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Nobody Wants This Producers Erin and Sara Foster Want to Own the Romantic Comedy Space

October 20, 2025
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Nobody Wants This Producers Erin and Sara Foster Want to Own the Romantic Comedy Space
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Just this month, Taylor Swift sang about embracing all the lovey-dovey things she once pretended were dumb—and on Nobody Wants This season two, out Thursday, Kristen Bell’s agnostic podcaster comes to a similar realization. “All these things that I had disdain for, I actually want,” she tells Adam Brody’s devout (and dreamy) rabbi of her romantic ideals. “I used to think I was so antiestablishment. But as it turns out, I’m establishment.”

It’s a vulnerable admission inspired by the real-life love story of series creator Erin Foster, who converted to Judaism for her husband, music executive Simon Tikhman, before they welcomed daughter Noa. “That’s really how I felt as an adult. I thought I just didn’t believe in anything, and it turns out I believe in a lot of things,” she tells Vanity Fair on a Zoom call with her older sister and fellow show producer, Sara Foster. “It’s a big reset. And as modern women, sometimes we’re scared to admit that domestic desire is the one we have. I just want women to feel like you can have both. It’s okay to want it—it doesn’t mean that you’re going to abandon yourself.”

The second season of Nobody Wants This ponders, like Sharon Horgan’s Catastrophe and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag before it, what would happen if a guarded woman found lasting love. “My through line I always come back to is, I’m the audience, so is this a story I would want to watch as the viewer?” Erin asks. “What kind of story do I want my daughter to see? What kind of story would my husband be interested in watching with me? What’s the most universal thing that people would enjoy?”

Sara adds, “We take that mindset into everything we do. Are we the customer for this jacket? Are we the person that would want to listen to a [podcast] episode about having a healthier gut? If something doesn’t resonate with us, if we are not the customer in all lanes, we don’t do it. We really use that as a North Star.”

The Foster sisters have been longtime creative partners. They created and starred in the VH1 series Barely Famous (2015–16), a satirization of reality TV that poked fun at their familial ties to the genre (their father, music producer David Foster, is the ex-husband of both Linda Thompson, mother of The Hills’ and Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ Brody Jenner, and Yolanda Hadid, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member and mother of Gigi and Bella). Then the two worked together at Bumble for several years, invested in various start-ups, founded their Favorite Daughter fashion label, and launched The World’s First Podcast, on which they serve as cohosts.

A similar relationship exists between Nobody Wants This sisters Joanne and Morgan (Justine Lupe), with the latter engaging in some confusing flirtation last season with Noah’s older (and very much married) brother, Sasha (Timothy Simons). Sasha’s wife, Esther (Jackie Tohn), does some soul-searching on their dynamic—sharing her desire to trade domesticity for the kind of freedom and corporate life afforded to a pre-baby Diane Keaton in Baby Boom. Meanwhile, Morgan tests the waters with an interest played by Lupe’s Succession costar Arian Moayed. Brody’s real-life spouse (and Bell’s former Gossip Girl colleague), Leighton Meester, also appears in the new season, as do not one, but two new rabbis—portrayed by Girls alum Alex Karpovsky and Seth Rogen, whose character is married to a non-Jew. “We want more Jews, not less. We’re trying to put asses in seats,” he tells Noah in the series. “And you don’t do that by telling people that they can’t marry the hot blond they met at Coachella.”

This season is about whether the well-worn concept of “when you know, you know” will apply to both Joanne choosing Judaism and she and Noah choosing each other as people. “I remember thinking when I was single, What’s the feeling I’m looking for? And I felt that way when I was converting to Judaism,” Erin says. “I kept waiting to feel something really specific. Do I feel it when I do the mikvah? Do I feel it when I host a Jewish holiday? I didn’t really feel it until I had the lived experience of being Jewish.” This season, then, is about “dismantling those ideas that…will make you feel like you haven’t figured it out,” she adds, “whether it’s in relationships or religion or a career.”

