New Girl vet Jake Johnson has kept his TV career flourishing over the years, and followed the beloved comedy up with the comic book drama Stumptown. But it's his new Netflix series Hoops that allowed Johnson to reconnect with his former New Girl co-stars, from Max Greenfield to Hannah Simone to Damon Wayans Jr. Unfortunately for anyone hoping for a clean sweep of cameos, Hoops does not feature any cameos from New Girl stars Zooey Deschanel and Larmorne Morris, but Johnson shined some light on why those didn't happen.
When it comes to Zooey Deschanel, Jake Johnson basically said he was possibly too ashamed to ask her to join the too-filthy-for-live-action Hoops, which potentially features more F-bombs than any other word in the English language. Here's how he explained it to EW:
Honestly, I would have wanted Zooey but this show is so disgusting that I was a little embarrassed to ask her. [Laughs.] I think I would have a hard time with Zooey in the room and me being like, ‘Fuck off, motherfucker, you motherfucking piece of shit!’ Even though she’s not a prude, I would feel a little weird about it. But I love the cast of New Girl. My thing is when I work with people and I like it, I like to do it again, so, for me, it’s just an opportunity to see a friend who is really talented.
For anyone who thinks that Jake Johnson is exaggerating with his above sentiments, know that he most certainly isn't. As Hoops' Coach Ben Hopkins, Johnson says some of the most hilariously filthy things I've heard in any TV show. Plus, a lot of it is directed at the teenagers making up the basketball team that he coaches, which just makes it seem all the more disgusting, even though the teens are all voiced by adult actors.
In any case, Johnson clearly wasn't dying to have Zooey Deschanel watch and listen to him talking to students about blowjobs or talking about his dick in any situation. Not that New Girl's Nick wasn't a feisty kinda guy himself, but not at all to those extremes.
On the flip side of things, it doesn't sound like Jake Johnson had any hesitation when it came to telling someone to fuck off in front of New Girl's Lamorne Morris. The reason why that actor can't be heard in Hoops is totally different. In Johnson's words:
You know, Lamorne was out because he wanted to play Coach Hopkins. [Laughs.] No, the truth is that I believe there was a part where we tried to get Lamorne to do and there was something with scheduling.
There's never enough time to do everything on desires, and that was apparently the case with Larmorne Morris' potential inclusion for Hoops. Though it's not entirely clear what Morris would have been working on that stopped him from taking on the voice role, it's very likely that he was filming his new Hulu comedy Woke, in which he portrays a comic strip cartoonist who starts hearing voices from inanimate objects after traumatizing incident. As traumatizing at it would be to get coached by Jake Johnson's Ben Hopkins, that wasn't it.
As previously mentioned, Hoops does contain vocal performances from not only New Girl leads like Max Greenfield and Hannah Simone, but also actors who recurred and had one-off appearances, such as Rob Riggle, Cleo King and Ron Funches. And keep an ear out for even more brilliant comedic minds as you watch, because there are tons of them, including co-star Natasha Leggero.
Hoops Season 1 is available to stream in full on Netflix, so be sure to check it out. And in the meantime, check out everything else coming to Netflix in the coming months, and bookmark our 2020 Fall TV schedule to stay current with everything else hitting the small screen soon.
