On the ABC sitcom “Happy Endings,” Eliza Coupe was one-sixth of a true ensemble cast, playing the hyper-competitive, neurotic Jane Kerkovich-Williams.
Now on the new USA legal comedy series “Benched” — which premieres Tuesday at 10:30 p.m. — Coupe, 33, finds herself in the unfamiliar position of being the main star.
“As an actor you always want to be the lead and then you go ‘Oh, that means I’m in every scene, every day, all the time,’ ” she tells The Post.
“We were shooting two episodes at a time. I worked 14-15 hours a day, every day. You don’t realize how intense it is, but I do enjoy being No. 1 on the call sheet, I’m not going to lie.”
On “Benched,” Coupe stars as Nina Whitley, a high-powered corporate LA lawyer who suffers a fall from grace. When her ex-fiancé announces his engagement on the same day she is passed over for partner at her firm, Nina has a meltdown at work and is forced to take a job at the only place that will have her — the public defender’s office.
“The character just has so much depth and so many layers to her,” Coupe says of playing the unfiltered Nina. “The way that they wrote it, it’s real, she’s a real person. I’ve done a lot of incredible, fun work on ‘Scrubs’ and ‘Happy Endings’ and they were such fun, crazy characters and they were amazing. This character is a bit more grounded. So that really spoke to me.”
As a public defender, Nina has to adjust to her rough-and-tumble clients and deal with frequent courtroom run-ins with her ex, now a rising star in the district attorney’s office.
Clad in designer suits and Louboutin heels, Nina must also try to fit in with her hardscrabble new co-workers — including Oscar Nunez (“The Office”) and a potential love interest in Jay Harrington (“Better Off Ted”) — an odd-man out scenario to which Coupe can relate.
I do enjoy being No. 1 on the call sheet, I’m not going to lie.
- Eliza Coupe
“I was a terrible waitress. I was in the weeds if I had a table. I was a nanny and I’m not great with kids,” she says of the bad jobs she has held over the years. “Almost every job I’ve had aside from acting has been a fish-out-of-water type of experience.”
The 12-episode “Benched” is co-created by actress Michaela Watkins (“Trophy Wife”) and Damon Jones, who originally intended the role of Nina for Watkins.
When her appearances on last season’s “Trophy Wife” proved too much of a conflict, Coupe stepped into the lead.
“That takes an incredible woman to be able to give up her baby like that,” Coupe says. “I definitely felt like I don’t want to let her down. I wanted to do it justice. But she and I have a very similar sense of humor and way of looking at the world. It kind of just worked out because of that.”