The Real Life Partners Of The Cast Of New Girl

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"New Girl" fans, it's time to accept it: Zooey Deschanel and Jake Johnson aren't together IRL. Neither are Hannah Simone and Max Greenfield, nor are Lamorne Morris and Nasim Pedrad. However, if it's any consolation, sometimes the actors from the beloved show do share snippets of their real-life partners — and as it turns out, some of their relationships seem just as fun as those on the show. 

We'll start with the star herself, Jessica Day (ahem, Deschanel). As it turns out, the "Elf" star went through a number of relationship status changes while filming "New Girl." When the show first started in 2011, she was married to Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie fame. However, that December, she filed for divorce. According to court docs, they had separated that October — one month after "New Girl" aired for the very first time. Deschanel went on to marry a second time during her "New Girl" tenure, tying the knot with Jacob Pechenik in 2015. They ended up parting ways in 2019, the year after the show's final season. 

Today, Deschanel is with HGTV star Jonathan Scott. Memorably, Deschanel and Scott met while shooting a 2019 episode of "Carpool Karaoke," and since becoming an item, they've never shied away from gushing over their feelings for each other. Such was the case when they opened up about Jonathan's 2023 proposal in Edinburgh. Jonathan also has a great relationship with Deschanel's kids. Plus, unfortunately for anyone expecting family drama, Scott and Pechenik get along great and regularly spend time together with the kids. We love to see it!

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On to Zooey Deschanel's on-screen love interest, Jake Johnson. With the exception of the final season, Johnson's character Nick Miller was known throughout the "New Girl" run for being the least together person in the loft, and that often translated into major mishaps in his relationships. However, it seems the opposite is true of Johnson himself. After all, he's been a married man since way back in 2005. 

Though Johnson typically tries to keep his personal life out of the spotlight, he made sure the show's production designer knew his wife was an artist. Speaking to Vulture, production designer Michael Whetstone recounted, "He said, 'My wife is this incredible conceptual artist. Her name is Erin Payne, and you should check out her work.'" Whetstone and the show's set decorator did just that, and Miller's room ended up having some of Payne's pieces in it. Payne's artwork was later also featured in the episode where hipsters moved into the apartment next door to the loft. Sweetly, in the wake of the show's coming to an end in 2018, Johnson took the art home. 

Other than bragging about his wife's work, Johnson has also made it very clear that his wife is his number one priority. As he told Variance, "I'm married. I know that's tricky in Hollywood but I'm not going to give up my wife so I can have more of what someone perceives as success." Johnson's on-screen chemistry with Deschanel may have been major, but it's safe to say he only has eyes for his wife IRL, and we couldn't be happier for the longtime couple.

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While Max Greenfield's character Schmidt had his ducks in a row to a greater degree than his bestie Nick Miller, his love life was a bit of a rollercoaster. However, like Jake Johnson, the opposite is true of Greenfield's IRL personal life. He's been married to Tess Sanchez since 2008 — and unlike his on-screen bestie, he's super open about their relationship. 

In a 2021 interview with Parents, Greenfield and Sanchez shared that they'd met in a bar sometime in the early 2000s. Two dates in, he gave her a mix CD titled "Cool Jams" (much to Sanchez's amusement), and the rest is history. Granted, they have joked about how their relationship has changed over the years, specifically after welcoming their two kids. As Sanchez joked in a joint interview with People + Parents, "Without kids, we were just more smoldering ... and now, we just laugh all the time."

Of course, there are some similarities between Greenfield's relationship with Sanchez and Schmidt's relationship with Cece, particularly regarding the show's final season. Some may remember that Schmidt quit his job to become a stay-at-home dad while Cece ran her own modeling agency. Funnily enough, Greenfield and Sanchez had a similar setup after their daughter, Lilly Sanchez-Greenfield, was born (though, in his case, not working wasn't really a choice). "I was out of work and ready to stop acting altogether ... So I told Tess, 'I've got the baby. You do your thing,'" he recounted to Parents regarding what he'd said to his then-casting executive wife. It's unclear if that inspired Schmidt's final season storyline, but it certainly has inspired some of what Greenfield has been up to since "New Girl." Back in 2020, he started DADZ, a dad-centered wellness brand. 

