I still think it’s kind of weird that Zooey Deschanel is with Jonathan Scott, one half of HGTV’s Property Brothers. Zooey is so twee and offbeat, it feels like she would only date banjo repairmen or professional chalk artists but here she is with a guy with a lifestyle brand and a popular show on cable. Zooey is also a mom of two and she runs a business with her ex-husband Jacob Pechenik. She was recently interviewed by the Wall Street Journal because she’s joining the cast of AppleTV’s Physical. She has a lot on her plate, but I think she’s just like that – she likes to stay busy and have a million side projects. Some highlights from her interview:
Whether she would ever reprise or reboot New Girl: “It kind of depends on the circumstance. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing reboots, but I definitely had a wonderful time and would be very happy to revisit.”
What she consumes first in the morning: “I make a pot of coffee, and it’s all for me because Jonathan doesn’t drink coffee. I don’t really eat breakfast a lot. I snack around, snacky snack. It would be my dream for someone to make me an omelet, but that would never happen in my life.”
Her role in Physical: “I worked out pretty much five days a week and tried to eat pretty healthy because it’s a lot of leotards. I also play a figment of Rose Byrne’s character Sheila’s imagination, so I kind of have two characters. One’s a version of the sitcom character, and one’s the real person who’s an actor who has a little bit of a fitness empire. I have two different wigs and I get to wear all kinds of fun outfits.
On TikTok “twee core”: “I love it. I love twee. I love “twee core.” I consider myself an advocate of twee.
Jonathan build her a solarium in their new house: “I love the solarium, because it’s the most unusual room. It’s a big glass room that’s two stories high and I had had a dream of having one for a long time. When I first met Jonathan, I told him about how much I wanted a solarium. He made it happen. It feels like you’re indoors and outdoors at the same time—like you’re in Europe or something.
Her favorite thing to do with Jonathan: “Escape rooms, that’s our thing. We like to take the kids to family movies. We like to go to parties and have parties.
What she splurges on: “Clothes. I have a lot of vintage pieces. When I was pretty young, I bought a Courrèges collection at a vintage fashion expo. I still have that. I was really young and I didn’t have that much money and they were all my size. The lady kind of took, not pity, on me but she knew how much I wanted it so she gave me a really good deal. I think I bought four Courrèges pieces for $1,000 or something.
What piece of advice she’s gotten which helped her: “Just don’t go away. If you stick it out, even when it’s hard, that’s where you get the real value and that’s where you start seeing success. Sometimes it takes so much longer to see success than you think it’s going to. Especially in entertainment, there’s so many ups and downs. I’ve had that many times in my career. There’s always going to be good and bad and if you believe in what you’re doing—just stick with it.
I think the “stick it out” advice is particular to actors and artists, as in – keep following your dreams, keep trying to book jobs, stay with it. It’s not a general piece of advice to “stick it out” everywhere, all the time, in every situation. There are plenty of times when people should walk away and do something else, professionally and personally. And yes, Zooey does love twee core and everything twee and vintage. It’s her style, it’s what she enjoys, and so be it. It’s not for me! I do think it’s funny that the twee stuff has not only gone mainstream, but the “vintage look” which is part of Zooey’s celebrity brand is basically the same 1950s-housewife look fetishized and adopted by “trad wives” on TikTok.
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