The bagels were coming out faster than Jackie Tohn could catch them. Every second or two, a ring of dough plopped onto a rotating platform, and she had to move it to a tray before the next one fell.
“Oh my god, this is so joyful,” Tohn said as she scurried.
Tohn, 46, knows from delight. She is a star of the Netflix comedy “Nobody Wants This,” about the romance between a hot rabbi, Noah (Adam Brody), and an equally hot non-Jewish podcaster, Joanne (Kristen Bell). Tohn plays Esther, Noah’s judgmental sister-in-law. Esther is often a scold. Tohn, who has the glitter and mild abrasiveness of an emery board, is more upbeat.
She describes the show, which returns for its third season on Thursday as “representing Jewish joy.” On a rainy Monday in late September, she had come to the Hudson Yards location of the appetizing franchise Russ & Daughters, which for the lox-inclined is another expression of Jewish joy. (A longtime fan of the original store on the Lower East Side, Tohn had yet to visit this one.)
After Tohn had settled in, the store’s co-owner, Niki Russ Federman, invited her to the bakery in the back of the shop to see how the bagels are made.
“Did you come hungry?” Federman asked.
“What does it look like?” Tohn said, eying some whitefish.
Animated and curious, Tohn watched as a baker gave some bagels a quick boil and then placed them on wooden boards, coated in seeds, which were then slotted into a rotating deck oven.
“Why does bagel-making make me feel like I’m at amusement park?” Tohn asked as the bagels revolved.
Working backward in the baking process, Federman showed Tohn a proving room, which she referred to as a “bagel sauna,” where racks of bagels schvitzed, and then a larger room where the bagels were mixed and shaped.
Another baker poured flour, sugar, barley malt, yeast and a few of yesterday’s bagels into an industrial mixer. After a brief rest that dough was put into the former and Tohn, having put her hair up in a cap that read “Non Merci” and her hands in plastic gloves, was put to work.
“You have to work fast,” Federman warned.
Tohn did, hurriedly stacking the bagels onto a tray in rows of five. She paused briefly to admire her work only to fall behind. “There’s no celebrating in bagels,” she reminded herself. She filled a second tray, then a third. Satisfied, she left the baking to the professionals, then returned to the main space where she put in an order for bagels, lox, whitefish salad, babka, a black-and-white cookie and just a taste of horseradish cream cheese.
“I’m already very Jewy,” she said. “But when I get in a Jewy space, it all comes out.”
Tohn, who grew up on Long Island, the youngest child of two gym teachers, can’t remember a time when she wasn’t performing. She’d shot some commercials as a teen and had a small role on “The Nanny.” After a single semester of college, she moved out to Los Angeles, where she struggled for nearly two decades, paying the rent on a tiny apartment with guest roles.
In those days she thought of herself as a girl next door type. But eventually she accepted that she had another type.
“That type is strong Jewish woman,” she said, between mouthfuls of bagel. “That’s who I am: I am a strong, proud Jewish woman. So playing that feels great.” She apologized for “chew-talking.”
Once she embraced that type, her casting improved. She had a significant role on the Netflix comedy “GLOW,” as a limo-driving wrestler, and another as a publicist on the Amazon superhero satire “The Boys.”
A friend of Bell since their 20s, Tohn learned about “Nobody Wants This” while she was helping Bell clean out her closet. A year later, after the writer’s strike, she was invited to audition for the role of Noah’s ex-girlfriend, Rebecca. Bell suggested she might be a better fit for feisty Esther. When the call for Esther came, Tohn sent in a tape and was hired.
In the first season, Esther is presented as a foil to the free-spirited if mildly neurotic Joanne. Esther is critical, snarky and often mean, especially to her husband, Sasha (Timothy Simons), traits that border on stereotypes of Jewish women. “Nobody Wants This” has received criticism along these lines, and Tohn said she was surprised by it. But when her character became more prominent in the second season, she pushed for greater complexity.
In those episodes, Esther looks at Joanne and her sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe), and envies how much fun they’re having. By the start of the new season, she has separated from Sasha, acquired a real estate license, joined a dating app and submitted to a Brazilian wax.
“She’s finding herself,” Tohn said.
Since last season, Tohn has found out some things, too. After her father was diagnosed with cancer, she had a blood test that revealed a genetic mutation, common among Ashkenazi Jewish women, that confers a high risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.
“It was this absolute nightmare,” she said. She had a preventive mastectomy and subsequent reconstruction, though not before throwing a party she titled “Ta-ta to Jackie’s Tatas.” It included a banner that read “Boob Voyage.”
“They were a real delight,” she said wistfully.
Though conversations around Jews and Judaism in America remain vexed, “Nobody Wants This” has topped the Netflix TV list in both seasons. Tohn welcomes being part of a comedy centered, she said, on “Jewish people living their lives and being flawed, but being good people, real people. That is a relief.”
Having managed half of her bagel, she wrapped up the babka and cookie to take away — a little Jewish joy for later.
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