‘Nobody Wants This’ Is Going Deeper—But Staying Light—In Season Two

From the moment it premiered last fall, Nobody Wants This felt like the platonic ideal of a millennial rom-com. It brought together The OC’s Adam Brody and Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell for a hot rabbi/shiksa podcaster meet-cute. Mishegas ensued as Rabbi Noah and Joanne tried to figure out how to integrate their very different Los Angeles lifestyles and families. The series, loosely sparked by creator Erin Foster’s own interfaith romance and conversion to Judaism, was a hit for Netflix. It also inspired a steady stream of TikToks—from besotted odes to crying to reenactments.

“I’m not gonna lie: I was watching all the TikToks,” Foster says. “I kind of wanted to see how the show resonated with people—to strike a balance between giving people the things that they liked, but not letting that dictate every decision that we made.” There were some specific stories she wanted to tell in the first season—like Joanne getting the ick from Noah’s sweet attempts to make a good impression on her family. “That was really important to me, to watch her kind of self-sabotage and see him refuse to let her do that,” Foster says. “I really loved watching TikToks of women saying that this show was about making healthy love fun and exciting and sexy.”

Season two, which drops October 23—squarely between Rosh Hashanah and Hanukkah—focuses on the critical months after the initial chemical reaction, when a romantic relationship gets real. How much time are you going to spend together? Do you like each other’s friends? Can you merge your families? For agnostic Joanne and devout Noah, the big “will they or won’t they” is: Will Joanne convert, and if she doesn’t, will Noah be able to keep his place within the temple?

Beyond Joanne and Noah, season two also offered the chance to dig deeper into standout characters, like Joanne’s sister Morgan (Justine Lupe), Noah’s brother Sasha (Timothy Simons), and his wife Esther (Jackie Tohn), who appeared to be edging toward a low-key love triangle last time around.

Two venerable Girls alumni, Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan, joined Nobody Wants This in season two as showrunners. “No one is trying to reinvent anything,” Konner says reassuringly. “We’re not going to shoot in black and white this year, or do a musical.” They both came in as fans. As Kaplan told VF last year, “I love the heroine in that she’s imperfect but amazing. And I love watching this other person celebrate her exactly as she is.” It doesn’t hurt that Konner and Kaplan are both Jewish—since season one drew some sharp criticism of its Jewish female characters.

“I was honestly very surprised, and I was disappointed,” Foster says of the criticism. “Find me another Jewish rom-com showing Jewish people in such a positive light, showing the Jewish faith in such a positive light. It’s something that I take very seriously as someone who converted and felt so welcomed by the Jewish community.” She continues, “With the heaviness of what’s going on in the world around the Jewish faith, to have a lighthearted, sweet, happy show that reminds people how beautiful Judaism is—don’t find something wrong with it! Take the win, you know?”

Konner mentions that, while the team brought in Rabbi Sharon Brous to talk to the writers, they didn’t script anything this season specifically in response to the criticism. “Like any show, the second season is when you really start to develop your characters,” Konner says. “So we develop Esther more and show why she behaves that way, and see her other sides”—including the parts of her personality that made Sasha fall in love with her in the first place.

Meanwhile, Noah’s mother Bina (Tovah Feldshuh) remains intimidating, but in a way that doesn’t make her the punchline or the patsy. “I’m not going to say she’s warm and fuzzy all of a sudden because she’s playing the foil to our main character—she has to be tough,” Konner says. “But I do think we start to understand why she is the way she is.” Bina even makes an emotional connection with wild-child Morgan, who could learn a thing or two from Bina.

“Morgan’s character is a big, big, big part of the season,” Foster tells me. “She really explores some stuff in the wake of her sister being in this healthy relationship.” Naturally competitive, Morgan attempts to top Joanne’s rabbi boyfriend by bringing home psychotherapist Dr. Andy (Lupe’s fellow Succession graduate Arian Moayed). All of this might just destabilize the sexy, confessional podcast that Joanne and Morgan cohost. “They start having conflict,” Konner promises, “and not the fun kind.” Just as Girls carved out a space for women to be screwups, Nobody Wants This allows the sisters to be “who they are, in all their mess.”

Moayed is one of several new casting gems this season; another is Girls MVP Alex Karpovsky as a rival rabbi at Noah’s synagogue. The guest star most likely to thrill Nobody Wants This fans, though, is Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester, who also happens to be married to Brody in real life. She plays a school frenemy of Joanne’s who is now a momfluencer. The role wasn’t created for Meester, but when her name was floated, the writers expanded the part and crafted a scene that throws Meester and Brody together. “I did not anticipate how funny she would be,” Konner says. “She’s really good at improv—everything feels really weird, and you don’t see it coming. And seeing her and Adam in a scene together was so much fun.”

Konner says that Foster is an incredible advocate for her characters because she knows them inside and out. “Some of my favorite moments on set are watching Erin and Kristen whisper to each other, and I’m, like, Is it Joanne and Joanne, or is it Erin and Erin? Kristen works so hard to give Joanne the respect she deserves and to bring that voice to the screen.”

Ultimately, the heart of season two remains Joanne and Noah. “I would say that Joanne’s journey is figuring out how to be in a healthy relationship, and what that looks like, because I think that she romanticizes the idea in a lot of ways,” Foster says. “I think that Noah’s arc— we have to avoid saying that a lot in the writers room!—is: Am I chasing this because it’s exciting and different, or is this really my lifelong partner?”

Foster says she and her sisters and friends used to talk about choosing between the safe person and the exciting person. “It turns out there was this third option: someone who was exciting and exhilarating, and also loving and stable. If I was able to find that at 37, then I want other women to also know that they should be waiting for that.” She smiles. “And he does not have to be a rabbi!”