Max Greenfield on Schmidt’s hutch, ‘Succession,’ and why his daughter isn’t allowed on TikTok

The first words Max Greenfield says to me are veiled under a thin layer of playful sarcasm: “Looks like you got some cool pens back there.” Indeed, I do; we’re talking over Zoom, and on the wall behind me are dozens of pens and colored pencils, sorted into cups by color. The setup is a little on-the-nose, given that we’re here to discuss the actor and author’s collaboration with stationery giant Paper Mate.

Greenfield is probably greatest known for portraying the delightfully neurotic Schmidt on Fox’s New Girl, or good-natured Midwesterner Dave Johnson on CBS’s The Neighborhood, which is now in its fifth season. But at the beginning of the pandemic, Greenfield became a favorite among the teaching-from-home set when he posted videos of him struggling through daily school lessons with his ebullient daughter, Lily. He ended up writing two children’s books based on that experience — I Don’t Want to Read This Book and This Book Is Not a Present — and teaming up with Paper Mate(opens in a new tab) to donate $20,000 to Los Angeles’s Accelerated Charter Elementary School as part of his celebration of Teacher Appreciation Week.

He spoke to Mashable about the partnership, his kids’ TikTok habits, and, of course, Schmidt. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mashable: I’m sure you’ve heard this a lot, since it’s a pretty career-defining role for you, but I’m a huge fan of Nick Pepper. 

Max Greenfield: [Laughs] Oh, wow, thanks!

I’m kind of joking, but I really did love Ugly Betty. As I grew up, New Girl became my show because, whether or not they say it outright, Schmidt has OCD, and I have OCD. It was nice to see that reflected in a character.

My favorite episode we’ve ever done was episode six, I think, Season 1. It was called “Control,” and it was that one with the hutch. I was like, “Oh, this is easy to play.”

Oh, yeah. It’s real serious: Street trash does not enter the house.

It’s a whole thing.

It’s a whole thing! New Girl was about a teacher, and you’ve since had to become a teacher at home with your daughter. 

Well, what I really discovered is that I’m definitely not a teacher. I was forced to become one and realized, “I’m not cut out for this,” and then had such a great appreciation for teachers and what they do. What I was doing [as a parent] over the pandemic was just so new to everybody. No one knew what they were doing. The school just said, “Here’s a curriculum.” It wasn’t even online at that point, it was just submitting assignments by email. There weren’t classes or anything. They eventually figured it out, but from March to June nobody knew what they were doing. And why would they? 

[My daughter and I] were making those [Instagram] videos during that time, and so many teachers reached out to us to express how grateful they were for the videos. They felt like, “Oh my God, this reminds me of my students, this reminds me of my class! I miss it so much. It’s killing us that we’re not there.” And being in it at the time with one student — sometimes two when a friend of Lily’s would FaceTime to do homework together — I was like, “You miss this!?”

Fifteen of these kids in one room?

I mean, 15 at minimum. And you realize that they do [miss it] and that the really good teachers love what they do.

Is there a teacher you had or lesson you learned in school that really stands out in your memory?

I wish I had been smart enough to listen to any.

I did see a TikTok(opens in a new tab) where you were asked about your GPA, and you said it started with a “point zero.”

By the way, I wish it was that good.

It’s OK, you have other talents. Your daughter has such an fantastic sense of self. What is something about her that makes you proudest to be her dad?

Every day there’s different stuff. She started a new middle school this year, so the journey through that has been really exciting and scary and, ultimately, rewarding. She’s involved in all these different things. [At] one point we were like, “Do you… like cheerleading?” She’s like, “I don’t really care.” And I go, “Well, can you not do it? Because you’re doing too many things.” And she was like [imitates daughter shrugging apathetically], “OK!” Her ability to do so many things and be a part of everything that’s going on at her school, I just love, love that. Though, it’s a lot of driving for dad.

You’ve made videos with her(opens in a new tab) on your TikTok account but have said she isn’t allowed to have her own. At what age will she be able open one?

I think when she’s 36 she can have one. She knows there’s a couple of rules now that we’re not bending on, and that’s one of them. She asks [to open an account] every once a while, and she’s tried to access TikTok on my phone, so I’ve deleted it. But she can get back into it! So she’s not allowed to have my phone now. She’s hacking into everything.

