Long story short — wait, no. Forget it. Kristen Bell wants to keep it long.
The actor stars in a new Netflix series with a title that goes on longer than the Energizer bunny: “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window.”
In the show, she plays a woman intrigued by a handsome new neighbor who thinks she has witnessed a murder. Netflix wanted to shorten the name of the series, but Bell insisted on keeping it.
“I said, ‘No way’ because, here’s a little tip of the hat. This show is definitely, it’s a satirical psychological drama,” she told TODAY on Thursday.
Bell said the show and the title sends up other projects that have come before it.
“It’s based on all of these psychological novels that were written for women, by women,” she said. “The formula’s always the same. She drinks too much. She might be mixing it with pills. She thinks she sees a murder. No one believes her. There’s so much formula to it that we thought it was about time that somebody poked fun at it.
“So, we’re hoping that the title will tip you to the fact that we are making fun of the genre the entire time. And I think, I didn’t know I’d been waiting to do my best sort of bad acting my whole career for this show.”
The show is a mystery and a thriller, but also satirical. Crossing genres presented a challenge for Bell.
“That was one of my main problems is I was like, ‘But is it — I’m trying to play it sincere, but is it funny?’ And then they kept telling me, like, ‘Yes, just play it completely straight. Everything around is funny,’” she said.
“I feel like I gave a pretty sincere performance and then it ended up just being really comedic.”
Take a deep breath before asking your voice remote to queue up the show because “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window,” which also stars Michael Ealy and Tim Riley, will be available to stream Jan. 28.