D'Arcy Carden's acting career was "getting nowhere" when she landed on The Good Place

The Washington Post

Carden was a 36-year-old struggling actress and Upright Citizens Brigade alum when she auditioned for the role of Janet, which could've gone to a 13-year-old boy. “We auditioned a million people, ranging from 13-year-old boys all the way to 75-year-old women and everything in between," said creator Michael Schur, who used a dummy scene with aspiring Janets playing a customer service representative for a company that made defective dolls. Carden walked into her audition expecting to be rejected. So she tried to make Schur laugh. “I feel like I know what Janet is now,” he remembers thinking. “But I know it because of D’Arcy, not because of me.”