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"New Girl" superfans may be aware that Season 3 guest star Prince had quite the crush on the actor who played Cece, Hannah Simone. In fact, in an episode of "The Mess Around Podcast," which Simone shares with co-star Lamorne Morris, she laughingly recounted that the singer had long tried to set something up, but she wasn't interested. Enter the Prince episode. "He, uh, like a teenage boy, showed up at my job," she joked, adding that the table tennis scene where Cece slammed the ball had been genuine and that Prince really had walked straight off the set. 

Prince's pash aside, insiders told Us Weekly that Simone has been married to hubby Jesse Giddings since 2016 — and they had been seen together in 2014, too, though the lovebirds have never confirmed if they'd been an item at the time. Either way, by 2016, they were husband and wife, and the following year, Simone and Giddings welcomed their first child.  

Unlike Simone's on-screen love interest, who is happy to speak publicly about his IRL relationship, Simone has made it pretty clear that her relationship with Giddings is something she'd rather keep out of the spotlight. Granted, every now and then, the couple will post something that has us swooning. Giddings, who is a former "E! News" host-turned-photographer, shares snaps here and there of Simone to his Instagram, congratulating her on career achievements or giving funny shout-outs for her help with his caption game. As he wrote at the end of one post gushing over their stay at a historic hotel: "Yes I copied this caption from my wife because she's brilliant and I couldn't have put it better." They may stay private for the most part, but it's clear they're smitten. 

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Unfortunately, not all the "New Girl" stars are happily paired up in real life. In fact, Lamorne Morris has spoken pretty candidly about his singledom. More specifically, he's joked that he's keen to change his relationship status. Speaking in a May 2024 episode of his podcast, "The Lamorning After," Morris quipped, "I'm a single man, and you know, ladies, I just wanna let you know I'm trying to get back out there." Granted, that came with a major, non-negotiable caveat: his daughter, Lily Morris. Yes, we're chuckling over the fact that Lamorne and Max Greenfield both have daughters with the same name, given the Winston Bishop–Winston Schmidt debacle. 

Back to Lamorne, the actor explained, "I do have a daughter, and she's the number one priority in my life, so if you can get with that ... hey, if you've got kids. Hey!" Lamorne added that he thought he might start putting Lily in pictures on his dating profiles just so any potential suitors knew what they were getting into right from the start. 

Lamorne has never made it public who Lily's mother is. Prior to becoming a dad, though, he was in a rather public relationship with E! News star Erin Lim. The exes haven't shared what prompted their split, though, and Lim has since married someone else. As for Lamorne, despite being single, he's been a very busy man since "New Girl" wrapped, and even won his first Primetime Emmy for his role in "Fargo." True to form, the doting single dad shared a video to TikTok of Lily laughing at him for getting so emotional about it. 

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After several seasons of being unlucky in love, Winston Bishop finally settled down with Aly, played by Nasim Pedrad. As such, it would make sense that she'd be next up on our list. However, while some of the "New Girl" alums are quiet about their relationships, Pedrad is entirely silent, except for mentioning unnamed "Loud American boyfriends" in the past on Instagram. As such, we're moving right along to the cast member who dipped in and out of the show more than once: Damon Wayans Jr. 

Wayans first joined "New Girl" for the show's pilot, as the high-strung Coach. He ended up leaving after the show he was originally on was renewed but returned as an on-and-off personality in the loft from Season 3 onward. As for his IRL relationship with his now-wife Samara Saraiva, it kind of sounds like it could have been a storyline on the show. 

As Wayans recounted in a 2020 interview with Scott D. Menzel, he'd originally been set up with Saraiva's cousin. That didn't work out too well, and not because he was locking eyes with Saraiva. Quite the contrary, he mentioned that they hadn't exactly clicked either because they seemed like such different people. However, the following evening he saw Saraiva again — and they greeted one another by, ahem, whacking each other's unmentionables. Evidently, that made for a beautiful marriage. "I'm like, 'Oh my God, this girl is a psycho' — and we've been going on, going strong ever since," he laughed. From not thinking there was anything there to finding a greeting probably no one else would have found endearing, it's a tale as old as time, with a very "New Girl" spin.