The Good Place's "not-robot" Janet is the glue that holds the show together

Vanity Fair

“That has proven to be the best decision I made, I think,” creator Michael Schur says of D’Arcy Carden's character, which is not exactly a robot. Schur says he's particularly happy that he made Janet a corporeal being, “instead of a disembodied computer voice like Alexa or something. . . . Every time we go to a new place, there’s a possibility that there is a new Janet. It’s really fun.” Schur auditioned all kinds of actors, regardless of age and race, for the Janet role before landing on Carden. “She made the robotic language that I had written for the dummy scene seem like a real person was doing it,” he says. “She found this weird humanity inside this robotic scene.”