Romantic comedy fans are raving about Nobody Wants This, Netflix’s recent offering starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. The 10-episode series premiered on September 26, and audiences are hooked. “This show is based on the only good decision I ever made: falling for a nice Jewish boy,” show creator Erin Foster tells Tudum (Foster is married to entertainment executive Simon Tikhman). “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.” Here’s everything you need to know about this feel-good Netflix original.
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What’s “Nobody Wants This” About?
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Foster based the story about a rabbi and a free-spirited woman falling in love on her own romance. “I was always a very cynical writer because I was a very cynical person,” she said, “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.”
Casting Kristen Bell
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Foster knew it would be tricky finding someone to essentially play herself. “You have to have an honest view of yourself. You can’t have yourself on this pedestal,” she told Tudum. Enter Kristen Bell as Joanne, who Foster realized was perfect. “She held onto so much of herself and then also created this character who I really liked, but was comfortable showing the flaws.”
Casting Adam Brody
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Brody has come away from his role on The O.C., and was perfect to play “cool rabbi” Noah. “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 said. “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.”
True To Life Romance
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Foster converted to Judaism for her husband, a theme explored on the show. "’This is my worldview. No one's going to be able to change it. These are my habits. They are what they are,'" she told TODAY about her thought process at the time. "And then you meet someone who totally turns that upside down, who makes you want to be a better version of yourself, and who makes you question all the things that you thought were true."
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Foster’s Experience
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Bell says Foster was open and generous with her history and thoughts. "Erin talked to us a lot about her experiences,” Bell told TODAY. “She is such an open book and offered up all of her history of meeting and dating her husband, and her thought process about converting and about their differences and their similarities.”
Fiction, Not Documentary
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Foster insists the supporting cast—are not based on real people. "I had a lot of anxiety around that, and I intentionally made the characters really different than the people are in real life because I didn't want to get divorced," she told TODAY. "My husband is, like, really private. Being married to someone like me is his personal hell. Literally today, he was like, 'Have a great day. Good luck with the interviews. Please don’t talk about me.'"
Nice Guys Win Too
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Foster wanted to show that nice guys don’t have to be boring. "I really want to show a romantic comedy that has a male lead who treats women nicely, and not in a way that makes him feel like he's a pushover," she said. "[A] good guy (could) also be the 'crushable' guy that you want to end up with."
