Ever since True American made its debut on New Girl in 2012, I’ve been baffled by it. Every time I watch the show I find myself thinking about how this nonsensical game could be played in real life, and I’d ponder how on Earth they came up with one of the best inside jokes from New Girl.
It turns out there are answers to both these questions about the gag that involved all of New Girl’s hilarious characters, and I’ve got the history for you. So, if you are looking to play the game at the center of some of New Girl’s best episodes or if you just want to know how it came into existence, keep reading.
How To Play True American
Now, the “rules” in the show are loose, at best. However, they are explained by the characters. So, here’s a breakdown from Jess and Winston about how to play Ture American circa Season 1, Episode 20 of New Girl:
Jess: It starts off, there are four zones. An alternate zone is a crazy zone.
Winston: There’s a trail of chairs, but the floor is lava.
Jess: [Pointing at lots of beer] These are the pawns they’re the soldiers of the secret order. [Grabs a bottle of Jack Daniels] This is the king of the castle.
Winston: Now, remember, everything you hear in True American is a lie, knock on wood.
Jess: And it starts with a shotgun tip-off.
My understanding after this point is that the goal is to get to the castle without touching the ground. The New Girl creator Elizabeth Meriwether put True American’s rules in the simplest form when she jokingly said this during a panel for The Paley Center for Media in 2014:
It’s like drink a lot and then don’t walk on the floor.
However, fans have created legit rules for Ture American, and unlike the show, they actually create a semi-cohesive and playable game. While there is even a WikiHow on how to play this silly drinking game, True American Rules.com and Wide Open Country provided the most common and conscience methods of play. Here are the basics:
The Setup: You need to create The Castle and The Zones. The Castle is made up of a big bottle of liquor in the middle with beer cans lined up in four lines that stem from the bottle. The big bottle is the king, and the beer are the pawns. The lines created by the beer cans also show you each zone. Which brings me to the Zones. These are four quadrants and each needs five pieces of furniture or items to stand on in them – because the floor is lava. You can only take a pawn by standing on the item closest to The Castle in each respective zone, other than that, I'm not quite sure what the point of the zones are.
Starting The Game: The players have a shotgun contest to determine who goes first. Then, the person who won yells "One, two three, JFK!" And the rest yell "FDR" and the game begins with players grabbing a pawn and retreating to a piece of furniture in one of the zones.
Playing The Game: Players take turns moving. On a person's turn, they are allowed to move one space, and other players win their moves by either holding up a number no one else chooses, completing a quote about American history or figuring out the commonality between two things the person names. However, whoever is on their turn gets to decide which game is played. Also, every player must have at least one pawn and no more than three pawns in their hand at all times.
Losing: If you don’t have a beer, and you get caught, you lose. The same goes for if you step on the floor.
Winning: When you are at the spot closest to the castle you can grab a pawn. You play until all pawns are gone and you are able to take a drink out of the King.
While I’ve just laid out a lot of rules that fans have created to play True American. At its core, I think all you really need to know is the floor is lava, and you better be ready to scream “JFK! FDR!”
The History Behind New Girl’s True American
In Season 1 of New Girl, Jess brings home an older boyfriend, played by Dermot Mulroney. So, to bring him into the story and to show his maturity level, the writers came up with Ture American, according to Bustle. Loosely based on a “floor is lava” like game writer Lesley Wake Webster used to play in college, the team decided to add it into the show, and intentionally didn’t give it any real rules. Luvh Rakhe, a writer and co-executive producer, elaborated on why they did this, saying:
We knew we didn't want to explain the rules to the audience. That would give us a lot more license to make it completely insane.
So, the script didn’t have any rules at all, and writer Berkley Johnson said they wrote it around 2 a.m. with Rakhe, and they were “just typing, ‘They walk on pillows, they turn some stools upside down and use them as boots.”
While there clearly are no rules, it's been claimed that there are. So, after disputing a claim that there are rules to True American, Zooey Deschanel explained to The Paley Center for Media in 2014 how the game manifested itself while they were shooting:
That first True American episode we were like making up things that sounded like the most cryptic game you could possibly come up with. And then after the fact people imposed rules.
In the Bustle article, Deschanel also said the screaming of “1,2,3,4, JFK, FDR” and “George Washington, Cherry Tree” was her idea. It was confirmed that the numbers on the forehead were always a rule too, and the New Girl cast had a lot of say in how the game was ultimately portrayed on screen. According to Lamorne Morris who played Winston:
It took a life of its own once Zooey started to yell out American history terms.
After Season 1, True American made subsequent appearances in almost every other season (see the list of episodes the game is featured in below), and each time the game got messier and funnier.
- Season 1, Episode 20 “Normal”
- Season 2, Episode 15 “Cooler”
- Season 3, Episode 20 “Mars Landing”
- Season 5, Episode 21 “Wedding Eve”
- Season 7, Episode 8 “Engram Pattersky”
They never really found a concrete way to play True American, it was simply chaos on set. According to Jake Johnson, who played Nick, anything could happen while shooting the drinking game. He explained to Bustle that there would be times when people would randomly start throwing pillows or jumping on the couch, and in those chaotic situations, the cast would just follow along.
Jake Johnson has been asked over and over what the rules are to this game, however, the simple answer is…there are none. However, while speaking with E! News in 2016 the Nick Miller actor did provide a way to go about playing Ture American, saying:
There's a lot of flaws in the logic of the game. So in terms of the rules of playing it, you just have to get drunk and yell presidents and throw beer in corners. That's it.
Well, there you have it. Ture American is truly just an amalgamation of chaos, drinking and some light American history. However, while the creatives didn’t come up with any definitive rules, viewers have, and this game has become a beloved joke and activity among New Girl fans. But, if following these complex and confusing rules is not your thing, you can turn the Fox comedy on through a Hulu subscription, and follow Jake Johnson’s rules of the game, which is to simply: “get drunk and yell presidents and throw beer in corners.”
