Zooey Deschanel with She & Him at the Sound Academy, Toronto, June 11 2010. Kate Yang-Nikodym photo
Indie-queen actress goes fully mainstream
- by Shawn Conner
Zooey Deschanel gets tagged as a heartthrob for the hipster set, and for good reasons. She’s in a cool band with another musician with tons of indie cred (he’s from Portland), she’s married (not hip!) to Ben Gibbard of indie-gone-major-label band Death Cab for Cutie (they’re from Bellingham), and she’s appeared in at least one really good, audacious indie (as in aesthetic, at least) film, (500) Days of Summer (a movie that runs a clip of the end of The Graduate and gets away with it).
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer (2009).
But she’s also done her share of mainstream movies – Elf, for one..
Zooey Deschanel in Elf (2003).
… and Yes Man (with Jim Carey, no less) for another…
Zooey Deschanel in Yes Man (2008).
So maybe it’s not so surprising to find her in a new sitcom, The New Girl. (Which, lets face it, sets the bar for generic and boringly literal TV series names, even more so than The Killing.)
Cast of the Fox sitcom The New Girl.
Fox is promoting the show by describing Deschanel as “adorkable” (we’re not making this up) and putting up billboard (of course).
But the network is also niche-margeting the series to an otherwise TV-adverse audience – those who would rather see Zooey in her band than in a half-hour sitcom. Which is why we found this New Girl ad in the bathroom of a local live music venue, Electric Owl. Mind you, it was in the men’s – I wonder if it was in the women’s as well.
Electric Owl men's room, Vancouver, Sept 14 2011.
