New Girl's Max Greenfield modeled Schmidt after Joey Tribbiani, Dwight Schrute and Barney Stinson

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"My feeling was if you were going to have these two grounded characters (Jess and Nick) who were doing incredible work — just really, really good solid single cam acting — there needed to be the big explosive joke hitter," he says. "You needed that. Most shows have had them. Like, if you look at The Office, Rainn Wilson got that in the beginning. You had it with Neil Patrick Harris’ character (on How I Met Your Mother) and Joey (on Friends) and all these other characters like that — that sort of No. 3 that hit the punchlines. I was like, ‘Alright, I’m just gonna go big on this stuff.’ And it’s paid off.”