and to get on board.

One of the funniest ongoing gags throughout the run of the series was the way Schmidt would mispronounce certain words. We’ll get to how it all started later in this list, but for now let’s just enjoy his take on ex-Bears quarterback Jay Cutler. These mispronunciations definitely weren’t scripted. But is there a “New Girl” fan out there who uses coupons at the grocery store and doesn’t call them cup-ons? Actor, Max Greenfield, loved doing these mispronunciations so much that sometimes the crew would have to ask him not to do it in a scene that was supposed to be a little more serious.

When we talk about unscripted moments we aren’t just talking about dialogue. Sometimes a character’s reaction can be just as improvised as their words. Which was the case with the water massage scene in season two. In this scene, Tran gives Nick a water massage in an attempt to calm and relax him. Prior to filming the scene, the crew brought in a professional water masseuse to explain to actor Jake Johnson, how he should react to the experience. Well, once he was actually in the water, Johnson felt uncomfortable and decided to go with it and play that up in his performance. It definitely doesn’t look very relaxing.

Usually on a single-camera comedy, filming is done with the camera on one actor while the other actor is off-camera reading their lines. “New Girl” however, used a cross-coverage technique that had multiple cameras filming at all times, allowing the actors to feel more engaged and comfortable improvising, without fear of stepping on each other's lines. This free flow is often best seen during fights, like the one between Nick and Jess in season two. As Greenfield has said in the past, “When it does get crazy, and really over each other, and it really does feel like, ‘What are these guys doing, there’s no way that this is scripted,’ it’s probably not.”

If you still don’t quite understand how to play the True American drinking game, don’t feel bad. The actors don’t know either. And neither do the writers. The game makes its first appearance on the show in episode 20 of season one. And according to actor Lamorne Morris (who plays Winston), the scene was pretty much all improvised, “We made it up completely.” All the script said was, “they play a drinking game called True American.” This hasn’t stopped people from asking for rules clarifications from the actors though. Says Morris, “I have people sending me photos of them playing and questions of them debating the rules with friends, but I have no idea. I have no clue what these answers are.”

Nick needs a new cell phone, but there’s a big problem: his credit score is almost non-existent. It’s so bad that the store staff gather around just to see it with their own eyes. As you might imagine, he leaves the store without a phone and plenty of humiliation while Jess tries to assure him it’s not that bad. Later, Nick attempts to spin the situation, but no one, especially Winston, buys it. Morris shared that the line was improvised. He explained they were encouraged to keep trying original dialogue until something perfect landed. It’s a brilliant line, and who else will tell you the hard truth besides a best friend?

The first time actor Max Greenfield improvised a mispronunciation was in episode five of the first season, with the word “chutney”. When he did it, it made show creator Liz Meriwether laugh. “And when you get Liz to laugh,” said Greenfield “it makes you feel really nice. It’s a very good sign. So when she started laughing, I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I have the green light to do this whenever I want.’” And he didn’t wait very long either, because two episodes later Schmidt was arguing with Nick over a broken turdlet.

The freedom the actors on the show had to improvise and talk over each other's lines (as people actually do in real life) can’t be praised enough. The writing on the show was great, but this free-flow style, to paraphrase Emeril Lagasse, took the show up a notch! Another example of this is Nick’s mostly improved rant at Cece in season six where he first tells her to change her shirt, and then speaks over her dialogue, with more and more authority and volume, telling her that “sparkles are in!” BAM!

Damon Wayans Jr. was great in the pilot episode of the show, and when he had to leave the show there were probably a few fans who resented the new guy on “New Girl,” Lamorne Morris. However, if you were initially lukewarm on Winston, you surely came around after his hysterically brilliant Theodore K. Mullins rant in episode 19 of that first season. Of course now you’re wondering how much of that rant was unscripted. Well, this was the only line in the script: “I'm Theodore K. Mullins and Nick is my lover on the down low.” The rest was all Morris!

To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a cookie is just a cookie. But sometimes it’s so much more. This was the case in the fifth episode of the second season, when Nick gives Schmidt a cookie as a symbolic gesture of how much he cares about him. Jake Johnson later posted a part of the script from the now-famous “cookie” scene on his Instagram account. And as we see, this is another great example of the freedom the actors had. First off, the repeating of the line “gave me cookie, got you cookie” five times wasn’t scripted. But there are smaller things too, like leaving out, or adding, a word here and there. Co-showrunner David Finkle has called the final result, “so real.”

The series finale features another classic Nick and Schmidt flashback scene. And it was pretty much all improvised. The scene flashes back to when the guys first moved into the loft and are talking about what the future might hold for them. In the script Schmidt says, “I’m gonna hopefully meet a girl and have a kid.” and Nick responds, “Maybe I’ll be a writer and fall in love.” According to Johnson, “That was all that was in there.... I think I said to him, ‘What does she look like?’ And he improvises exactly what I look like.” It’s one of those things that is so perfect to the show, and the characters, you can’t imagine it wasn’t written that way. But it wasn’t!

Do you know of any other unscripted moments from “New Girl”? Let us know in the comments.