Whatever Happened To Hannah Simone?
London-born actor Hannah Simone is truly a citizen of the world. Raised primarily in Canada, Simone spent her adolescent years traveling the globe from Cyprus to India. As a teenager she worked as a model, and after returning to Canada to study at the University of British Columbia, she spent several years as a VJ on the Canadian pop culture network MuchMusic. During this time Simone landed small parts on various television shows — she played a character credited as "Sexy Girl" on two different episodes of the Ving Rhames-led "Kojak" reboot in 2005 — but her big break as an actor came a few years later in 2011 when she was cast in Fox sitcom "New Girl."
Created by Elizabeth Meriwether and starring Zooey Deschanel as a quirky young woman sharing a Los Angeles apartment with three goofball dudes, "New Girl" was one of the great hang-out shows of the 21st century, thanks in large part to its endlessly charming cast, including Jake Johnson, Lamorne Morris, and Damon Wayans Jr. As fashion model Cece, best friend to Deschanel's Jess Day, Simone is originally set apart (and living apart) from the rest of the ensemble, but soon enough becomes one of the guys thanks to her on-and-off romance with persnickety roommate Schmidt (Max Greenfield). The show lasted for six full seasons followed by a shortened Season 7 in 2018, after which Simone was largely absent from television screens for several years. In 2023 she returned to network television on the ABC supernatural sitcom "Not Dead Yet." Let's take a look at what Simone has been up to since the end of "New Girl."
Simone had a baby toward the end of New Girl
The biggest thing that Simone has been up to since the end of "New Girl," of course, is raising a family. In August 2017 she and her husband and fellow former MuchMusic VJ Jesse Giddings welcomed a baby boy. The couple keep their private lives, well, private — so much so that fans of Simone and-or Giddings might not have even known that they were married and expecting until paparazzi photos of Simone and her baby bump were published earlier that summer. Other than a photo shoot of the baby's room for People Magazine in October 2017, Simone has kept her son out of the public eye, not even publicly confirming his name.
Simone's pregnancy largely occurred during the hiatus between "New Girl" Seasons 6 and 7 but was nonetheless incorporated into the show. At the end of Season 6, Cece and Schmidt find out they are going to have a baby. Season 7, however, jumps forward three years, skipping over all that pregnancy stuff and showing the couple and their precocious toddler living in the suburbs, with Cece running her own modeling agency and a mustachioed Schmidt thriving as a stay-at-home dad. Coincidentally, Deschanel was also pregnant during the filming of Season 6, giving birth to son Charlie Wolf Pechenik in May 2017.
The Greatest American Hero
In February 2018, just a few weeks before the final season of "New Girl" aired, it was announced that Simone would play the title role in a reboot of "The Greatest American Hero." The original 1981 series was created by television maestro Stephen J. Cannell ("The Rockford Files," "21 Jump Street") and starred William Katt as a schoolteacher who receives a super-powered suit from a race of space aliens but can never remember quite how it's supposed to work. The show is fondly remembered for Katt's distinctive red super-suit, still a Halloween staple decades later, and for its Mike Post-penned theme song "Believe it or Not," which was memorably parodied on "Seinfeld."
The planned reboot starring Simone was actually the second time a distaff "Hero" spinoff was attempted; in 1986 Mary Ellen Stuart starred in a pilot for "The Greatest American Heroine," which was later added to the syndication run of the original series. "Fresh off the Boat" writers Rachna Fruchbom and Nahnatchka Khan handled writing and producing duties for the new pilot (Cannell died in 2010) and would have made Simone's South Asian ancestry a key part of her character. Alas, it was not to be, as ABC ultimately decided not to pick the show up for a full season, or to even air the pilot. In 2022, Simone posted a screenshot from the pilot to Instagram, still lamenting that audiences "never got to see this show."
