If you’re in the mood for (yet another) pandemic binge-watching experience, you could do worse than blasting through The Good Place. Despite its darker themes of being stuck and trying to find meaning in a surrealist nightmare, the sitcom is surprisingly heartwarming—particularly due to the work of D’Arcy Carden, who starred as a robot database of sorts with all the secrets of the universe hidden behind her endlessly smiling visage. The series finale this past January inspired Carden’s last domestic trip pre-pandemic, says the actor, and brought her to Greece last fall for filming.
Now sheltering in Los Angeles with her husband and dog, Carden chatted with Condé Nast Traveler about longing for New York City, traveling with a group of friends, and listening to Paul Simon as she drifts off to sleep.
The aspect of travel she misses the most:
I am actually a weird one—I don’t mind the actual plane and the waiting around. In fact, I kind of like it. But man, I love when you get to your place. You can finally put your bag down in your house or your hotel or whatever, look around, and say, “Oh, I get to spend a couple of days here!” It’s so exciting. I love that feeling.
Her last trip before the pandemic:
It feels like I don’t remember anything before March. The cast of The Good Place went to New York for the finale in the end of January, a nice little week in New York, and it was lovely and fun to do with the cast. I lived in New York for 10 years, so it was weird to me to stay in a hotel. When I think of New York, I think of living in a shoe box and leaving the house every morning with a bag of stuff for the day. I left with my house on my back, and I would work and do shows and auditions and come home at midnight. Now when I come to New York for work, I can stay at a nice hotel and take a car instead of the subway. I can’t believe it’s even the same place, you know?
Why she compares missing flights to getting drunk:
At some point, I learned that you have to get to the airport an hour early, so I get there an hour early. I do not get there an hour and two minutes early. It drives my husband absolutely crazy; I think every couple is like that. One of them wants to get there five hours early and one of them wants to get there 20 minutes early. In my life I’ve probably missed three flights because of being too late, which is nobody’s fault but my own. It’s the same feeling as getting too drunk. You do it and you remember the next day why you don’t want to do that again. Then you don't do it again for a few years and then do it again, and go “Oh, no, no, no.”