Entertainment

TheNew Girlstars directorial debut, comedy-thrillerSelf Reliance, pays homage to the will-they-wont-they romance that made him famous.

Jake Johnson is a DIY guy.

He hand-built an 8-foot-by-12-foot cabin with whiskey-lined shelves in the backyard of his Pasadena home.

Jake Johnson laughing while sitting on an orange diner booth with windows in the background.

Recently, he added a sauna to the screened-in porch.

Thats where my fat ass sits, he jokes, pointing to it.

(The couple has two cats and two dogs in total.

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If I wasnt with my wife, I wouldnt have all these animals, he says.)

Various child-sized bikes and scooters are scattered around the property.

The couple met when Johnson first moved to Los Angeles and was working at the Hollywood Park Casino.

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Payne, whos an artist, was a bartender at the Cat and the Fiddle.

Johnson slept on a futon and jotted ideas for writing projects directly on his walls.

Im still going to be with you, but were going to go to my house, Johnson recalls.

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He attests that the futon-dweller is still within him.

Theres really basic human stuff that I dont do well and that Ill forget.

he says, dressed in anAdam Sandler-esquepairing of oversized athletic shorts and a well-worn flannel.

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I get weird and Nick gets weird.

But who gives a sh*t?

Youre still carrying money!

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Over the course of his career, Johnson has grown indifferent to the conventional Hollywood measures of success.

He bristled at the familiar, lovable-sitcom-guy-to-Marvel-beefcake trajectory laid out for him.

I was having sit-downs with executives and we were having discussions of game plans, he says.

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And that whole world, it felt so like it had nothing to do with me.

Like Nick, Johnson is at risk of being underestimated.

The rap that I get a lot is that I have a lack of work ethic.

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But I work all the time; its just a different goal, says Johnson.

But for me, I go, We already did it!

We made it, we had a great time, and we loved it.

Johnsons longtime friend Michael Cera draws inspiration from Johnsons career choices.

Hes not really the kind of guy to just be a guy for hire, says Cera.

Hes just too smart for that, and too industrious, and too opinionated.

Cera is also impressed by the smaller choices Johnson makes on set.

As an actor, you wait around for a while on standby.

But Jake is like, Im going to give you my phone number.

Im going to get out of here and go have lunch.

For me to hear that, as a child actor, Im like, You candothat?

He reinvented the whole wheel.

Though Johnson gravitates toward writing projects these days, the craft didnt come easily to him.

I remember coming home and telling my mom and she just said, No.

She told the teacher, Hes not dyslexic, hes lazy.

Never say that word again, Johnson says.

I used to go into the city and read plays.

Johnson eventually landed at NYUs Tisch School of the Arts, where he majored in dramatic writing.

He won the life-changing role of Nick Miller onNew Girl, now considered the millennial generations quirkified answer toFriends.

Everybody always says the reason guys do everything is sex, but I think men get so simplified.

Of course it feels good to have sex, but deep down, you want love.

But Johnson didnt always feel the love for Nick during the shows initial, 2011-2018 run.

The first season blew up and the second season was huge.

The town thought it was cool and I was young enough to still care what the town thought.

All of the sudden youd be like, Dude, I got invited to the Golden Globes!

Wed all be like, Dude, that amazing actor just said they watched!

Then our show fell off a cliff and all those same people stopped liking it, he recalls.

But we still made it for four more years.

Like, Oh, Schmidtty and Nick, what are you up to now?

I would go, My question to you, Steve, is why do you keep watching?

They would literally start writing back stuff like, I never thought you were going to read it.

He says the exchanges would always end in a nice human thing.

So when the movie did badly, my agent called and goes, Its really not doing well financially.

Theres not going to be any more sequels, Johnson says.

But I cried out of happiness, actual tears.

He was like, You good?

Im like, Im great, man!

Not that Johnson was averse to the work itself, or even the Tom Cruise-levelworkout regimenCruise required of him.

He just couldnt shake the belief that his efforts were better spent elsewhere, like this wintersSelf Reliance.

I had note cards of every scene [on the walls], he says.

He sold the movie to Hulu, and premiered it at SXSW to much fanfare.

I was emotional, like, I fcking fcked up.

Johnson saw getting the movie right as his duty to his fans.

Im in a long-term relationship with this audience.

If Im taking a job and not considering my partner, Im a bad husband, he says.

Youre in a dance here, buddy.

Soon after, Johnsons real-life partner comes knocking on the cabin door.

My brain at 45, it sometimes just forgets, he says.

Thats why she wasnt mad at me.

Shes like, Hes not doing it onpurpose.