Zooey Deschanel talks about what it’s like to direct “New Girl”

New Girl just got a new director — and it’s our very own Zooey Deschanel! While last season saw castmate Jake Johnson behind the scenes, this year Zooey will be directing the season premiere. false

The A.V. Club got a chance to sit down with the actress, and discuss her brand new role.

"I loved it," Deschanel said. "It was a lot of work. The thing that I thought was most difficult was — it was really fun when I wasn’t in the scenes. And when you’re in the scenes it’s a little more stressful because you’re trying to act and give a good performance and then judge yourself as well as direct and judge other people."

Makes sense. Interestingly enough, Johnson said almost the exact same thing during the episode he directed, “Bob & Carol & Nick & Schmidt,” which was actually pretty Nick Miller-heavy. Deschanel went a step further, and mentioned the technique they use to ease some of the actor/director pressure.

"We have stand-ins for blocking, so I could have my stand-in do my action so I could see what that looked like," she said.

Since the season premiere airs tonight on FOX, Deschanel noted a few of her ultimate favorite episodes — and her selection is pretty fantastic.

" I always think of, first or second season, there’s this episode, I think it’s called 'Menzies,' I love that. There’s an episode called 'Bad In Bed' that I loved. There was an episode in the first season called 'Injured' that I really loved. And now I’m blanking because there are so many episodes," she said.

Of course she wouldn’t spoil the season in full, but she did give a hint as to what tonight’s premiere might mean for the whole season — after all, usually the first episode sets the tone, and lets us know what to expect from our favorite characters.

"...I’d say this episode is really setting the emotional tone for the season," she noted.

Hmm. Does that mean there’ll be more (amazing) tension between exes Nick and Jess? Hopefully those two crazy kids realize they still love each other, after all this time.

Here’s a behind the scenes look from FOX that’ll remind us of how incredibly powerful season five was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F79U_wElQ90?feature=oembed

Don’t forget to tune into New Girl tonight and check out Zooey’s episode!