Vulture Festival 2019 started on the most wholesome of notes as The Good Place stars D’Arcy Carden and Manny Jacinto discussed the unorthodox nature of their onscreen relationship while their co-star and The Good Place: The Podcast host Marc Evan Jackson moderated. The trio spent much of the panel chronicling and analyzing the development of the unique afterlife love story between Jacinto’s sweet simpleton bad boy, Jason Mendoza, and Carden’s otherworldly Siri-genie hybrid, Janet.
Carden revealed that even in season one, when the writers were first flirting with the idea of shipping the characters, it was important to everyone that Janet never appear to be “slumming it†with Jason. Carden rationalized this for her character by explaining that, to an omniscient supernatural entity like Janet, Jason is “as smart as Stephen Hawking,†relatively speaking. The actors felt this allowed the purity of the duo’s emotional connection to shine. According to Carden, it also gave Jason a chance to teach Janet “the one thing she didn’t know, which is how to feel.â€
Once Jackson opened the floor to audience Q&A, things started to get pretty forking juicy. A fan gifted D’Arcy a spec script, Manny announced his engagement to longtime girlfriend Dianne Doan, and we learned of a secret video somewhere on YouTube that contains the direct inspiration for Jason Mendoza. When asked which moment from four seasons of shooting the actors would choose as their personal Good Place, Carden noted that she would gladly spend “the rest of eternity†in the series finale. Having been tight-lipped about finale spoilers to a comical degree throughout the panel, Jackson finally threw the audience a bone and closed the panel by describing how the show ends: “Things transpire. Others don’t. End of The Good Place.â€