Bad luck with pilots
"The Greatest American Hero" was not the only pilot Simone was involved in that ultimately went nowhere. Despite being highly in demand in the years following "New Girl," she apparently couldn't catch a break. In 2019, she appeared in "Awokened," a would-be vehicle for comic actor and "New Girl" alum David Walton about an uptight yuppie whose life is transformed when he accidentally eats psychedelic mushrooms. Simone and Lamorne Morris were on hand as the main character's sister and a delivery driver, respectively. Though no networks expressed interest in it, the full pilot is available to watch on writer-director Daryl Wein's YouTube page.
In 2021, Simone was attached to the pilot "Welcome to Georgia" for CBS. Created by "Spider-Man: Homecoming" and "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" scribes John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the show followed a busy married couple (Simone and Taran Killam) who turn to Simone's character's mess of a mother (Elizabeth Hurley), the eponymous Georgia, for help raising their young child. Despite the high-profile names in front of and behind the camera, the network passed on the pilot. A semi-autobiographical sitcom about Simone and her Indian immigrant father was also in development at ABC in 2019 but was passed over. When asked about these near misses in 2023, Simone was philosophical, telling Salon, "What I've really learned to trust about this industry is that you don't want a role or a show that you're not right for, or the show isn't quite right yet. You don't want that."
The Bash Brothers
Not all of Simone's projects were dead on arrival, though. In 2019, The Lonely Island — Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone's musical comedy collective, best known for their "SNL" digital shorts like "Dick in a Box” and "I'm on a Boat" — released "The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience," a parody of Beyonce's 2016 visual album "Lemonade" centered around, of all things, the 1980s heyday of Oakland A's heavy-hitters Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire (Samberg and Schaffer, respectively). The half-hour Netflix special features the two ballers at the top of their game yet crippled on the inside by their secret insecurities and, to a much larger extent, their inveterate steroid use.
Simone stars with Jenny Slate in the segment "Oakland Nights" as a pair of businesswomen who go on a double date with the Bash Brothers. Going back to Canseco and McGwire's apparently shared home, the ladies are thoroughly unimpressed by its faux-Asian decor and promise of "silk robes and kimonos" sung by pop star Sia (and lip-synced by actor Sterling K. Brown). When the Brothers show off their sexual potential by humping the arms of their couch, the night comes to an abrupt end with a "hard pass" from Slate. Simone, Brown, and Slate are just a few of the high-profile cameos in the special; later on, Canseco and McGwire are accosted in an IHOP parking lot by a girl gang made up of Maya Rudolph, Stephanie Beatriz, and the Haim sisters.
Voice work
While several of her post-"New Girl" live action projects didn't work out, Simone has had greater success of late as a voice actor, performing in some animated series for children and a few that are really not for children. In 2020 alone she voiced roles on the Peacock adaptation of "Where's Waldo," the Netflix high school comedy "Hoops" starring her "New Girl" pal Jake Johnson as a belligerent basketball coach and she played a snake in two episodes of the Comedy Central stoner cartoon "Loafy," about a drug-dealing Manhattan manatee voiced by Bobby Moynihan. Simone also had a recurring role on Season 4 of the CBS All Access cop comedy "No Activity," which notably was not a cartoon in its first three seasons; the Funny or Die-produced series pivoted to animation for its final season in 2021.
But Simone's longest-running voiceover gig has been for the Disney Junior series "Mira, Royal Detective." A story of a plucky young Indian girl who uses her wits to solve mysteries in and around the royal palace, the cartoon is voiced entirely by actors of South Asian descent, including Leela Ladnier in the lead role, Freida Pinto, Kal Penn, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Danny Pudi. Simone voices Pinky, one of Mira's best friends and a fellow commoner, who is rarely seen without her pet goat. The series ended in 2022 after two seasons, though it remains available to stream on Disney+.
A best friend once again
Simone returned to network television five years after the end of "New Girl" in "Not Dead Yet," a supernatural sitcom based on Alexandra Potter's novel "Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up." Gina Rodriguez stars as Nell, a relatable millennial wreck trying to rebuild her life after giving up her career for a long-term relationship that has just ended. Hoping to get back into the journalism game, she takes the best job she can get: writing obituaries for a struggling independent newspaper. Helping her out along the way are her best friend (Simone), her new roommate (Rick Glassman), and the ghosts of the people who feature in her obits.
