Before she was even old enough to get her driver’s license, Olivia Rodrigo was on New Girl. She played Terrinea in the season six episode, “Young Adult,” in which Jess (played by Zooey Deschanel) tries to impress some cool girls at her school by introducing them to their favorite author: Nick Miller (Jake Johnson), of The Pepperwood Chronicles fame.
“The Olivia Rodrigo [episode] was really weird because I remember her and those girls,” Johnson told Entertainment Weekly. “It was me, Zooey, and the girls, and they were such sweet kids. And some kid actors are just good.”
The Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse star and Deschanel “used to have a joke that we were fake managers and how when a guest star would come on, one of the bits we would do with each other was that we would playfully compete over who’s gonna sign them.” Johnson was the bad cop to Deschanel’s good cop, and “when Olivia Rodrigo and those girls were on, I was for sure trying to scoop them up because I was like, ‘There’s money in these kids!’ They were just good actors.”
(Olivia? Taylor Swift? Prince? New Girl had the best musician cameos since The Adventures of Pete and Pete.)
Johnson later saw Rodrigo on an episode of the Disney Channel’s Bizaardvark with his kids. “I remember being like, ‘I knew that f*cking kid was good!’ And when she really blew up, I’ve gotten really into her albums because I’ve got ten-year-old girls so I’ve heard ’em all,” he recalled. You can watch all her New Girl scenes below.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)