It’s also about complicating the whole “hot rabbi” obsession. “Season one highlighted healthy love…but we also created this guy in Noah who was so perfect that it was important [for] season two to show that he was kind of a shitty boyfriend at some points,” Erin says. “Rebecca [Noah’s ex, played by Emily Arlook] wasn’t necessarily, quote, unquote, crazy…. I never want to set women up to fail and to think that they are looking for something that doesn’t exist. Nobody’s perfect, including Noah.”

Ideas are already percolating for a third season, although the show has not been officially renewed. “We have an overall [deal] at Disney. We’re developing a lot of other things,” Sara says. “We want to own the rom-com space.” The Fosters join Vanity Fair for a spirited conversation about the sophomore installment of Nobody Wants This.

Vanity Fair: In the second season, Joanne explores the idea that she might desire some of the cheesy, domesticated things with Noah that she once pretended not to want. Where did that storyline originate?

Erin Foster: I don’t know if you feel the same way, Savannah—Sara and I are both women who want things the way that we want them on our terms.

Sara Foster: [With mock outrage] Whaaaat?

Erin: We also kind of secretly have this anti-feminist streak in us where we want a conventional relationship with a guy who makes decisions for us. It’s like those two different parts of your brain battling each other, and I think it’s such a huge part of the modern woman experience.

Sara: I want him to support my career and never hold me back—but also open the car door and pay the bills.

Erin: Wanting a little bit of the old world-new world and not really knowing what to do with it. I met my husband when I was almost 36 years old and very set in my ways. I felt very cynical about the whole love experience, and then when we got together, I realized how conventional I actually wanted to be. I really liked the idea of being a “we.” There was something very exotic about that because I had never really been exposed to it.

Joanne and Morgan, the characters very broadly inspired by the two of you, seem to be racing to catch up to each other’s milestones. Did that stem from any real-life feelings between you two?

Erin: Sara and I never had that. Sara was in a relationship for 17 years [with former tennis player Tommy Haas, from whom she split last year]. Me and my dad were actually both single at the same time. We were each other’s date to everything and wingmen all through my early 30s. We had this “we don’t really believe in any of this” attitude of cynicism about love, and he actually paired off before I did. He got together with Katharine [McPhee], our stepmom. They got really serious. And I swear to you, even at 35 years old, it did something to me where I thought, So it’s not uncool for us to settle down with someone. It gave me permission to go find a partner and settle down.

I felt like our connection was this cynicism we had. I always thought that was interesting—you create an alliance, whether it be with a best friend or a family member, that you have this viewpoint on something, but it’s not always forever. So Joanne and Morgan shared philosophies until Joanne kind of grew out of it, and it just felt really right that that would kind of piss Morgan off. When I paired off with my husband, Simon—

Sara: What is this “paired off”? I’ve never heard you use this term.

Erin: Really? [Shrugs] I don’t know. But when Simon and I got together, Sara was very supportive and connected to him, and we didn’t have that issue.

Sara: But in life it’s hard when you’re accustomed to a certain dynamic and that dynamic shifts. Like, Erin hasn’t been to my house in two years. Normally, she’d be done with work like, “I’m coming over.” She’ll cook me dinner, she’ll put my kids to bed. She’s literally not been in my house for a year and that’s an adjustment—

Erin: Because I had a baby.

You both have been creative partners for most of your adult lives, but do obstacles in your dynamic still arise?

Sara: There’s no push-and-pull power dynamic. We both have pretty clear lanes. There’s no part of me that wants to be a writer. Erin has such an innate talent that is so specific to her. I would say she has the most important comedic voice in TV right now. She can’t say that about herself, but I can and I’m so proud of her.

Erin: Yeah, but it’s taken many years for it to fall into this natural rhythm. There’s a lot that I’m not as passionate about, like the business side of things is not as exciting to me as the creative side, but you have to have both. And it’s hard for me to have a lot of different plates spinning. I get overwhelmed. I’m good at focusing on the thing in front of me, and I think Sara’s really great at reminding us to diversify and keep the train on the tracks. The writers room monopolizes a lot of my time, so I’m really unable to be in a ton of meetings and fittings for Favorite Daughter and even development stuff for other shows. So she’s really great about being able to lead the charge on that and be understanding when I have to be in the writers room.

Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan, formerly of HBO’s Girls, have joined the series. Did hiring new showrunners help delegate some tasks so that you two can focus on what matters most to you?

