Jim Carrey Opens Up About His Big Return To TV

Jim Carrey is coming back to TV for the first time in over 20 years, with Showtime’s new dramedy, Kidding. Now he’s opening up to Entertainment Tonight about the process. 

“Projects find you when you’re ready to express them. That’s what I find. The ones that you’re drawn to are the ones that for some reason you’ve just experienced something very similar, or something in your past is lit up by the script when you read it,” he said at Showtime’s Summer Television Critics Association press day. “You go, ‘I understand this person completely.’”

Jim’s character, Jeff Pickles, is a beloved children’s TV icon — ala Mr. Rogers. When his personal life starts to implode around him, he struggles to keep his career, and self, from spiraling out of control. That’s something Jim has experienced when he took a long hiatus from the business. 

“I didn’t like what was happening, the corporations taking over and all that,” he explained. “And maybe it’s because I felt pulled toward a different type of creative outlet and I really liked the control of painting — of not having a committee in the way telling me what the idea must be to appeal to a four-quadrant whatever.”