What about your son?

He’s not a big TikTok guy. He likes YouTube a lot, though. He likes to watch people play video games. They all love MrBeast. He’s real into the idea that MrBeast is rich. We try to explain it to him like, “Well, you know, he’s giving back,” and he’s like, “No, no, no, he’s so rich, dad.”

Has he asked you to order him a MrBeast burger yet?

There’s been a couple of mentions of merch, but…I’m not interested. I wish I could speak on it more articulately, but I’m not well-versed in MrBeast.

Did you know that, on TikTok, more than 89,000 videos have been made to the the audio snippet of Schmidt saying, “I would rather sit naked on a hot grill than wear something off the rack.”

I heard that! I’m surprised it was that one out of all the quotes.

There are certain Schmidt phrases like that that itch a special part of my brain with their musicality. Is there a quote that does that for you?

There are moments where I’ll think that a person said something in a funny way, where maybe 95 percent of the people in the world would say it the way you think it would be said, right? There was a line on Succession this week.

Oh my God, I watched…

What an episode. Tom throws out a joke when Logan’s girlfriend [Kerry] sees what had happened, and he mentions it feels like she just “caught a foul ball at Yankee Stadium.”(opens in a new tab) But the way he said it, he bent it in a different way. He said “a foul ball at Yankee Stadium.” And I was like, “You… you don’t play baseball.” The rhythm of it was so funny. That whole show is fantastic, but I love him so much. He’s so great on that show.

It’s perfect for the character, too, because he’s supposed to be so high up in the world that he doesn’t even understand the everyman’s baseball.

No, that guy rode his whole life. He rode crew. And so for him it’s called “a foul ball.”

OK, back to teachers: You said you weren’t cut out for teaching. What was the hardest topic that you had to work through with your kid?

I found that the things that you struggled with when you were a kid you still struggle with as an adult. Science was a really difficult thing for me, and now my daughter will bring home her science homework and I’ll go, “I can’t even read this, let alone explain any of it to you.”

Yeah. That’s what Google is for. I saw you caption a photo of your daughter on Instagram noting she dislikes reading out loud.

I myself had a really difficult time reading, and still do sometimes. My two books, I Don’t Want to Read This Book and This Book Is Not a Present, try to find a different way to give a voice to a child who might not necessarily feel comfortable with reading but doesn’t know how to advocate for themselves. It’s a real conversation starter. Reading tends to be something that kids think that they’re just supposed to do, like breathing or eating, it’s supposed to just come naturally but that was not my experience with it. So to be able to laugh at the idea that this is something that we’re learning was really fun and exciting. And I think it takes some of the pressure off having to be good at it.

I was totally in when Paper Mate asked me to be a part of this Teacher’s Appreciation Week campaign, to visit an underserved school and donate a bunch of their products. I can see that you probably have some behind you. [Laughs] Looks like a really good collection of Flair Pens.

Is that your favorite product?

Great product. It’s unbelievable.

They come in all different colors. It’s the greatest. Anyway, the books were inspired by my experience during the pandemic, but are really supposed to be used in the classroom. And it’s so much fun to see teachers read books about not wanting to read books for kids who are really embracing reading and learning to read.

Usually, I go to these schools, and I’ll read the books aloud to a big group of kids. It’s really fun and interactive, and there are big words in the books and they get to scream them. In Don’t Want to Read This Book there’s this big word, “infinitesimal,” spread across two pages, and I always go “What is this word?” And they all try to guess it, and it’s fantastic. Sometimes, one kid will get kind of close.

In one of the classes, a child in second grade took the book and started reading it, and he was just in that place where he could read enough of it, where he was getting through it and it was so much fun to watch. He was like right there. I stepped aside, and his teacher sat with him in that moment and they started reading the book together. And you go, “This is the most rewarding part of writing those books.” You know, they were really meant to be in the classroom for teachers and to see the way that teachers have embraced them has been so, so fulfilling. So [I look for] any way to give back and to celebrate teachers because they know how to use this stuff better than I do.