‘The Good Place’: D’Arcy Carden Says Playing Janet Was Initially A Struggle

D’Arcy Carden admitted that playing the first incarnation of Janet on the NBC comedy “The Good Place” was not easy.

“With acting, it’s all about reacting and emotion. Every line you say and every line your scene partner says, the point is reacting to it, but when your character doesn’t react, it’s a weird struggle,” Carden told Variety of the main challenge she faced when portraying the early version of her character. “I talked about it with [series creator] Mike [Schur] a lot, and he’s amazing and so collaborative, and it was very helpful to figure it out together.”

After figuring out the right balance between human and robot, Carden said that playing Janet started to feel so natural for her. “Now, I feel like I know her so well: She is me, I am her,” Carden told Elle last September.

In an interview with Collider last January, Carden revealed that the “first season was more challenging” for her and “coming back for the second season felt more like home.” “I was like, ‘Oh, I know this character! I love this character!’ It feels right in my body now,” Carden said of playing the sentient database right after she and Schur finally determined who Janet should be. “But for the first season, it was definitely a struggle to not be too robotic and not be too human. It just was harder than I thought. The nice thing is that Mike Schur is super open and collaborative, and loves to talk about script and acting. Any time I was struggling, I would just grab him at lunch and say, ‘This is hard!’”

Season 2 of “The Good Place” ended with humans Eleanor (Kristin Bell), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), and Jason (Manny Jacinto) being sent back to Earth for a chance to live a kinder life.

Plot details about Season 3 are being kept under wraps, but Bell told the Los Angeles Times that the “next season is about how you can play chess with people who don’t know you’re playing with them and doing so in a way that doesn’t affect the greater universe.”

“Because our characters don’t know there’s a greater mission, we’re meandering on Earth,” Bell continued. “So now we are all left on Earth separately. And what we learned from the first two seasons is that our strengths come when we’re together. But can Michael (Ted Danson) and Janet [who are both monitoring the humans’ every move] tamper with us without affecting the universe?”

Without giving any spoilers away, Jamil also shared that the Season 3 scripts they have read so far are “even funnier” and “slightly filthier.”

“The Good Place” Season 3 is expected to premiere this fall on NBC.