Will new series lift actress to stardom?

Associated Press

NEW YORK

At 31, Zooey Deschanel is a seasoned actress who has logged mainstream credits (“Elf,” “Yes Man”) as well as the art-house fare (“Almost Famous,” “(500) Days of Summer,” “Our Idiot Brother”) with which she is more closely identified.

She is mega-pretty with her trademark raven bangs, creamy skin and blue eyes that seem in a state of perpetual surprise.

A refreshingly normal person sparked by an endearingly iconoclastic style, she reigns with indie cred. But she is confronting the prospect of big-time stardom on a big-time network TV hit.

Her series, “New Girl,” premieres tonight at 9 on Fox. On the show, she plays Jess Day, a schoolteacher who is goofy, good-natured and unguarded in her dealings with the world — and particularly tone-deaf with respect to men. When she catches her boyfriend in their apartment with another woman, she bolts for new quarters that she finds on Craigslist. It’s a spacious loft she will share with three guys (played by Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield and, replacing Damon Wayans, Jr., after the pilot, Lamorne Morris) who welcome her as surrogate big brothers.

Jess is the sort of gal who sets her hair on fire with her curling iron; who greets a strange man in a bar with, “Hey, sailor!”

“Well, I guess I can’t hide my crazy,” she laments to one of her roomies after her latest foible.

For “New Girl” to succeed (and many critics think it succeeds brilliantly), the viewer must believe that a beautiful girl can also be such a dork that her social life is routinely upended.

“Here’s the thing: You can be a nerd and be awkward, AND be attractive at the same time,” Deschanel said.