Nobody Knew Zooey Deschanel Was Going to Do That Accent for Season 3 of ‘Physical’
[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for Season 3, Episode 4 of “Physical.”]
No one, not show creator Annie Weisman nor longtime director Stephanie Laing, knew that Kelly Kilmartin would have a Southern accent until Zooey Deschanel showed up for Season 3 of Apple TV+’s “Physical.”
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Deschanel’s sitcom star and rising fitness guru Kelly (glimpsed in the Season 2 finale) assumes the role of Sheila’s vicious inner voice for the final season, as Sheila comes ever closer to her dream of an aerobics empire in ’80s San Diego. And while audiences watched star Rose Byrne neg herself for two seasons in voiceover, now Byrne’s Sheila is reacting in real-time to what Kelly has to say — and none of it kind.
“We always wanted Zooey, and when she said yes, we were thrilled, but we never really talked about what she sounded like,” Laing told IndieWire. “When Zooey tried out that accent, Annie and I were like, ‘That is incredible. Please, please do that.’ It is not what we expected.”
In a separate interview for an upcoming episode of IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Weisman pointed to the writers’ room for the seeds of Deschanel’s choice. “[Writer] Coleman Herbert, he’s from the South, and there was a kind of lilt to [Kelly’s dialogue] and a cadence that ended up feeling Southern in a very affected way. And so she kind of locked into that and just felt right for it.” (What AI bot could bring that nuance to the table?)
Deschanel’s accent (as both the real Kelly and Sheila’s interpretation of her) is as dark and darkly funny as “Physical” itself, while aiding and abetting the show in stretching its narrative and storytelling devices. If this is the first time audiences see a personification of Sheila’s inner voice, it’s also the first time the camera shifts away from her point of view to show her best friend, Greta (Dierdre Friel), observing her interacting with it. And Deschanel didn’t always stick to the script.
“We threw out a lot of improv for it too, which obviously Zooey really good at,” Laing said. “We would say insult her in different ways, and we’ll see what plays best in the edit.” But that bold move — having one actress improvise insults to another during a take — only works if the set is a safe and protective one, which Laing and Weisman have ensured over the course of the series.
“I’ve directed 24 of 30 episodes, and so I’ve been there from the beginning,” Laing said. “[Weisman and I], we just kind of created a safe space because it’s just our voices with Rose. We treat the subject matter very seriously and we take a very honest approach, and so I think that’s the key to it. There’s a vulnerability. You have someone like Rose Byrne who’s willing to just go there, and so is Zooey.
And both go there in the fourth episode, “Like a Rocket,” which sees “Physical” diving into the 1980s in full force at a fitness expo where diet cookies and shape garments are being hawked alongside exercise equipment. It’s here that Sheila’s fragile sense of recovery is badly shaken during an epic evening with Kelly. The real Kelly, not just the one who lives in Sheila’s head. Maybe.
“When you have that inner voice who is now taking the shape of someone out and about in the world, whether or not it was really that person is moot,” Laing said. “This is the final step to, as Annie geniusly said, ‘Wrestling the inner voice to the floor.'”
But before Sheila’s hungover humiliation and relapse, we get the surreal delight of watching Rose Byrne and Zooey Deschanel hang out while Deschanel croons a song (“She sang that live. Of course! You know how she’s not gonna lip sync,” Weisman said), Byrne tries on girdles, and the two manage to share secrets and stories that may or may not come back to hurt them both. The result is a dizzying montage that manages to be both hallucinatory and charming, subtly scary and a relief to see Sheila blowing off steam — not to mention a showcase for two actors palpably relieved to throw off the burden of likability.
The moment — like most of the instances when Sheila feels relaxed — is short-lived but serves to make the final moments of the episode all the more brutal to watch as Sheila relapses and fills the hotel bathtub with boxes of diet cookies, sinking into them and bingeing.
“We used over 3,000 chocolate chip cookies,” Laing said. “And Rose is such a… God, she’s just so incredible. I remember saying, ‘I think you should eat it like a Pez dispenser.’ And you can see that it’s in her eyes and it’s just this performance of these cookies going in and just toss it. It’s like bite, toss, bite. And she’s building up to this thing. And then when she does have that line, ‘Leave me alone,’ [Annie and I], we had to take a moment.”
For Weisman, the climax of “Like a Rocket” is a low point for Sheila —but the possibility of a reset. With six episodes to go before “Physical” concludes its third and final season, there’s still plenty of time to see which voice Sheila ultimately listens to.
New episodes of “Physical” premiere Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
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