‘The Good Place’ Brings Kristen Bell Back To Television, But She’s No Veronica Mars

The Good Place brings two television veterans back to the small screen. Kristen Bell is to join Ted Danson in the new sitcom about a woman trying to understand what it means to be a “good” person. Bell joined Danson at San Diego Comic-Con International to help promote The Good Place by giving prospective fans an inside look at the upcoming sitcom, before its September 19 airdate.

The Good Place Stars Kristen Bell And Ted Danson Give SDCC Audiences A First Look

It was clear by Ted Danson’s reaction to Entertainment Tonight‘s question about his own good place that The Good Place stars are getting along famously and have bonded through filming the first season of the series. The actor hugged co-star Kristen Bell, saying that spending the day doing interviews with Bell was as good as it gets.

Ms. Bell shared Danson’s sentiments, but added just one more experience to her own list of good places.

“Besides working with Ted Danson every day, which is joy in and of itself,” Bell said, “mine would be humid Michigan summer nights when there’s a lightning storm.”

Of course, leave it to Danson to point out the flaw in Kristen’s description of her good place. He suggested Kristen wouldn’t be entirely happy without having husband Dax Shepard and children 3-year-old Lincoln and 19-month-old Delta there with her, teasing the actress over her frequent Facetiming sessions with the rest of her family. The 68-year-old actor says Bell is Facetiming with her children as soon as the director calls cut on the set of The Good Place, but Ted doesn’t fault her for that. In fact, Danson says she deserves a Mother of the Year award and an Actress of the Year award for her dedication to both aspects of her life.

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In The Good Place, Eleanor (Bell) is killed in a car accident and meets her mentor, Michael (Danson), in the afterlife, but there’s a catch. It seems mistakes were made and Eleanor didn’t actually perform the good deeds for which she was granted access to the otherworldly utopia. As might be expected, Eleanor must return to the world of the living to learn where she went wrong.

Kristen Bell On Frozen, Game Of Thrones, And The Good Place

In a new interview, Time magazine draws attention to the wide array of characters Kristen Bell has played in films and on television, but Bell says she doesn’t necessarily look for that diversity when choosing her roles. She says she doesn’t look for any specific qualities in the characters she plays, but she adds that, when she is faced with playing a character deemed evil, or negative, she approaches the role by trying to bring out the humanity in that character.

“That’s why I gravitated toward Sarah Marshall,” says Bell of her role in The Good Place. “I believe very few people on this planet are malicious for the sake of it. I think everyone is trying to be good and are sometimes misguided.”

As Eleanor arrives in the afterlife in The Good Place, she’s faced with a tally of her life’s good deeds and bad deeds to determine whether she belongs in the good place or the bad place. It’s a rather comical look at what many people expect to happen in the afterlife, and while it is funny, it also provides a social commentary on who we are becoming as a society. For Kristen, one of her favorite moments comes with a specific item on that list.

“I think one of my favorites is ‘Started to write a social media post about David Bowie dying then stopped and realized I don’t need to comment publicly on David Bowie’s death.’ That got you into the good place. I think they’re all things we deal with every day that people roll their eyes at,” says Ms. Bell.

One of Kristen Bell’s most iconic roles would have to be Anna in Frozen, so, knowing Bell is also a big fan of HBO’s Game of Thrones, the actress was posed with the question of who Anna could play on the George R.R. Martin-based series. Without flinching, Bell immediately had the answer: Arya Stark.

“I think what we saw in the most recent episode was Arya turning away from the Many-Faced God because she remembered she was a Stark and was going to follow her moral barometer over anything else,” says Kristen Bell. “I think she also is desperate to get back to her family, and I think those things are all really important to Anna. But Anna could never be as violent as Arya is.”

The Good Place premieres on September 19 on NBC.

[Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images]