Zooey Deschanel’s in no rush for her ‘New Girl’ character to date a roommate

Despite a few tantalizing hints, Zooey Deschanel says neither she nor the writers of Fox’s “New Girl” are in any hurry to set her Jess Day character up with her roommate Nick.

With the series in its second season, airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox, Deschanel admits Jess has felt a few mutual sparks with Nick (Jake Johnson), who is one of her three male roomies.

“But Nick and Jess aren’t ready for each other,” says Deschanel. “And no one’s going to throw them together now.”

That time qualifier, “now,” is crucial. If the show runs more than a few years, there will be almost no way around it — because when it comes to making the audience gradually come to want and almost demand a romance between two attractive and single characters, that’s the way TV rolls.

Nick and Jess are about the same age. They’re both attractive. They both routinely undergo standard life crises, like Jess losing her teaching job at the start of this season.

As the series was starting last year, one of the major setups is that they both had been bounced out of relationships in ways they didn’t want or expect.

So they’ve both periodically spent time moping or navel-gazing, Nick more overtly than Jess.

The other two roommates, Schmidt (Max Greenfield) and Winston (Lamorne Morris) are fine. They just aren’t, for Jess, romantic options.

So that leaves Nick and Jess. They sometimes drive each other nuts. But one small bonding moment at a time, the audience has slowly sensed them inching their way closer together.

Just not yet.

“It’s a difficult proposition,” says Deschanel, if only because it’s so much fun for the writers to let them pursue romance apart.

It’s the old “Moonlighting” question, manifested today on shows like “Castle,” which just put its two leads together, or “The Mentalist,” which is keeping them apart, or “Elementary,” where it’s too early to tell.

“This way Jess and Nick can have this love/hate relationship,” Deschanel says. “I think I can say the writers definitely are not going to throw them together. But they might tease it out.”

Source : nydailynews[dot]com