The New Girl Character You Likely Forgot Reacher's Alan Ritchson Played

I don't care what anybody says, the first two seasons of Elizabeth Meriwether's "New Girl" should be in the pantheon of the funniest sitcoms about roommates. I never thought the concept of three (and at times four) weirdo dudes living with a silly-girly chick could be as hilarious and bonkers as seen in Fox's TV series. It's a shame the show couldn't maintain that initial freshness and goofiness throughout its 7-season run, eventually turning into an insufferable, painfully unfunny, and mawkish mess in its last three seasons — at least for me, and I was a huge fan!

But seasons 3 and 4 are still plenty of fun — even if not on the same level as the previous two — and have their amusing highlights I can never get tired of. One of those is season 4's fourth episode, "Micro," which brings us to the very reason you clicked on this article.

The popular star of "Reacher" Alan Ritchson had a guest role in that episode, playing a ripped and handsome dum-dum called Matt, who goes on a few dates with Zooey Deschanel's titular new girl, Jess. As it becomes evident on their first date, Jess can't stand Matt (and his tattoo that says warrior poet) because he's an absolute doofus who just happens to have the body of a Greek god. But since she made a bet with her roommate, Nick (Jake Johnson), that she can date this guy for at least a month no matter how stupid he turns out to be, she pushes on despite loathing every second she has to spend with this imbecile.

Eventually, Jess even agrees to go home with the guy one day, and that's when she's faced with something so horrendous that she knows she has to lose the bet and run away from him as fast as possible. See, Matt might look like the perfect specimen of the human male, but he's lacking in one crucial department: he's the owner of a micropenis.

Not all auditions are created equal. Sometimes, you get an unexpected opportunity in the middle of the night, walking through a restaurant's parking lot, afraid you might get mugged. Then a car pulls up, and you suddenly see the familiar face of a director you once worked with before. That's exactly what happened to Alan Ritchson. In an interview for Wired, the star laughingly shared this anecdote of him heading to a diner late at night to finish a movie script he was working on at the time.

He said, "A blacked-out Audi pulls up in front of me, and it was like, oh god, I'm gonna get mugged. But I can fight, so I wasn't worried." Then he continued, "The window goes down, and it's Jay Chandrasekhar from 'Super Troopers,' who I worked with on 'Blue Mountain State.' [He goes] 'Hey, buddy!' and I was like, 'What are you doing? Dude, you can't just roll up on somebody in a parking lot at midnight like that.'" But instead of getting robbed, the actor-director told Ritchson that he talked about him recently at a Fox meeting since he was set to direct an episode of "New Girl" and thought he'd be great for this small role. Then the actor asked what's the part, and Chandrasekhar explained, "You're a really cool dude, everybody likes you, and you've got a micropenis."

And as any decent and confident man would, Ritchson immediately wanted to clarify the situation. He went, "So you have this episode called 'Micropenis,' and you think of me?! I'm the guy that you think of, Jay?!" Sure enough, he was the guy, accepted the role to play Matt, and the rest is sitcom history.