13 Facts You Probably Never Knew About "The Good Place"
Janet for president.
BuzzFeed Staff
BuzzFeed Staff Writer
1. You know how in the world of The Good Place, characters are awarded or deducted points based on their actions? Well that's actually inspired by something creator Mike Schur used to do in real life.
"A daily game that I played by myself as I milled around Los Angeles, was assigning negative and positive point values to various good or bad things that people did," said Schur during The Good Place's panel at San Diego Comic-Con. "So if someone cut me off in traffic, I would think, 'You just lost 25 points, man, jokes on you cause you’re going to hell.'"
2. All that shrimp on the show? Yeah, Kristen Bell has to have special fake shrimp made for her because she's been a vegetarian since she was 11.
"I have never actually had seafood of any kind because I grew up in Michigan, which is not exactly the fresh fish capital of the world," Bell said during the panel. "We’ve got Lake Erie and those fish have three heads. Our prop department [makes] these little vegetarian shrimp that are essentially rubber nuggets."
3. And the rubber nuggets have to be painted to look like shrimp.
4. Janet actually got her name because of Schur's habit of calling his characters “Jim” and “Janet” in his scripts until he can think of something better.
5. And when casting the role of Janet, the producers auditioned actors of all ages, ethnicities, and genders.
“[D'Arcy Carden] made the robotic language that I had written for the dummy scene seem like a real person was doing it,” Schur told Vanity Fair. “She found this weird humanity inside this robotic scene.”
6. Manny Jacinto (Jason) was Jameela Jamil's (Tahani) seventh kiss ever.
"He’s my seventh ever kiss because no one kissed me until I was 21," said Jamil at Comic-Con. "[And] though he’s contractually obliged to kiss me on camera, I’ve still counted it in my number. "
7. And Jameela was also Manny's seventh kiss ever.
8. Kristen Bell 100% "superfan-ed" Ted Danson when she met him for the first time.
"Ted and I met on a movie about seven or eight years ago and become fast friends, despite the fact that I superfan-ed him when I met him," said Bell. "I had just binge-watched the first season of Damages, and I was obsessed with Arthur Frobisher, who was his character, and I told him in the lobby when I first met him, 'This might sound weird, but I am checked into this hotel as Holly Frobisher, the character name of your wife.'"
9. According to the Season 2 bloopers, Kristen has a habit of filming her scenes with gum in her mouth.
10. When Will Harper (Chidi) got shot in the face with "blood," a piece of foam went directly down his throat.
"[The blood] was Rice Krispies and foam and, like, this caramel syrup," said Harper during the panel. "I remember one take, in particular — it’s in the episode — there’s a lot of blood on my teeth because I happened to have my mouth wide open. As soon as it went off, a piece of foam went directly down my esophagus and into my being."
11. Jameela thought that the photo of Doug hanging in Michael's office was a young Mike Schur. Real-life Doug is actually just a friend of one of the writers.
12. Young Kristen and Eleanor have something in common: They both love mailmen...a lot.
"So, Eleanor is obsessed with mailmen and I, in high school, for a good few years, had hanging on my wall this picture of this dude in biker shorts and it said, across the top, 'Priority Mail,” said Bell. "At the end of last season, when we had a lot of mailman stuff on the show, I thought it was about time it came down off my wall of my childhood bedroom and I framed it and gave it to Mike."
13. Schur has said that the point of the show is to say, "Here's 50 different ways that people have thought about these problems, choose whichever one works for you."
"The point of it is not to take a point of view on what’s right or what’s wrong, just to show different ways that you can take a point of view," said Schur.