The breakout success of ‘Nobody Wants This’ has been ‘really satisfying’ for Erin Foster in more ways than one
A day later, Erin Foster is still “pretty shook” by her show “Nobody Wants This” scoring three Golden Globe nominations. The Netflix rom-com is up for for Best Comedy/Musical Series, Best Comedy/Musical Actress for Kristen Bell, and Best Comedy/Musical Actor for Adam Brody.
“When you’re starting out in your career, you imagine that you’re going to have all these accolades and you have all this big stuff waiting for you. And then you start your career and you realize how different it actually is in reality. You make something that you care about and people don’t watch it or you make something you think is really great and the network doesn’t pick it up,” Foster tells Gold Derby. “At least for myself, I got so used to the runaround and so used to thinking something might be special, but no one else thinking it is. So you kind of protect yourself in that rhythm and just kind of stop focusing on concrete things because if you don’t attain them, then all of a sudden you feel like a failure. So to finally get to this place when I never knew if I would or not is really satisfying.”
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“Nobody Wants This'” success — it was renewed for a second season two weeks after hitting Netflix — is even more meaningful to Foster as it is inspired by her own life and she wasn’t sure if the show would come to fruition at certain points. She converted to Judaism before her 2019 wedding to Simon Tikhman, with whom she welcomed a daughter this year. The series follows “hot rabbi” Noah (Brody) and Joanne (Bell), an agnostic podcaster, falling in love and navigating an inter-faith relationship. Foster, who, like Joanne, co-hosts a podcast, “The World’s First Podcast,” with her sister Sara Foster, spent years workshopping the pilot, which initially hewed very closely to reality as she’s always written about the “chaos of my dating life.” But Tikhman is a “really private person,” and Foster, who started her career acting on such shows as “Castle,” House,” and “The O.C.,” wanted to respect that and their relationship.
“I kind of wondered if I really just wasn’t meant to be happy and be a writer at the same time — and so thinking about that struggle and that challenge through COVID when I was really trying to figure out how to write a show like this. And then everybody turning us down when I finally wrote the script for the pilot — getting rejected everywhere — that kind of sent a message. And then finally landing at Netflix, which is like the biggest platform,” she says. “I didn’t understand how important where you end up is until I was in the Netflix family and realized just how skilled they are at promotion and the reach that it has, and how skilled they are knowing exactly the kind of trailer to make, exactly the people to put in place, how vastly large the teams are dedicated to each part of it. … All the moving parts that came together for it to finally be accepted the way that it has been is the ultimate compliment, and it is really satisfying.”
SEE Adam Brody’s Hot Rabbi on ‘Nobody Wants This’ is the role he has procrastinated a lifetime for
The networks that turned down “Nobody Wants This,” according to Foster, didn’t foresee a long shelf life because it lacked a “crazy high concept.” “[It was] yes, he’s a rabbi, but at the end of the day, how long can those conflicts go on for?” she recalls. “I think that they would see now, watching the show, that they made a big decision that wasn’t right, but also that, I think, people enjoy watching true-to-life conflicts that are grounded and subtle and internal. It doesn’t have to be big explosions or people falling down or tripping or getting drunk. It can just be real-life stuff that gets in the way of a relationship.”
Foster was very much not in her 20s when she met Tikhman — and neither are Joanne and Noah. While the duo’s ages are never specified, the characters are in their late 30s, adding a layer of appeal and different stakes to a relationship that is never a “will they, won’t they?” but a “should they, could they?” Netflix, who suggested Bell, 44, for Joanne never pressured Foster to age down the characters to cater to our youth-obsessed culture.
“I’ve always really appreciated that from Netflix. They never wanted to pull away from something that they thought might be unlikable or controversial,” Foster says. “Listen, I’m 42 years old. I don’t think that I’m the person to tell a story right now of dating in your 20s. I did date in my 20s, but it’s a sh–show in a completely different way. There was some article I read years ago that I always think about that’s like, instead of us always doing the like 30 under 30 lists, it’s much more impressive to do the list of people who made it after 30, who made it after 40. It’s so much harder in life to find your person when you’re older, to start a business when you’re older. The world is really set up and built for people in their 20s to thrive and then you’re sort of forgotten about it some age. It’s so much scarier dating in your 30s when you have this clock running against you. And so I love being able to tell a story like that and also not make age the hyper focus in the show.”
Having older characters (not that 30s is ancient) also gives the show an emotional maturity and confidence not typically seen in onscreen romances. Case in point: Before Joanne and Noah’s first kiss, they joke about how they haven’t kissed yet before Noah tells her to put her ice cream and purse on the ground. Brody and other men in the writers’ room initially took umbrage with Noah doing that because they were afraid he’d seem too bossy (and Brody didn’t want Joanne’s purse to get stolen).
“Adam is a feminist at heart and he’s really protective of ever coming across like a misogynist or like an ass—. I was always pushing him to understand that because Noah is this incredibly sensitive, emotionally evolved, emotionally intelligent, sweet, soft person, he also has to boss her around a little bit,” Foster says. “He needs to have that rizz, like that masculine energy to contrast with the softness of him emotionally so that he can sort of become the perfect man for a woman. And I think that when you have a really strong character like Joanne — you have a very decisive, confident, direct woman — you have to pair her with a man who can handle that energy. So if you made him kind of nervous to kiss her, in real life, that’s not sexy. In real life, Joanne would be like, ‘Hmm, OK, I’m not into it.’ In real life, you need a man like Noah to be like, ‘All right, you wanted me to kiss you, put your sh– down. I’m about to give you the best kiss of your life.’ That’s the kind of energy that would hold her attention. … I kept saying, ‘I promise you guys just, just let me live my fantasy out, OK? I promise you women will die when they hear him take charge in that moment.”
And they did — as well as during the final minutes of the Season 1 finale. After deciding to convert to Judaism when Noah is in line to become head rabbi, Joanne changes her mind and breaks up with him, telling him he can’t have both. But in the final moments, Noah chooses her and they kiss. Foster played around with multiple versions of the ending and is happy with the one they landed on. “He says, ‘Well, you’re right, I can’t have both.’ So I’m choosing you, you know, like he has to make that clear or else it, it’s kind of him not respecting the boundaries she’s put down.”
And yes, Noah and Joanne will be together when Season 2 starts. Foster, who was co-showunner of Season 1 with Jack Burditt, brought in “Girls'” Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan as showrunners for the second season, which will begin production early next year. “If Season 1 season one was meeting each other and falling for each other, then Season 2 is like, what’s the first year of their relationship look like? What does that look like? What are their fights like and how are they merging their lives together?” she teases. “The first year of a real relationship is figuring out how your lives work together.”
That includes how to celebrate the holidays. Foster agrees with Brody’s assessment that Noah would not be into Chrismukkah. “I’m currently battling this with my husband. Simon will not let me have — even my mom was like, ‘Can I send her like a little branch that has Hanukkah charms on?’ He’s like, ‘Nope, it’s not going to happen,'” she shares. “Listen, Christmas is so amazing that I think people like Simon or Noah — they’re scared of it or are very scared of us getting the Christmas bug because the Christmas bug is strong. Christmas is intense. It just feels amazing. I think they don’t want us to feel that because then we’re going to be gone forever.”
So will there, in fact, be a war over Chrismukkah in Season 2? “Chrismukkah Season 3.”
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