Jamie Lee Curtis says she ‘hated’ shooting “New Girl” even though it’s a ‘great show’ — here’s why

Raechal ShewfeltMon, August 10, 2026 at 11:14 PM UTC

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Jamie Lee Curtis in Sacramento, Calif., on March 19Credit: Steve Jennings/GettyKey Points -

Jamie Lee Curtis says she’s wanted to make another sitcom.

The Oscar winner didn’t enjoy making New Girl, on which she was a recurring guest star, because of the way it was shot, however.

Curtis is an executive producer and guest star on Newlyweds, a new NBC comedy premiering this fall.

No offense to the sitcom New Girl, which ended its run in 2018, but Jamie Lee Curtis was decidedly not a fan of working on it.

The problem, for her, was that the comedy, which starred Zooey Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, Lamorne Morris, and Hannah Simone, was a single-camera show. Created by Elizabeth Meriwether, it was about Deschanel’s Jess moving in with three single men, where she finds friendship and, ultimately, love.

Curtis played Jess’ mother and made a handful of appearances throughout the show’s seven-season run, which ended in 2018.

“I did a single camera, which, I mean — great show, New Girl, very funny — it’s a good show, but doing it is just like doing a movie,” Curtis said at NBCUniversal’s Summer Backlot Experience, which Entertainment Weekly attended. “You know, you’ve got a camera crew, and nobody laughs. It’s silent, and it’s awful. For me, awful. Single-camera comedies, for me, not fun.”

Though not new, that type of filming came into fashion in the last few decades, with the success of sitcoms such as The Office, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, and Black-ish.

Curtis has “begged” her agents to do another sitcom, a multi-camera show, like Anything But Love, in which she and the late Richard Lewis starred in from 1989 to 1992, rather than doing another single-camera comedy.

For that one, she and Lewis played Hannah and Marty, coworkers at a Chicago magazine who were crazy about each other, only both of them tried to hide their feelings.

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Now, she’s in luck. Curtis is the executive producer and a recurring guest star on a new multi-camera sitcom that stars real-life couple Téa Leoni and Tim Daly, who married in July 2025, as newlyweds.

Officially described as a “later-in-life love story about a free-spirited woman and a buttoned-up professor who marry impetuously after a whirlwind courtship,” the new show costars Emma Meisel, Ignacio Diaz-Silverio, and Bill O’Neill. Showrunner and executive producer Gail Lerner has previously worked on shows such as Will & Grace, Black-ish, and Happy Endings.

Rob Reiner, Zooey Deschanel, and Jamie Lee Curtis on ‘New Girl’Credit: FOX Image Collection via Getty

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Curtis, who plays Daly’s ex-wife, is best known for movies, including Everything Everywhere All at Once (for which she won the Best Supporting actress Oscar in 2023), My Girl, Freaky Friday, and the Halloween franchise, but her recent work has been heavy on TV.

She won an Emmy — and two more nominations from the body that awards them— for her guest-starring role as The Bear in 2024.

Curtis has also costarred with Nicole Kidman on crime thriller Scarpetta.

Newlyweds premieres Oct. 23 at 8:30 p.m. ET on NBC.

on Entertainment Weekly

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