Winston's professional basketball days in Latvia never could have prepared him for this!
In January, Lamorne Morris and Hannah Simone, who played Winston and CeCe on New Girl, launched a re–watch podcast Welcome to Our Show from iHeartMedia, with Zooey Deschanel, who plays the show's titular character Jessica Day.
Now, in an E! News exclusive interview—and in the spirit of reminiscing on old episodes—the pair revealed one particular fan of the hit–sitcom: Kobe Bryant.
It turns out that Bryant was such a big fan of the show, that one day he decided to stop by the Fox Studio Lot in Los Angeles to make a surprise visit and watch the cast film.
"As I'm coming out of my trailer," Lamorne recalled, "I see this tall dude in a Nike track suit walking up to the stage with one of the executives."
"I was like, what actor is 6'6"? Like, this is silly, who is that?" he said. "And up comes Kobe Bryant."
He continued, "I genuinely felt like I was about to have a heart attack. I didn't know what to say. If anyone knows me, they know that I'm a huge basketball fan."
And while he was starstruck, Lamorne realized Kobe had come just for them. "Our stage is the only one on that side, so I go, 'He's coming here.' And Kobe comes in to watch us perform and he sat back and he chatted us up."
Sounds like all of Lamorne's swishes came true that day!
And Hannah said she remembers that day vividly as well, and that they were filming season 2's episode of Table 34.
"I'll never forget, because all the guys were dumbstruck," she laughed. "They were all just kind of standing at a distance, looking at him, and I remember him sitting by himself, so I went and sat with him."
She continued, "We just sat and talked about his childhood growing up, and how he started in basketball, and what kind of drove him to it and his relationship with his parents."
We'll know we've made it when we have NBA champions visiting our place of work in their free time.
To learn more behind–the–scenes fun facts about New Girl, tune into Welcome to Our Show when new episodes drop every Monday.