Canadian actress Hannah Simone on Schmidt, her new webseries and playing against type
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“If you look at my resume or where I’ve lived, it seems like I’m all over the map, but I feel like [my life] has been completely consistent,” says Hannah Simone, whose roles on Zooey Deschanel’s sitcom New Girl and the dystopian webseries H+ have taken her in a new direction from her previous endeavours—being a MuchMusic VJ; working as, wait for it, a human rights and refugees officer for the UN. “My life is so crazy! I learned early on to really embrace change and enjoy the ride.”
She’s not exaggerating. Born in London, she moved every three or four years to a new country, sometimes in warzones (Saudi Arabia, India, Cyprus), with her Indian father, her German-Italian-Greek-Cypriot mother and her brother. After the family settled in Canada, she earned degrees in both international relations and television and radio studies, then embarked on the aforementioned UN gig before becoming a TV host and moving to L.A. to pursue acting.
She hit a bit of a casting jackpot when she landed the role of Cece, best friend to Deschanel’s Jess on New Girl (season two began September 25).
The show, which opened with Jess moving into an apartment with three guys she barely knew, has struck a chord, perhaps because head writer Liz Meriwether (No Strings Attached) tends to avoid the obvious joke. “I thought [Cece] was such a breath of fresh air, because often you watch TV shows and they pit women against each other—someone stealing someone’s man…that’s the easy comedy,” says Simone. Her main storyline revolves around her relationship with one of Jess’s roommates, Schmidt, played with scene-stealing élan by Max Greenfield. What began as a standard lame-guy-lusts-after-hot-girl story evolved into an unexpectedly sweet romance. “I love that they just went for it,” Simone says. “There are pregnancy scares, wedding proposals, break-ups and make-ups. It really reflects how our generation operates when it comes to love.” Cece, unlike Simone, is completely unamused by Schmidt. “It’s actually a terrible thing,” she says. “Max saves it for the show, so when the camera starts rolling, I never know how he is going to deliver his line. Just thinking about him makes me laugh!” (A sample, wherein Schmidt is trying to curry favour with Cece: “I love Slumdog. I love naan. I love pepper. I love Ben Kingsley; the stories of Rudyard Kipling. I have respect for cows, of course.”)
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