So why no Jess and Nick reunion?
Even though she’s not a prude, I would feel a little weird about it."
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: For someone who was missing basketball, watching these 10 episodes was much-appreciated.
Credit: Netflix
Served as a nice, vulgar warmup for the NBA playoffs.
That should be on the poster: If you don’t like minute one, move on.
It doesn’t get better if you don’t like it.
Ray Mickshaw/FOX
What was it aboutHoopsand the character of Coach Hopkins that made you want to do this?
Honestly, we started this about seven years ago, maybe even longer.
I think it was after season 1 ofNew Girland then it just kept coming back.
Netflix ordered it a year and a half ago.
And that felt like a really fun thing to do.
If this is not your sense of humor, you’re not going to like it.
And, for me, I think there’s something refreshing about that.
Sometimes it’s okay to just be a joke machine.
That’s exactly right.
And what I liked aboutHoopsis, no, I didn’t.
I might start using joke machine for the rest of press.
If you ever see it, know that you get the credit.
So what was it like recording in such a way?
And has your voice recovered since then?
So we tried to save the yelling rants of each episode for the last bit of each record.
to “[Soft voice] Look, Shannon, I really care about you.”
And we just thought, let’s let Coach be Coach.
He’s his own thing, he’s a character and I like playing him.
I don’t relate to him.
I can’t understand why he does the things he does.
To me, I can’t relate to that, but I find it so funny.
Where he goes, “I’m not going to spend another penny here in my life!
Oh, a gumball machine, f—ing great.”
And that rhythm I could do endlessly, I just find it so weird and so funny.
Where would you slot Coach Hopkins in on that pantheon?
Above or below Whoopi Goldberg inEddie?
He’s got to be really low because he’s also a terrible basketball coach.
[Laughs] So he’s never going to make it.
He sells everyone out.
He’s got big dreams, but the only reason he has this job is because of his daddy.
He’s not a talented guy.
Mostly in the movies they’re talented but they have like problems with alcohol or a terrible divorce.
Coach just got the job because nobody wants it.
So I would say that he is almost more of a physical education teacher than a basketball coach.
In this seven-year process of crafting this character, did you pull inspiration from anywhere specific for Coach?
[Laughs] And then it came back to life.
It was not a seven-year process of fine-tuning Coach.
Coach is not a fully-realized human being, it’s whatever works for the joke machine.
If you worked nonstop for seven years then there probably would be a little bit more depth to it.
[Laughs] You know what, there better be.
He would have been kicked out almost instantly because he wouldn’t follow any rules.
There’s no way Coach Hopkins would wear a mask.
There’s no way that he would believe in a pandemic.
There’s no way that he would stay quarantined.
He would be the first guy to screw it up, 100 percent.
So that begs the question, was Lamorne Morris asking for too much money?
You know, Lamorne was out because he wanted to play Coach Hopkins.
Even though she’s not a prude, I would feel a little weird about it.
But I love the cast ofNew Girl.
Hoopstips off Friday on Netflix.
