--- description: The New Girl actress explains her penchant for old pop and how she overcame the mean girls title: 10 Questions With Zooey Deschanel image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfbc62bfef7e40052/6987687ecd1bba45d96f37e7/zooeydeschanel10q.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [10 Questions](/tag/10-questions/) ## 10 Questions Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # 10 Questions With Zooey Deschanel  by [Nolan Feeney](/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Nov 13, 2014 12:04 PM CUT  Actress Zooey Deschanel Actress Zooey DeschanelKeene–Corbis  by [Nolan Feeney](/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Nov 13, 2014 12:04 PM CUT **Your band She & Him is releasing a covers album,** **_Classics_** **, on Dec. 2\. What attracts you to standards?** That was how I started out–it’s actually how I learned to write music. I had a cabaret act, and I transposed all the music and I would play through all these Gershwin and Cole Porter songs. I learned so much about song structure, and it was really such a great education. **Loretta Lynn wants you to play her in a Broadway version of Coal Miner’s Daughter. Is she a role model for you?** She’s a little firecracker. She’s so true to herself, and I try to use that as a guide. It’s easy when you’re in the public eye to become overly aware of what other people think you should do and shouldn’t do. It’s too many notes. **Your show** **_New Girl_** **had its love interests get together and break up, and the show came back stronger than ever. Why did that work so well?** _The Office_ was great, and I’m sure they would have survived if Jim and Pam had broken up. But in _New Girl_, the crux of the show was, there were these people who hadn’t figured it out. If they figured it out, then there really is no show. It’s a more modern idea of romance–the romance is between the friends. **What are the challenges of telling a love story on TV?** When these people are just dating, the idea is to throw them with lots of people. It looks like they’re dating at a speed no normal human being dates. There’s some suspension of disbelief. **Do you agree with critics who say the romantic comedy is dying in film but finding new life on television?** I don’t know if it’s dying in film–it’s in need of a reinvention. It’s such a narrow genre because it basically involves the same thing happening every time. The romantic comedy is an evolution of the screwball comedy from the 1930s, but the screwball comedy had a broader range of topics. To surprise people, you need to keep changing things up. **You said that you feel like an outsider in Hollywood. Do you still feel like that?** One hundred percent. Feeling like an outsider is part of my nature, and it’s what makes me who I am, so I think I’ll find a way to make myself feel like an outsider no matter what situation I’m in. **You dropped out of Northwestern University your freshman year after being cast in** **_Almost Famous_** **. Do you ever miss college?** There were areas I would have liked to explore academically, but I had my own education growing up and doing movies. I read a lot. I try to teach myself anything I want to learn. I would have liked to finish, but I would have missed a ton of opportunities. **You co-founded the women’s lifestyle site HelloGiggles. What void did it fill online?** When we started four years ago, there weren’t a lot of positive women’s communities. We put in a ton of checks and balances at the beginning to avoid people ever saying anything mean about each other. It’s strange because a lot of people are like, You can’t change human nature–people are inherently negative. I don’t think that’s true. If you expect the best of people, they’ll step up. **Last year you spoke out about why embracing femininity didn’t make you any less of a feminist. What inspired you?** There was a moment in the mid-2000s when a lot of the women in the public eye weren’t saying they were feminists, and that \[bothered\] me. It was stigmatized. That’s why being attacked for being feminine really ticked me off, because why can’t you be feminine and a feminist at the same time? It shouldn’t matter what I look like. **Would you play a superhero?** Yeah! I’m not against it at all. I like those movies. I think it has to be the right type–it has to have a sense of humor. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3583144/10-questions-with-zooey-deschanel/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3583144/10-questions-with-zooey-deschanel/"},"headline":"10 Questions With Zooey Deschanel","datePublished":"2014-11-13T12:04:19.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T11:24:43.549Z","description":"The New Girl actress explains her penchant for old pop and how she overcame the mean girls","url":"https://time.com/3583144/10-questions-with-zooey-deschanel/","keywords":["10 Questions"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfbc62bfef7e40052/6987687ecd1bba45d96f37e7/zooeydeschanel10q.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nolan Feeney","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfbc62bfef7e40052/6987687ecd1bba45d96f37e7/zooeydeschanel10q.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Actress Zooey Deschanel","caption":"Actress Zooey Deschanel","creditText":"Keene–Corbis","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/10-questions/","name":"10 Questions"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3583144/10-questions-with-zooey-deschanel/","name":"10 Questions With Zooey Deschanel"}}]}] ```