It seems like D’Arcy Carden has always been part of the pop culture fabric, and with good reason. This year alone she’s starred alongside Jennifer Garner and Regina Hall in The Five Star Weekend (still No. 1 on Peacock after two weeks), shared top billing with Will Forte on one of the most critically acclaimed comedies of the year (Sunny Nights) and even fronted an HGTV show with pal Sherry Cola.
But until the one-two of The Good Place and Barry ignited her career less than a decade ago, Carden spent a lot of time watching the people around her get their big break. “The struggle lasted for so long for me, longer than people usually give it,” she says. “But it’s almost like things were going well even though they weren’t. I was doing Upright Citizens Brigade, what I wanted to be doing. I was just having a really hard time paying my rent. That was the struggle. Because I was very satisfied.”
These days, Carden seems to be satisfied and less concerned with making ends meet. During a recent episode of The Hollywood Reporter podcast, I’m Having an Episode (Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple), the actress talked about her turn in Peacock’s hit Elin Hilderbrand adaption, finding kinship with her initially annoying character and the inevitable drama of any girls trip.
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Elin Hilderbrand has such a deep catalog of commercially successful books, yet Five Star Weekend is only the second adaptation. Did you get a sense of why it took her so long?
She is so prolific. I should ask her why it is just starting, because she seems down now. She’s been so involved and having so much fun. We shot this show mostly in L.A., but we spent a month in Nantucket — which was fun. “Are we on vacation? Are we working? What is this?” Elin prepared the the island for us… amazing dinners, amazing parties.
What is your take on the dynamics at play in this show. Personally, my worst nightmare would be traveling with one of my best friends and a bunch of strangers, to me, who have these deep histories to the friend.
It’s a bit self-serving for the person throwing the party, right? “These are all of my people, and you guys don’t really know each other!” Or maybe they met once and they’re a little jealous of each other. Who’s the number one bestie? More often than not, in a situation like this, some shit would come up.
And it does. It reminds me a lot of a bachelor or a bachelorette party — just at a very different time in life. Did you have a bachelorette party?
It was a very anti-bachelorette party. It was three [of my] high school best friends and [my] two sisters. We went out to a nice dinner in San Francisco, got a manicure and pedicure. On sort of a whim, we ended up going to karaoke and drinking too much. My husband — my fiance, at the time — had to come pick us up, which is very bachelorette party vibes. But that was not the intention.
I wouldn’t call the characters on Five Star Weekend archetypes, per se, but they are all very specific — which made me wonder what role have you played in your career that felt closest to yourself?
There are certain characters that you play where you’re like, “This is me a little bit.” I felt like that with like Natalie, who I played in Barry, and this character, Brooke. I’m looking at this character like, “Oops, I do that too!” This thing that is maybe not so flattering is maybe a part of me. The few scenes that they sent me for the audition, I knew her so well — in friends and relatives and myself. She’s this sweet, try hard, awkward do-gooder. Like, just desperate. All these things that are maybe not so flattering. Also, she’s a good person. She’s a wonderful person. She’s really like searching.
Brooke is, at first glance, kind of that person on the group trip where you think, “God, who invited her?” Then you peel back the layers and they relax and you end up loving them.
Someone’s always like, “I brought my cousin!” What? But I think Brooke is so surprised that she was invited. She sort of worships Hollis [Jennifer Garner]. I think she just feels so alone in her life. The idea that this superstar picked her is kind of beyond her wildest dreams. So, she’s trying so hard to fit in. And absolutely failing at that for quite a while.
Going back to this idea of relating to a role, is that something you need to take on a project — or are you happy to just go with good material?
There probably does, but you really can let your idea of relating to something be very broad. When it’s all said and done, we’re just playing imagination. We’re just playing pretend. Sometimes,it’s in the writing more than the character. A goal of mine is always to play the opposite of whatever I’ve just played, trying to reach for something new every time.
To your credit, in the time since you broke out, you have avoided typecasting. Is that by design?
Well, thank you. It is by design — and also it might not be helpful to my career. (Laughs.) I don’t know. But it’s what I gotta do. There’s probably, for sure, a smarter way to do this — to lean into the things that are working or what people people like me for. But there’s something in me that’s like, “Do the opposite!” It’s this demon voice that’s like, “You can’t do that again!”
Sunny Nights, your series with Will Forte, came out rather quietly in the U.S. earlier this year after it premiered in Australia. I recognize that there there are always so many variables at play here, but when you’re part of something that is critically acclaimed and maybe doesn’t get many marketing levers pulled for it, what is your response? Is that just part of the experience of the job?
It’s an Australian show, and we were hoping anybody would pick it up out here. Hulu did and that was super exciting. And, yeah, there’s only so much you can do. I have realized, over the years, that the whole point is doing it on the day. If only five people in America watched Sunny Nights, and I think quite a few more did, but if only five had… I wouldn’t have regretted doing it for a second. It was like it was so fulfilling, such an incredible experience.
You and Sherry Cola made an unscripted series, Wild Vacation Rentals, for HGTV earlier this year. I found it very fun. It’s just you and Sherry staying at absurd Airbnbs. But it did leave me wondering… did you actually sleep in any of them?
Do you really want me to tell you?
Yes.
OK, I’m gonna peel back the curtain. We didn’t actually sleep in them. Hollywood magic! But we did spend a the day in them. And I would have slept in some of those places. Some of those places I wouldn’t have wanted to sleep in.
Because it was such a positive show, I imagine it would have taken a turn if you had actually slept in some of them. There were some weird ones…
It was a positive show! We would meet all of the homeowners, the vacation rental owners, and they were all so sweet and wonderful. Something that really struck me was that these people, their whole job was to give you a good time. They set out the soap just so. There’s just something very sweet about it. The idea of being like, “This place was good and this place was bad,” I couldn’t even stomach it. So it was like, let’s find the positive of every single place no matter what.
To go back to relating to characters one last time before we leave, Janet on The Good Place was not artificial intelligence. But she was an all-knowing, non-human who evolved and viewers all loved. As we’re now forced to talk about AI daily, in respect to so many aspects of life, do you find your experience of that character coloring your opinion of AI?
I’ve always had almost an empathy for robots. It’s like Pinocchio, something that’s thinks it’s a real boy but isn’t. We know it’s not. Alexa or whatever, I’ve always had this thing inside of me that’s like, “This poor thing!” It doesn’t know that we know that it’s not alive. So, I had an in with Janet. I sort of humanized her in a way that I guess I’ve always done. AI, for me, it’s not so much about the actual program as it is about the people that are making it. I don’t use it and I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but I’m not like mad at ChatGPT. I’m mad at the people forcing it down our throats. It’s that, “Fuck the rest of the world, this is what we’re doing!” That’s the the part that is frustrating me: the people in charge, not the poor little robot.
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The Five-Star Weekend is now streaming all episodes on Peacock.