As she did on "New Girl," — and on "Mira, Royal Detective," for that matter — Simone is once again playing the supportive best friend to the main character. In a recent interview with Salon, she said that the show's focus on female friendship is what drew her to the role, and that, supernatural elements notwithstanding, she sees the heart of the show being the "love story" between her and Rodriguez's characters. Some fans of hers, however, are not entirely pleased to see Simone once again in a support role. Writing for Pajiba, critic Dustin Rowles supposes that the show would be better if Simone's character was the focus, as both she and her character are more compelling than the current lead in the writer's opinion.
New Girl revisited
One of the most recent hot trends in podcasting is the "rewatch" show, where the stars of well-known shows take listeners through an episode-by-episode recap of the series full of behind-the-scenes info, personal reflections, and interviews with their former colleagues. Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey struck audio gold with "Office Ladies," their podcast based on "The Office," and Zach Braff and Donald Faison continue to delight audiences with their "Scrubs" rewatch titled "Fake Doctors, Real Friends." In January 2022, Simone teamed up with Zooey Deschanel and Lamorne Morris for "Welcome to Our Show," a rewatch of "New Girl" from the very beginning.
Speaking to Salon, Simone marveled at how little she and her castmates remembered about episodes filmed more than a decade ago, and that watching them for the podcast was like seeing them for the first time. "I'm rewatching it and I'm like, 'Wow. I get why so many people love it,'" she said, "because I can now watch it with fresh eyes." Each podcast episode includes not just the reminiscences of Simone, Morris, and Deschanel, but input from the director and writers, as well as a fresh round of the show's famous ever-evolving drinking game: True American. After a year and a half on the digital air, the podcast has only made it about halfway through the second season; hopefully there will be plenty more talking about "New Girl" to come.
Charity work
Over the years Simone has used her star power in service of a number of charities, including UNICEF, the Children's Defense Fund, and Free the Children. In 2013, she hosted a fundraising contest on behalf of the Pink Daisy project, a nonprofit that supports young families experiencing breast cancer, with the top prize being a visit to the "New Girl" set. Simone has worked with WE Charity several times over the years, from participating in the 2015 WE Day youth empowerment event in Illinois (along Selena Gomez, Magic Johnson, and many others) to helping build schools in Kenya and rural India in 2017.
More recently in May 2023, Simone put her considerable stylishness to good work, curating a Mother's Day gift box for the mail order company Gratitude Collab that includes a gold and diamond pendant, high-end chocolates and vegan skincare products, as well as artisanal textiles. The proceeds of the gift box's sales go to the nonprofit the Good Plus Foundation (stylized as Good+Foundation), which provides resources to low-income families in an effort to alleviate generational poverty.
Simone shies away from publicity
In case the globetrotting childhood, network TV stardom, and charity work via luxury goods didn't tip you off, Hannah Simone leads what most of us would consider a very glamorous life. But at the same time, it is a very private life. "I don't put myself out in the world," she told Salon while doing publicity for "Not Dead Yet." "I have a very small, tight friend circle." Simone has had her share of pet projects over the years, from partnering with TJ Maxx in 2019 to flexing her interior design muscles in collaboration with Palm Springs vacation home renters Sunstone Home. But one of the most notable parts of her resume, especially in the years since "New Girl" ended, is what is not on there: No reality show competitions or game shows, very few talk shows, no hosting gigs for New Year's or the Rose Bowl Parade — a surprising lack of those things we often think actors have to do to stay in the public eye.
Simone truly does seem content with staying out of the public eye unless she is actively working. One notable exception to that privacy, however, is her Instagram account. Carefully curated and entirely on her own terms, Simone's social media game is on point, updated regularly with a mix of promotional photos from "Not Dead Yet" and "New Girl," and casually posed images of her against some impossibly exotic backdrop or locale, captioned usually with something self-effacing. The account is an extension of her personal brand, of course, but one kept on her own terms.