Erin: Listen, it’s a lot of work running a show. So I need all the help I can get. And the new showrunners that came in worked on shows that I love. There’s a perception that it was a new role, but it was really just replacing people that had been there season one that maybe weren’t as good of a fit.

[Shrill and Kevin Can F**k Himself writer Craig DiGregorio was an original executive producer and co-showrunner with Erin Foster. Sitcom veteran Jack Burditt, one of series EP Steven Levitan’s top producers on Modern Family, was also enlisted to help helm the first season. Konner and Kaplan boarded the creative team as executive producers and showrunners alongside Nora Silver, of Hulu’s Welcome to Chippendales and Freeform’s Single Drunk Female. Foster has continued to serve as a producer and writer on her show’s sophomore season.]

Sara: We had developed with Jenni and Lena [Dunham, Konner’s former producing partner] years before, and Jenni’s a friend of mine—it’s a great fit.

How did you go about navigating the (for now) totally platonic, but increasingly confusing, bond between Morgan and Sasha?

Erin: We’ve established that they have a really strong connection with each other—it doesn’t feel romantic, but it feels inappropriate on a level. It’s not a friendship that’s appropriate to have in a marriage, which is why Esther calls it out, and we wanted to deal with it right up at the top. What does it mean when you’re in a marriage and like to get attention from someone else? What is that person giving you that you’re not getting in your relationship?

Sara: Me and Simon.

Erin: Sara and Simon have this inappropriate relationship, of course, and it’s something that Simon and I are really dealing with in therapy.

Instead of what you assume would happen—two people scream and fight in therapy and break up over it—Esther goes, “Okay, what is this telling me? You think Morgan’s fun, but I want you to see me as fun.” So she tries to explore that side of herself this season. I think a lot of women do feel like, I don’t recognize myself.

You seem to have an everything-is-copy mentality regarding mining your personal lives for the series and podcast. Is it sometimes difficult to determine what is off the table for sharing publicly?

Erin: Look, we’ve never been people on social media who are crying into the camera.

Sara: I actually think I cried once—when I was doing my Christmas giveaway.

Erin: That’s embarrassing. No, Sara’s done some amazing giveaways for families that are in need during Christmas. Sara and I have never been influencers in the traditional sense. Our livelihood is not sharing too much of our lives on social media, so we’ve never felt the trappings of that.

Sara: You’re not going to see my kids going to bed at night while I’m reading them stories and then in the morning brushing their teeth. We’ve jumped the shark. And I get it, a lot of people make their living like that, but those kids are going to be adults one day and be pretty bummed about some of the things that were posted for the world to see. Erin doesn’t post her daughter. People who follow me know what my kids look like and I’m fine with that. I think we’ve just normalized this idea where nothing is off-limits anymore. Social media is a highlight reel. Barely Famous was a scripted show. The podcast is the only place to go to get to know us as people.

Erin: Morgan and Joanne have a banter like Sara and I do, but the content of the banter is very different. Morgan doesn’t have kids. Sara had kids at 29—13 years before I did. A huge part of my identity was being an aunt, and we don’t really have that in the show.

Joanne and Morgan often disagree about what form the podcast should take. Have you ever had a similar argument about Nobody Wants This?

Sara: She doesn’t ask! She put something in the show that is insane, and I’m not going to say what it is, but I was like, “Are you good? What? I literally told you this yesterday and it’s already on the board!” Erin goes rogue.

Erin: Everyone’s sharing different stories [in the writers room] Then when you say something that clicks for everybody, it just takes on a life of its own. But we have to be respectful to what the other person’s really uncomfortable with. There are times when we have conversations on the podcast and then afterward one of us goes, “No, you can’t put that out there.”

My husband and I have gone through a cycle of what’s going to be on the show and what’s not. Season one, it made him really nervous and uncomfortable, but if something’s really interesting, there’s always clever ways to give it to a different character. But of course, as open as we are about our lives, we keep a lot to ourselves, and there’s an understanding of what those things should always be.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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The post Nobody Wants This Producers Erin and Sara Foster Want to Own the Romantic Comedy Space appeared first on Vanity Fair.

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