'New Girl' Jake Johnson On Comfy Jeans, 'Jurassic World' And Season 5
You probably know Jake Johnson as Nick Miller, everyone's favorite scruffy cynic on the hit FOX show, "New Girl."
Season five isn't coming back for a few months and FOX hasn't released an official date yet, but until then, you can still find Johnson pretty much everywhere.
He's making appearances in "Jurassic World," in his upcoming film "Digging For Fire," and most recently, in a Funny or Die video poking fun at American Eagle's new Denim Flex and Denim X campaign where, yes, he does parkour.
Johnson is no stranger to funny Internet videos. Aside from his comedic talents in "New Girl," he's starred in plenty of Funny or Die videos with talented actors like Lizzy Caplan and Derek Waters.
In an exclusive interview with Elite Daily, Johnson said he found many similarities between shooting the popular online spoof series and his TV work.
"The director of this actually directed ten episodes of 'New Girl,' so it feels very similar," he said.
The way Johnson connected with American Eagle is actually pretty similar to how I imagine Nick Miller might do it: Anytime the "New Girl" wardrobe department put a selection of jeans in front of Johnson, he always went for the American Eagle brand because they were the most comfortable.
"And when I heard they were making a funny video, I wanted to do it with them," he said.
When asked if Nick Miller's similar taste in jeans means they're similar in real life, Johnson chuckled and agreed.
"When you do TV, the characters and your personalities blur so much together because you improvise so much," Johnson said. "I know the writers like to take things from real life and try to add it to the character, but I think there’s a lot of me in every character I do."
What about in Lowery from "Jurassic World"?
"You gotta ask the audience about that one," he said.
For Johnson, playing Lowery was a surreal experience. He said his first day was actually Chris Pratt's last -- we suspect that's why he wasn't able to give us any advice about how to tame velociraptors.
Although most of Johnson's shots took place in the control room and not in the actual park, the crew couldn't help but play the classic Jurassic Park theme song during filming.
"That was a really out of body experience as well," Johnson recalled about how he felt hearing the song on set. "Like I was 12 years old again."
"Jurassic World" is still in theaters, so you can experience that magic with Johnson. You'll also be able to see him in "Digging For Fire" on August 21.
To hold us over until "New Girl" returns in the fall, Johnson left us with a very important piece of information: which roommate he thinks would survive the longest alone in the Jurassic World theme park.
"Cece. She just seems pretty tough. And also Hannah Simone is pretty tough, she doesn't seem like she'd take a lot of crap."
As a long time fan of the show, I'd have to agree.
