The New Girl Guys Recall the ‘Dogshit’ Questions They Were Asked About Coach and Winston

Before he fully metamorphosed into his Prank Sinatra and Winnie the Bish persona on New Girl, Winston (Lamorne Morris, not that other Winston) arrived during the show’s second episode, following the departure of Coach (Damon Wayans Jr.) in the pilot. The duo eventually became co-New Girl loft inhabitants in seasons three and four, when Coach returned to Los Angeles after a break-up in pursuit of a fresh start … and fresher ladies. Despite the hilarity of adding one more New Girl guy to the cast, though, the presence of two Black leading men seemed to be a foreign concept for some interviewers to grasp. At A Night With the New Girl Boys Presented By Roku at this year’s virtual Vulture Festival, Morris and Jake Johnson both recalled fielding these subtle racist questions throughout the show’s run, after showrunner Liz Meriwether mentioned that she, too, often found herself being asked to explain the presence of two Black actors.

“They were utter dogshit questions, and utter dogshit to then ask, Can you both be on the show? You can, absolutely,” Johnson explained, mentioning a particularly egregious Golden Globes red carpet experience. “You don’t just need one Black guy, you can have a bunch of them on a show. There was a lot of dogshit interviews about having two Black guys on television shows.” Morris said that these types of questions plagued him from the beginning of New Girl, but they escalated when Wayans fully rejoined the show in season four. More often than not, Morris says that he was asked if he would be “replaced” by Wayans. “Let me tell you something, I got those questions a lot. For awhile it wasn’t frustrating,” Morris explained. “I guess it was an honest question, because it makes sense, right? Maybe people thought that I was … they wouldn’t recognize that one Black face was out for another.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Morris fondly reminisced about the time he powered through a scene with severe bowel movement problems…

…while Schmidt Max Greenfield remembered how Johnson asked a “deeply offensive” question about sex stuff to guest star Dennis Farina. We’re very thankful that he lived to tell the tale, and also attend our festival.

A Night with the New Girl Boys was presented by Roku.