'True Blood' star Ryan Kwanten is sinking his teeth into a romantic role on Fox's hit comedy 'New Girl.'

According to E! Online, Kwanten will appear in the Valentine's Day episode. Warning, spoilers ahead.

It's the first Valentine's Day for newly single Jess (Zooey Deschanel) and she drags Schmidt (Max Greenfield) out to a bar to be her wingman. That's where Kwanten's character, Oliver, enters the picture.

The 'True Blood' star is just one of many familiar faces making a stop on one of this year's best new comedies.

It didn't take long for 'New Girl' to establish itself as the fall's most solid (and charming) hit, and Zooey Deschanel's lead character, Jess, also wasted no time in finding herself an equally dorky love interest.

In Tuesday's episode of the Fox comedy, Jess has decided to sleep with her new boyfriend, Paul (Justin Long), but she's worried that, having just emerged from a long relationship, her skills will be rusty.

"Jess gets really insecure and she's afraid she's not going to know what to do," said Jake Johnson, who recently spoke about the show in a dual interview with co-star Lamorne Morris. The actors, who play Nick and Winston on the show, were back in Chicago (where I live) to visit family for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I spoke to them in a Michigan Avenue coffee shop about what the future holds for their characters and for Jess, who doesn't want to mess up her still-new relationship with Paul.

Naturally she goes to her male roommates for advice.

From Spinner: We love a good crossover, especially when our favorite TV stars pick up a microphone and belt out some tunes.



The good folks over at Spinner have compiled a bunch of videos of TV celebs from Joey Lawrence to Zooey Deschanel as they showcase their vocal chops. Though a number of singers have moved from music to television, this list features stars who made it big on the small screen before picking up a microphone, to varying degrees of success.

Undeniably one of the big hits of the season, 'New Girl' is quite lovely. It makes me laugh, which I always appreciate, but it makes me laugh when I'm not expecting it, which is rare since so many of my favorite comedies are deep into multiple seasons.

But series star Zooey Deschanel has become a bit of a lightning rod for pop culture criticism and I'm always curious to know how others are interpreting what I see as 22 minutes of light entertainment. Sometimes seeing fiction through an insistently critical lens can ruin all the fun, but with 'New Girl,' the ideas being tossed around by writers at blogs like Jezebel make the show that much more interesting. Here's a quick guide to some of the themes the show is exploring, and how they're being discussed by critics.

Max Greenfield plays Schmidt on Fox's new hit sitcom, 'New Girl,' but he's cool being known as Zooey Deschanel's TV roommate. When he stopped by 'Good Day LA' (weekdays, 9AM PT on Fox), all the 'Good Day LA' crew wanted to talk about was the adorkable Zooey, and Greenfield was totally fine with it.

Steve Edwards tried to get a rise out of Greenfield by saying, "When she was here, she said she was the only reason" the show's a hit. But Greenfield didn't bite. "Well look, I'm not going to argue with that," he said. Although he's also had recurring roles on Fox's other hit shows 'Ugly Betty' and 'Veronica Mars,' he's grateful for 'New Girl';s success. "Everyone involved knows how seldom that happens," he said.

Before she was forensic anthropologist 'Bones,' Emily Deschanel, 'New Girl' Zooey Deschanel's older, less hipster sister, was a high school senior at Crossroads School in Los Angeles.

After her feature-film debut in 1994's rom-com 'It Could Happen To You,' Deschanel had a few more notable roles, like Stephen Kin's 'Rose Red' in 2002 and 'Boogeyman' in 2005, before landing the role of Temperance Brennan on Fox's 'Bones.'

The hit show returns for Season 7 on Thurs., Nov. 3 at 9PM ET on Fox, and expect a few big changes for our favorite duo. Bones is pregnant (Deschanel was at the time too!) and feeling the early kicks of her baby, and Booth is having a hard time adjusting to the life of an expectant dad.

Check out Deschanel's high school picture after the jump. Is it just us or did she look more like her little sister when she was younger?

Did you miss the boat on 'New Girl,' one of this fall's best new shows? Don't worry, there were only three episodes and you can watch them below!

The show returns to Fox (Tues., Nov. 1, 9PM ET) after about a month-long hiatus thanks to baseball, but it's not too late to hop on Zooey Deschanel's adorkable train.

Deschanel stars as Jess Day, a quirky school teacher who moves in with three men after she catches her boyfriend cheating on her. Max Greenfield, Hannah Simone, Jake M. Johnson and Lamorne Morris also star.

Watch the first three episodes below.

'X Files' veteran Mitch Pileggi has booked a guest role on TNT's 'Dallas' reboot.

