Lizzy Caplan on Fleishman: ‘Seeing a woman having a midlife crisis is usually explosive’

‘It’s made a lot of us feel less alone’ … Lizzy Caplan. Photograph: Photo by Cibelle Levi

Seventeen years ago, when Lizzy Caplan was 24, it was foretold: she was going to be a star. Following the huge success of Mean Girls, in which she played the artsy outsider Janis, Caplan had been cast in CBS’s hottest new sitcom, The Class. At the helm were Friends co-creator David Crane and sitcom legend James Burrows as director.

“This was the pilot to get, the show – it was going to be huge,” recalls Caplan, over Zoom from Los Angeles.