Jamie Lee Curtis Says She 'Hated' Filming New Girl at NBC Newlyweds Panel

At NBCUniversal’s Summer Backlot Experience panel in Los Angeles on Monday, August 10, 2026, Jamie Lee Curtis promoted her upcoming NBC multi-camera comedy Newlyweds — and drew wide attention for blunt remarks about New Girl, saying she “hated” filming the single-camera hit even while calling it a “great show.” Curtis, 68, also described herself as the show’s “HBIC” and said she has spent decades asking her agents for a return to the sitcom format she loves.

Editor’s note: This article draws on panel coverage from Deadline, Page Six, The Wrap, Entertainment Weekly (via Yahoo Entertainment), and CBR, August 10–11, 2026. Quotes are attributed to Curtis and fellow panelists at NBCUniversal’s Universal Studios lot event.

What happened at the panel

Curtis joined Newlyweds creator Gail Lerner, stars Téa Leoni and Tim Daly, and cast members Emma Meisel, Ignacio Diaz-Silverio, and Bill O’Neill for a conversation billed as part of NBC’s summer backlot programming.

The session centered on Curtis’s long-running desire to work in multi-camera sitcoms — the rehearsed, studio-audience format associated with classic network comedy — and on Newlyweds, which she executive produces and will recur on as a guest star.

The line that circulated most widely afterward was her comparison between that format and her experience on New Girl, where she played Jessica Day’s mother in recurring guest appearances.

Curtis on New Girl: ‘great show,’ ‘awful’ to shoot

Curtis was careful to praise the series on its own terms while criticizing the production experience:

“I did a single-camera, which I hate. I mean, great show, New Girl, very funny. It’s a good show, but doing it is just like doing a movie. You’ve got a camera crew, and nobody laughs. They are silent, and it’s awful, for me, awful. Single-camera comedy is not fun.”

She said she had “begged” her agents for multi-camera work instead. Curtis has also appeared in single-camera comedies including The Bear, but told the panel that the silent, film-like shoot day does not match what she wants from comedy work.

By contrast, she described multi-camera sitcoms as a “beautiful dance” — rehearsing material, refining jokes, and working with a crew of camera operators in a collaborative rhythm. That contrast helped explain why her New Girl comments traveled quickly across entertainment outlets on August 10–11.

Why Newlyweds matters to Curtis

For Curtis, Newlyweds is not just another credit — it is the sitcom job she says she has wanted for years.

Detail	Information
Premiere	Friday, October 23, 2026, 8:30 p.m. ET on NBC
Format	Multi-camera comedy
Curtis’s roles	Executive producer; recurring guest star
Logline	A later-in-life love story about a free-spirited woman and a buttoned-up professor who marry impetuously after a whirlwind courtship
Curtis’s character	The professor’s ex-wife — a role she described bluntly in her own words at the panel

The series stars real-life couple Leoni and Daly, who married in July 2025. Lerner, who co-created the show with Curtis, said the project began during the pandemic, went dormant for a stretch she called “hibernating,” and moved forward after NBC called in November 2025 to greenlight it.

Curtis traced her sitcom affection to Anything But Love, the 1989–1992 ABC series she starred in with Richard Lewis after a pilot-season turnaround. She called it “my favorite job I’ve ever had” and said that at 68 she had told her agents every year: “All I want to do is a sitcom.”

When the right project did not arrive, she said, “I just decided to basically kind of create my own job.”

‘HBIC’ and taking the boss chair

Curtis also spoke about stepping into a leadership role on Newlyweds, using an NSFW shorthand for herself:

“I’m 68 years old; I have wanted to be a boss my whole life. I’ve been waiting my whole life, literally, to be able to manifest ideas and bring what I love about what I do into the workplace I do it in.”

She said she refers to herself as the show’s “HBIC” — Head Bitch In Charge — while discussing her executive producer responsibilities. That self-description, alongside the New Girl remarks, featured prominently in follow-up coverage.

A pitch for network sitcoms — and ‘must-see free TV’

Beyond personal career goals, Curtis framed Newlyweds as part of a broader case for broadcast comedy.

She argued that audiences want comfort viewing at home — “laughs and feelings” — and that network sitcoms can deliver that without subscription costs. “A lot of people don’t have any money anymore,” she said, pointing to cable and streaming bills. Curtis called NBC’s Friday block “must-see free TV” and praised the network for “reinvesting in multi-cam and bringing back Must See TV.”

Newlyweds will anchor a Friday comedy block alongside Reba McEntire’s Happy’s Place, which Curtis said performed well enough that NBC sought a companion series about love and friendship. She predicted multi-camera comedy could spread beyond Fridays if the block succeeds.

Leoni and Daly: nerves, nostalgia, and a new audience

Leoni shared a contrasting early-career memory from multi-camera work on shows such as Flying Blind and The Naked Truth, recalling air-sickness bags hung backstage because she felt sick with nerves before performing. She said returning to the format now felt scary but “so much fun.”

Daly pushed back on the idea that sitcoms are outdated, citing young fans who discover his classic series Wings. “There is an audience,” he said; “it’s just a matter of us finding them and them finding us.”

Personal story behind the premise

Curtis connected the show’s impulsive marriage plot to her own relationship with filmmaker Christopher Guest, whom she married after knowing him only briefly — “we had never spent more than 72 hours together” before the wedding, she said — and whom she described as a conversational opposite after 42 years of marriage. That personal thread, she said, fed the idea of watching older characters “figure out life when they are filled in a life with other people.”

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Discussion

1. Can you love a show but hate making it — and should actors say so publicly?

Curtis praised New Girl while calling the shoot “awful” for her. Does that kind of honesty help audiences understand how TV gets made, or does it unfairly shadow a series fans still love?

2. Is the multi-camera sitcom due for a real comeback on broadcast TV?

Curtis bet that feel-good, free-to-air comedy could find viewers again in a costly streaming era. Do you still watch network sitcoms live, or has your comedy diet moved entirely to streaming?

Share where you stand — and whether Curtis’s New Girl confession changed how you think about single-camera comedy.