D'Arcy Carden says it was "easier" playing the love interest of longtime friend Abbi Jacobson in A League Of Their Own

In a new interview with D’Arcy Carden, The A.V. Club’s Saloni Gajjar had one important question: When will A League Of Their Own be renewed? Carden couldn’t answer (“I think everybody’s positive, everybody feels good about it”) but she did reveal what it’s like to play the love interest of her good friend, Abbi Jacobson (to whom Carden gave a birthday shout-out).

“It’s a little bit funny to play love interests with your friend. But it’s also a little bit funny to play love interests with a stranger! So I don’t know what’s better or worse or what,” Carden mused. “It ended up being very easy. You know, once we got over the giggly, like, ‘We’re gonna kiss? You’re gonna put your tongue in my mouth?’ Once we got over that stuff, it was just easy, and we—it was like, we just had to do it so much that it really became easy.”

The relationship the co-stars already had with each other actually made it “easier” than normal, Carden said, because “there is a level of familiarity” between them that they didn’t have to keep checking in to make sure “‘Is this okay? Is this okay?’”

Locking lips with a longtime pal wasn’t the only new experience on A League Of Their Own; the role was generally a departure from the roles Carden’s played so far. What that taught her, she explained, is that “It’s okay to be scared. Like, it doesn’t have to be comfortable. … It’s easy to play the thing you know, and the thing you’re like, good at, or what’s in your wheelhouse. But it’s sometimes really rewarding to do the things that feel scary.”

“In fact—I mean, I’ve done that so many times. I’m doing that right now,” she added, revealing that the night before she had just been discussing an opportunity that scared her. “I was kinda like, ‘Well, I just answered the question. Now I gotta do it.’”