New Girl Winston Actor Reveals He Was Very Allergic To Ferguson The Cat

Lamorne Morris, the actor who played Winston on New Girl, revealed that he was very allergic to his character’s favorite feline in a recent interview. New Girl was a popular sitcom that ran on FOX from 2011 to 2018. Winston was a fan favorite, partially due to his relationship with his cat Ferguson.

New Girl focused on Jessica Day (Zooey Deschanel), a young woman living with her three male roommates, Schmidt (Max Greenfield), Nick (Jake Johnson), and Winston. Winston joined the New Girl ensemble cast in episode two of the series, replacing Coach (played by Damon Wayans Jr.) to move in with a girlfriend. Winston’s quirky and unique interests, such as his bird shirts and musical theatre, helped the character capture the hearts of viewers. He got his cat Ferguson in the third season after finding out the cat’s previous owner, Winston’s then-girlfriend Daisy, was cheating on him and deciding she did not deserve to own the cat anymore.

While promoting his New Girl re-watch podcast, Welcome to Our Show, with Hannah Simone, who played CeCe on the show, Morris revealed to E! News that he was extremely allergic to the cat that played Ferguson. He recalled it being so bad that he had to “start taking meds for it.” According to Morris, the writers didn’t know about his allergy when Ferguson was written into the show. Fans loved the cat so much that it became impossible for the show to replace him. This added a lot of extra difficulty to filming for Morris. Read what Morris said below:

“It was beyond just taking meds I’ll tell you that much. There were a lot of things we had to go through in order for me to work with Ferguson. Right out the gate, fans immediately loved Ferguson. So it was like, I can’t switch to a cat that I’m not allergic to. I think we tried in some episodes, like we played with the idea of other animals, [but] Ferguson is king.”

But Morris fought through his allergies with the help of his fellow cast members. Simone recounted a scene where she had to hold the cat instead of Morris in order to complete the scene. “It was actually quite a cute CeCe–Winston moment because it just looked like we were homies,” she explained. According to Simone, it’s moments like that that make their new re-watch podcast, which they host along with Zooey Deschanel, so special. She added, “[Fans will] see there are so many moments where what was happening in our real life, kind of played out on screen.”

With Ferguson being such a key player in Winston’s character, it seems crazy to think there was a chance the cat could have been replaced. Thankfully, Morris was able to tough it out through Ferguson’s run on the show. And it is nice to hear that his co-stars were there to help him out in the moments where he couldn’t keep those sneezes in. It really shows how dedicated the cast of New Girl was to their show.

Source: E! News

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