Jake Johnson made a butt imprint on the New Girl couch

Jake Johnson made a massive impact on New Girl — particularly on the show’s set.

Johnson will appear on Tuesday’s episode of Last Meals to discuss his upcoming directorial debut Self Reliance. In an exclusive clip from the episode, The Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse actor discusses how routine on set is key to a smooth production — and how repetitive blocking left a mark on the furniture.

“On the couch on that show in the living room, there’s like a place where the legs would go up. And on the pilot I claimed it,” Johnson explains. “We’re shooting long hours. And so in rehearsal, little actor’s tip: When they say, ‘Let the actors do what they want,’ find a comfortable spot if you’re gonna shoot long. So Max [Greenfield] was running around, doing his thing, Lamorne [Morris] was like politely sitting. Zooey [Deschanel], she’s got to stand up cause she had a monologue, and so I sat down on a spot with my legs up, and then I think that my character would be drinking a soda water, right? Gotta have something to drink.”

Here’s the kicker: “I ended up sitting there so much over the years that on the couch, there was a crease where my butt cheeks were.”

Johnson was building to a larger point about the strange dynamic on television sets when new, unfamiliar directors took charge of a tightly-knit cast and crew. “Everybody knew each other so well,” he says. “So we were going over the scene, Zooey saying ‘I might do this,’ you’re doing the shorthand, you’re figuring it out. The director would come in and be like ‘Max, you sit here,’ and I’m like ‘On my butt groove? No way, my guy.’”

The actor details how a revolving door of directors can impact the atmosphere of a set. “You guys do it every day, you know each other,” he says. “You know where people shine, you know when someone’s in a bad mood the second you see them. Every week, there’s a new visitor who’s the boss. That person doesn’t know anybody or anybody’s dynamic, so it drove me nuts.”

Johnson used his experience on the New Girl set to create a more collaborative environment on his directorial feature debut. “What I really wanted to do on this one was have every department kind of run itself,” he says. “Sometimes you’ll feel like the director will come in and the set design would be great, or there’ll be a department that’s killing it, but now we all just work for this one person. So I wanted to hire everybody, I wanted the right vibe, and so that part of it was really great."

Mythical Kitchen’s Last Meals episode with Jake Johnson will premiere Tuesday, Jan. 16, at 6 a.m. ET/3 a.m. PT on YouTube. Watch the exclusive clip above.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

• The cast of New Girl: Where are they now?
• Jake Johnson recalls working with 'sweet kid' Olivia Rodrigo on New Girl
• Minx is canceled (again)