According to EW, Pileggi, known for playing Director Skinner on 'X Files,' will play Harris Ryland, the owner of Ryland Trucking and Shipping. He's also the ex-husband of Brenda Strong's character, Ann.

Strong told AOL TV a little bit about her 'Dallas' character.

"She's smart. She's grounded. She's like the new Miss Ellie," she said. "She sees a lot but doesn't say anything until she absolutely needs to and then when she does, she has words of wisdom and people listen. She's a tough cookie."

Pileggi recently popped up on 'Grey's Anatomy' and 'Leverage.'

In other TV news ...

J.R. Martinez has managed to come back from a near-fatal explosion in Iraq and go on to star in a daytime soap opera and is now competing on 'Dancing With the Stars.' He talked about what happened to him in Iraq, and the two-and-a-half year recovery that came after, on 'The Tonight Show' (Weeknights, 11:35PM ET on NBC).

One of the hardest things for him was coming out of the coma and seeing his body for the first time; he suffered severe burns on 40 percent of his body. Only 19 years old at the time, he recalled, "Coming out of a coma and seeing your body for the first time and thinking to myself, how am I ever gonna get a beautiful girl?"

Fox's 'New Girl' is the highest-rated new comedy of the Fall TV season. For the "adorkable" Zooey Deschanel, the transition from movies to TV has been seamless. In an interview with 'Good Day LA (weekdays, 9AM PT on Fox), she explained why.

"I think of it as a little movie. It's more like every week we're making a little movie," she said. "Our comedy is all about building on the characters and it's not about jokes, it's about characters being thrown into situations."

Fox has ordered a full season of 'New Girl.'

After just two episodes, the network has ordered an additional 11, giving the first season of the Zooey Deschanel-fronted comedy 24 episodes.

"We love the charming Zooey Deschanel and the entire cast, we're knocked out with the work that Liz Meriwether and the whole staff is doing and we are really psyched about the upcoming episodes in the pipeline," Kevin Reilly, president of entertainment at Fox, said in a statement. "It's great that audiences have responded so positively so far and we're confident that even more people will embrace the show -- and more comedy on Fox -- this season."

Seems like audiences are quite smitten with Zooey Deschanel's 'New Girl.'

According to Fox, the show had a 4.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic and fast nationals of 9.3 million viewers. Look for the number to be adjusted up when the final ratings come through. The typically female-skewing show was also No. 1 among male teens and men in the 18-34 demographic. It premiered to 11 million viewers and a 4.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic last week.

'Glee' had a total of 8.3 million viewers, also steady compared to last week. 'Raising Hope' was seen by 6.7 million people.

On The CW, 'Ringer' had 2 million viewers and a 0.9 rating in the 18.49 demographic, level with last week.

America, no matter your thoughts on the word "adorkable," you like Zooey Deschanel. You really, really like her.

Around 11 million viewers tuned in to 'New Girl' for the actress' series regular TV debut Tuesday night, making the new Fox sitcom the highest-rated show for the night with a 4.8 rating among adults 18-49. The comedy, about a woman who moves in with three dudes after a bad breakup, fared even better among women 18-34, scoring a 6.6 rating in that demo.

'New Girl' is Fox's biggest fall sitcom debut since 'Cedric the Entertainer Presents' in 2002. (Though let's hope 'New Girl' fares better than that one-season wonder.)

After more hype than probably any other sitcom in a season with a lot of new sitcoms, 'New Girl' (Tue., 9PM ET on FOX) premiered.

Given the sweet spot on the schedule right after 'Glee,' the show lived up to a lot of its promise, though it could be accused of trying a little too hard to be cool and clever.

Zooey Deschanel is cute as a button, but here's hoping she dials it back a notch in future installments as she settles in with her new male roommates. In this premiere, the guys helped her get back out there in the dating world after a break-up, only to find out she was stood up on her first try -- for texting too much.

So they ditched a party to go meet her at her date and cheer her up by singing some 'Dirty Dancing!' It's the heart these characters show and the heart the show had in that moment that gives it promise for the future.

A lot will be written this fall -- and a lot already has been said -- about the bumper crop of new shows that revolve around female characters. Three women-centered comedies premiere this week, and they certainly have their share of interesting gender issues.

But before getting into that topic, it might be worth saying whether these comedies are funny or not, and whether they have the potential to be consistently amusing once they shake off the flop sweat that almost all comedy pilots display.

In order of both laughs and potential, I'd list the shows in the following order: The solid '2 Broke Girls' (9:30PM ET Monday, CBS) is at the head of the class, 'New Girl' (9PM ET Tuesday, Fox) is in the middle of the pack, and 'Whitney' (9:30PM ET Thursday, NBC) is the most problematic of the three.