‘The Good Place’ Star D’Arcy Carden On Playing Different Versions Of Janet

D’Arcy Carden as Janet — “The Good Place” actress D’Arcy Carden said that playing Bad Janet on the NBC comedy allows her to explore the nasty and dark side of herself. NBC/Colleen Hayes

“The Good Place” actress D’Arcy Carden opened up about playing different incarnations of Janet on the NBC afterlife comedy.

“It’s crazy how many Janets I get to play,” Carden told TheWrap when asked about what it’s like to portray the sweet and bad versions of Janet on the show. “It’s dreamy. Not to sound super-cheesy, but it is an actor’s dream to get to play all of these different roles, even though they’re all really part of the same thing.”

“I really love playing sweet, little, normal Janet,” continued the 38-year-old actress, whose other TV credits include HBO’s “Barry” and Comedy Central’s “Broad City.” “But there is nothing like playing Bad Janet — getting to explore a really mean, nasty, dark side of myself is just fun!”

In an interview with Collider last January, Carden revealed that she knew right off the bat that the show would introduce a bad version of Janet at some point during the show’s run.

“I remember in the first meeting, the day after I got cast, [series creator] Mike Schur and [executive producer] Drew Goddard brought her up and explained, ‘And then, there will be a Bad Janet that comes and does this,’” Carden recalled. “I remember that it wasn’t clear if I would be playing her, or a different person would be playing her, and I was crossing every finger, hoping that I would get to play her. I had a fear that I wasn’t gonna get to play her. For me, that was the best. It was so exciting to get to play someone the exact opposite of sweet little confident Janet.”

Though she enjoys playing Bad Janet, Carden said that there are also some challenges that come with it. The actress told OregonLive that the difficult part about playing Bad Janet is that she has to be “mean” to her costars, specifically to Ted Danson, whom she frequently shares scenes with.

“I was so mean to Ted Danson,” Carden recalled of one Season 1 scene. “It felt awful. I had to apologize afterward.”

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