11 Brooklyn Nine-Nine Character Details Taken From The Actors' Real Lives
Misty Layne started as an actor and sketch comedy writer before deciding to concentrate mainly on writing. Utilizing both her love of television and film and her behind-the-scenes knowledge, she began a website reviewing films in 2013, with a focus on horror and indie media. Eventually, she began writing about all things television and film for other sites as well. Misty shares a home with five cats, a ton of books, and a fairly impressive vinyl collection.
It's no surprise that Brooklyn Nine-Nine was co-created by Michael Schur, who is also behind The Office and Parks and Rec, two other wildly popular workplace sitcoms. In Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Schur brings the same sense of unique, irreverent humor he brought to a humdrum Pennsylvania office and a municipal parks and recreation department to a New York City police station.
Whether it's the immature but competent Jake Peralta, the perfectionist Amy Santiago, or the self-absorbed civilian administrator Gina Linetti, the characters of Brooklyn Nine-Nine are all heightened, hilarious people, yet they all feel incredibly authentic and lived-in. It helped that the sitcom's showrunners took care to incorporate aspects of the actors' lives into their characters, whether it was something as simple as a laugh or as complex as a serious life experience. There was quite a bit of overlap, as it turns out, but it was just one of the many things that made Brooklyn Nine-Nine such a fantastic show.
Terry's First Name
One of the more obvious traits that transferred from actor to character came with Terry Jeffords, played by Terry Crews. Crews explained to Paste Magazine that the showrunners had named his Brooklyn Nine-Nine character after him. He also shared that it wasn't uncommon for him to tell the writers or showrunners stories from his own life, only to have those stories show up in the script a few episodes later.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine co-creator Dan Goor explained in an AMA on Reddit that before the pilot was finalized, he and Schur met with the show's actors specifically to try and incorporate some of their personality traits into the characters. That trend continued throughout Brooklyn Nine-Nine's eight-season run.
Jake & Gina Being Childhood Friends
Jake and Gina were one of the best pairings on the show. As a duo who had been childhood friends, they knew each other inside and out (and ragged on each other accordingly). The two were hysterically funny any time they were onscreen together, and the whole friendship was a delight.
The fact that Andy Samberg and Chelsea Peretti were actually childhood friends who went to elementary school together might have improved their chemistry, and it definitely informed their characters. Not only that, but Peretti had a crush on Samberg as a child, which she copped to in an interview with Conan O'Brien in 2014, telling O'Brien that she used to phone Samberg's house and "call and hang up, call and hang up."
Rosa's Bisexuality
Rosa Diaz was one of the breakout characters of the show. Equal parts intimidating, whip-smart, and secretive, the other characters viewed her as the toughest one in the precinct. In season 5, episode 9, "99," fellow detective Charles Boyle overheard her on a phone call with a woman who called Rosa "babe." Rosa revealed that she was dating the woman and was bisexual. She came out to the rest of the squad in the following episode.
Stephanie Beatriz, the actress who played Rosa, is also bisexual and came out in 2016 in a tweet. During a panel at SDCC 2018, she explained that she had helped shape Rosa's story, as Goor wanted a bisexual viewpoint in the storyline, so the character's story reflected her own reality.
Terry's Racial Profiling
Brooklyn Nine-Nine tackled a heavy topic in season 4, episode 16, "Moo Moo," where Terry is racially profiled. It was a subject the show especially wanted to cover, with Crews telling Digital Spy, "One thing that we really had to address was the racial profiling that the police have always been guilty of, especially in America."
Crews went on to say that he had been a victim of racial profiling in his real life, calling it "a very, very serious event," and said that the episode "was a highlight of my time on Brooklyn Nine-Nine."
Jake's Die Hard Love
Jake's die-hard love of the film Die Hard is one of his most defining character traits. He loved the movie so much that Goor tried to arrange a way for Bruce Willis to make a cameo on the show to satisfy Jake's fannish ways. Unfortunately, that never panned out, but the obsession with the action flick was comedic.
And it was at least partially inspired by Samberg himself. As it turned out, according to Goor in the Reddit AMA, a lot of Die Hard fans worked on the show. When someone asked whether Jake's fanaticism was all Samberg or something the writers had made up, Goor explained that he, too, was a massive fan of the film, as were Schur, the writers, and Samberg himself.
Terry's Art Skills
It was always a treat in Brooklyn Nine-Nine when Terry got to show off his art skills. He filled in for a sketch artist in one episode and drew a picture book for his daughters in another. As it turns out, Crews is actually a pretty good artist, as well.
In fact, his very first job, as he told Jimmy Kimmel, was actually working as a courtroom sketch artist. Crews also tried to get in with Disney before he played football or began acting, sending the company sketches in hopes of landing a gig.
"Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, …"
In an ensemble comedy like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, there end up being a lot of quotable quotes and catchphrases. From "Terry loves yogurt," to "Noice!" to "Title of your sex tape," fans had a plethora of options to choose to use in their own lives. One of the more notable catchphrases, though, was Jake's, "Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool..."
Often utilized when the situation was anything but cool (like when he was sentenced to prison after being framed for bank robbery), it was one of Jake's most reliable catchphrases. According to Amy actress Melissa Fumero, that quote actually made it into the show because Samberg said it so often on set in between takes to make his fellow castmates laugh.
Gina Laughing
Civilian administrator and assistant to the captain, Gina Linetti, was a lot of things, but being serious wasn't normally one of them. So, it wasn't uncommon to see her laughing in the background. As it turned out, Gina's constant laughing actually came about because Peretti legitimately couldn't stop laughing during takes.
According to Samberg, Peretti eventually gave up on trying to control her laughter, and it became another part of Gina's personality.
Terry's Love Of Yogurt
One of the longer-running gags on Brooklyn Nine-Nine was Terry's love of yogurt. He was constantly eating it, with people often commenting, "Terry loves yogurt." To say the guy was passionate about this dairy snack might be an understatement.
This particular character aspect came about because the showrunners saw Crews eating yogurt constantly on set and worked it into the show — not surprising, considering they actually built this entire character around the actor because they wanted him on the show so badly — with Crews laughingly saying that they "stole" this personality trait from him. Crews enjoyed yogurt so much that, for a while, he worked on creating his own yogurt line, Berry Crews, and later became one of the co-founders of Thor's Skyr.
Hitchcock's Prison Lover Is His Real-Life Wife
Brooklyn Nine-Nine season 5 began with a two-part episode that saw Rosa and Jake going undercover in prison. At one point, Hitchcock, one half of a hilarious duo of older cops from the precinct, showed up. At first, it seemed as if he was there to visit Rosa, but nope. He was there to visit another inmate named Jenny, whom he is later seen making out with through the partition glass in the meeting room.
Jenny was played by Danielle Aubuchon, who is actually Dirk Blocker's wife in real life. This was far from the first or last time one of the Brooklyn Nine-Nine's actors' real-life partners showed up, though. Samberg's wife appeared in the series' finale, and Fumero's husband appeared in another season 5 episode. Additionally, Boyle actor Joe Lo Truglio's wife appeared in season 1.
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