D'Arcy Carden
You may know D\u2019Arcy Carden as the lovable, all-knowing, not-quite-robot-not-quite-human entity Janet on\xa0The Good Place, and while she may not know\xa0everything\xa0in real life, she certainly knew she wanted to act from the moment she saw her father in a local production of Thorton Wilder\u2019s Our Town.\n\nBy the time she was nine, D\u2019Arcy had her mind set on child acting, and she tried to make her case to her father. But he didn\u2019t buy her \u201cI can handle it\u201d argument, and instead, she was forced to pursue acting at school until she graduated. It was a compromise she didn\u2019t want to make\u2014\u201cYou\u2019re ruining my life!\u201d was D\u2019Arcy\u2019s initial reaction. But in retrospect, she wouldn\u2019t have it any other way, proving that sometimes, parents do know whats best. (that last line was directed at my children).\n\nThe struggles started soon after she graduated college and moved to New York City to conquer Broadway. \u201cI shared a two-bedroom apartment with four, sometimes five people. I never had a dollar in New York, and I lived there for ten years. I kept auditioning, but I quickly realized, \u2018It\u2019s not going to happen right now. What the hell do I do?\u2019\u201d But through it all, she still tried to make a career out of acting, taking any job she could get, which often felt less like acting, and more like acting adjacent. This included being a temp, a waitress, a nanny, an extra, and even a tour guide.\n\nBut it took seeing an Upright Citizens Brigade show for D\u2019Arcy to really find her place. \u201cI was sitting in the front row at UCB\u2019s\xa0ASSSSCAT\xa0show, and the cast was Amy Peohler, Seth Meyers, Jason Mantzoukas, and Rob Riggle. An incredible cast. And something electric happened\u2014it was this weird religious moment where everything came together and revealed the clearest path. I realized, \u2018I don\u2019t care what I do for the rest of my life, I want\xa0that. I want to be on stage with these people.\u2019\u201d\n\nD\u2019Arcy immediately started taking improv classes, and discovered her authentic self by risking failure night after night. Over time, she gradually moved up the ladder at UCB, which ultimately opened up opportunities for television work, including her big break on Comedy Central\u2019s Broad City. These days, she\u2019s stealing the show on two critically-acclaimed television series:\xa0The Good Place\xa0and\xa0Barry.\xa0It turns out that nine-year-old D\u2019Arcy was right\u2014she really can handle the life of an actor, and she can only go up from here.\n\nD\u2019Arcy joins\xa0Off Camera\xa0to talk about the secret mantra that keeps her confidence going, the college professor who told her she wasn\u2019t \u201cdark enough\u201d to be a real actor, and why you should always be nice to the interns at UCB.