How I Travel: Actor D’Arcy Carden Keeps a Sleepy Time Playlist for Planes

If you’re in the mood for (yet another) pandemic binge-watching experience, you could do worse than blasting through The Good Place. Despite its darker themes of being stuck and trying to find meaning in a surrealist nightmare, the sitcom is surprisingly heartwarming—particularly due to the work of D’Arcy Carden, who starred as a robot database of sorts with all the secrets of the universe hidden behind her endlessly smiling visage. The series finale this past January inspired Carden’s last domestic trip pre-pandemic, says the actor, and brought her to Greece last fall for filming.

Now sheltering in Los Angeles with her husband and dog, Carden chatted with Condé Nast Traveler about longing for New York City, traveling with a group of friends, and listening to Paul Simon as she drifts off to sleep.

The aspect of travel she misses the most:

I am actually a weird one—I don’t mind the actual plane and the waiting around. In fact, I kind of like it. But man, I love when you get to your place. You can finally put your bag down in your house or your hotel or whatever, look around, and say, “Oh, I get to spend a couple of days here!” It’s so exciting. I love that feeling.

Her last trip before the pandemic:

It feels like I don’t remember anything before March. The cast of The Good Place went to New York for the finale in the end of January, a nice little week in New York, and it was lovely and fun to do with the cast. I lived in New York for 10 years, so it was weird to me to stay in a hotel. When I think of New York, I think of living in a shoe box and leaving the house every morning with a bag of stuff for the day. I left with my house on my back, and I would work and do shows and auditions and come home at midnight. Now when I come to New York for work, I can stay at a nice hotel and take a car instead of the subway. I can’t believe it’s even the same place, you know?

Why she compares missing flights to getting drunk:

At some point, I learned that you have to get to the airport an hour early, so I get there an hour early. I do not get there an hour and two minutes early. It drives my husband absolutely crazy; I think every couple is like that. One of them wants to get there five hours early and one of them wants to get there 20 minutes early. In my life I’ve probably missed three flights because of being too late, which is nobody’s fault but my own. It’s the same feeling as getting too drunk. You do it and you remember the next day why you don’t want to do that again. Then you don't do it again for a few years and then do it again, and go “Oh, no, no, no.”

What she watches on the plane:

I really like to watch movies that I’ve watched before. I get excited about the idea of watching a new release, but then I find myself gravitating toward comfort movies: I just watched When Harry Met Sally, and this is weird but Iron Man. I love watching comedy TV shows [on planes], so this last year I’ve had fun rewatching Broad City, and The Office always holds up, and Veep is a good one. The problem is, I fall asleep. There’s something about airplane air that just lulls you to sleep. If it’s something I’ve watched before, I can feel okay about falling asleep halfway through.

The outfit she wears on planes:

I overdress for the plane—I wear a cardigan and a big jacket and a scarf, things that can become blankets or foot covers if your feet get cold. A scarf is great because you can make it into a pillow. Also, a hooded sweatshirt because you can put it over your eyes. There’s something about a full sleeping mask that can give me a little bit of anxiety, makes me feel out of control. I can’t just open my eyes and see. So I like a scarf or hood to get the light out. But oh my god, I sleep so soundly on a plane.

How she sleeps in the air:

I’ve made a playlist on iTunes that is for sleeping. It’s just quiet songs that never get too loud, the beat never drives too hard. All of the mellow stuff from Radiohead, Björk, there is some Arcade Fire, Paul Simon. What you do is you go through the artists you love—they all have a slow song or soft song, and just plop them on a playlist. It’s an ever-changing flow. You can add, you can subtract. If you hear a song in a commercial and you think, “Oh, this is good for my sleepy time playlist,” then Shazam it and [put] it on a playlist. This is something I’ve done forever. I just heard a song called “Surrender,” by Natalie Taylor, in a commercial. I heard 10 seconds of it and I put it on my damn sleepy time playlist.

The destination she’s dreaming about:

The big one for me is Greece, and I’ll tell you why. For one, I’m Greek, and when you’re Greek, you’re very Greek, and you are proud of being Greek. The fact that I hadn’t been to Greece was almost shameful. Somehow I never got to Greece until last year. We shot scenes of The Good Place finale in Greece, so it was a wonderful week there, but we were only in Athens. I want to go back for as long as it’ll have me, [for] a long stay. I want to see the islands.

How she’s approaching vacations this summer:

Exploring the places that you can drive to. California has so many of these amazing parks, and Yosemite and Lake Tahoe and all the beautiful places that you sort of take for granted. I would love to hop in the car and go for a weekend to all these places I keep meaning to go to. When I moved to L.A., I wanted to be near the beach, and I would go at least once a week. I was nannying and auditioning, and I had the day off, I would go to the beach and read. L.A. is just this wild place where the beach and the snowy mountains are within a stone’s throw.

The travel ritual she has with her friends:

My group of friends, we go on a big New Year’s Eve trip every year. This year was in St. Maarten, and it was really incredible. This is going to sound so crazy, but it's six couples, and every year we think, “This is the last time we’ll ever do it, so let’s really blow it out.” I'm sure someone's going to have a kid, and everybody just keeps not having kids. Everybody’s very easygoing and there are no controlling personalities. We vote on it: We’ve gone to Costa Rica and Bora Bora and Paris. It’s in winter, when half of us are in L.A. and half in New York, so we’ve realized we just really want to be on a beach. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized how important traveling is to me, and that the best memories of my life are from traveling; from when I was a kid on family trips, or when you're on trips with your partner, or yourself, whatever. Those are the best memories. So the St. Maarten one was really beautiful, and I dream of it. It feels like ages ago, and it was just back in January.