Before Nobody Wants This creator Erin Foster met her husband, she thought the funniest thing about love is when it goes wrong. “I was always a very cynical writer because I was a very cynical person,” she tells Tudum, “and that’s where all my comedy came from and where my comedic perspective came from — failing at dating and failing at relationships and things blowing up and finding the humor in it.”
But falling for her now-husband completely changed her perspective. It turns out that being happy and fulfilled can also be funny, as proven in Foster’s semi-autobiographical, yet totally universal, series about a Los Angeles podcaster who meets the love of her life. “This show really represents how I view love now, which is so different than how I viewed it before,” she says. “Being in a really beautiful, healthy, fun relationship, it made me soften some of my cynicism.”
Nobody Wants This centers on the unlikely relationship between an outspoken, agnostic woman, Joanne (Golden Globe nominee Kristen Bell), and an unconventional rabbi, Noah (SAG nominee Adam Brody). From the moment they meet at a friend’s dinner party, both can tell there’s something between them. But also potentially between them are their differing outlooks on life, all of the modern obstacles to love, and their sometimes well-meaning, sometimes sabotaging families — including her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) and his brother Sasha (Timothy Simons).
“This show is based on the only good decision I ever made: falling for a nice Jewish boy,” Foster says. “But I realized that being happy is way harder than being miserable — there’s nothing to complain about. So, I created this show based on all the ways that finding the right person can be so hard.”
Finding the right person was also hard for Foster when it came time to cast a character inspired by herself for the series: “You have to have an honest view of yourself. You can’t have yourself on this pedestal,” Foster says. But, when Kristen Bell entered the picture, Foster knew the perfect Joanne had been found. “She held onto so much of herself and then also created this character who I really liked, but was comfortable showing the flaws,” says Foster.
As for Noah, millennials of a certain age can prepare to fall in love with Adam Brody all over again. The man who embodied Seth Cohen on The O.C. plays a different type of Jewish man here — Noah is a rabbi, but, like, a cool rabbi. “I think when you have that teen heartthrob career when you’re young, you then become an adult who wants to be taken seriously,” Foster says. “He’s been so careful with what he’s done. For him to feel like this was his leading man comeback onto the scene in TV was a huge honor for me.” As Noah, the ever-appealing Brody sets out to prove Foster’s most optimistic beliefs about love: “You don’t have to be with the bad boy that makes you feel like shit but really revs your engine, or the good guy who’s really boring,” she says. “You can find both.” (In this case, Noah is definitely the good guy who revs your engine, not the boring guy who makes you feel like shit.)
Another major component of Joanne and Noah’s relationship, like Foster’s real-life relationship, is Noah’s Judaism. But, warns Foster, “the show is not making any political statements because I’m not the person to make that statement. I didn’t grow up Jewish, I converted as an adult. I wanted to tell a Jewish story, but from an outsider’s perspective for someone who chose Judaism.”
Even though Foster’s experience is specific to her life, she knows she’s not the only person who’s taken some time to figure out her own life before being ready to share it with someone else, saying, “It takes a few decades as an adult to learn who you are and be smart enough to pick the right person.”
Foster explains that she’s proud of the ways the series reflects the complexities around shifting identities and changing perceptions that are a part of everyone’s reality as they grow up. “It’s so easy to become cynical. It’s so easy to become really desperate for it to work out. And I had to make a conscious decision to be happy. I did consciously have to be like, OK, I am not going to look at what everyone else is doing and wish I had that. I’m not going to envy those relationships. I’m going to be really happy with where I’m at in my life. How can I make my life as great as it could possibly be? ’Cause that’s all we can do.”
Want more intel on Nobody Wants This? Watch the trailer above and read on to find out when it premieres and who else you can see on-screen.
All 10 episodes of Nobody Wants This Season 1 premiere on Sept. 26.
Joanne and Noah are an unexpected duo. She’s an outspoken, agnostic woman. He’s an unconventional rabbi. Nobody Wants This charts their unlikely relationship.
Bell and Brody lead Nobody Wants This as Joanne and Noah.
They’re joined by Succession’s Lupe and VEEP’s Simons as Morgan and Sasha. Morgan is Joanne’s charming-yet-cutting, quick-witted sister. She doesn’t feel the need to strive for more than she already has — which is a lot. Joanne and Morgan share a hit podcast centered on their fizzy banter and ride-or-die commitment to being alone together. Sasha is Noah’s outlandish, eccentric older brother with an unstoppable, delusional confidence. He enjoys living through Noah, his “golden child” sibling.
The rest of the recurring cast is:
Foster created Nobody Wants This. The series is produced for Netflix by 20th Television in association with Steven Levitan Productions.
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