Erin Foster’s runaway hit comedy series Nobody Wants This saw viewers falling head over heels in love with the IRL meet-cute romance between agnostic podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Rabbi Noah Roklov (Adam Brody). For Foster, who loosely based the show on the story of meeting her own husband, heading into Season 2 meant continuing to weave in true-life experiences that resonate with audiences, in collaboration with new showrunners Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan of Girls fame. The cast also has some new additions, including Brody’s wife Leighton Meester (The Buccaneers), Girls alum Alex Karpovsky, Miles Fowler (A Man on the Inside) and Adrian Moayed (Succession). Here, Foster talks about what we can expect from the next installment set for release on October 23, where the action will pick back up and what we’ll see of Meester and Brody on screen together.
DEADLINE: How has it been being in a kind of new territory making Season 2? If Season 1 was based on meeting your husband, how did you feel approaching another chapter and possibly moving away from the real-life basis?
ERIN FOSTER: I don’t feel like Season 1 was more true to my life, and Season 2 is more fiction. They both are really a mix. In Season 1, the way that they meet and all of that is so different than my story. So, I think it’s really the same amount of truth, because once they essentially choose each other at the end of Season 1, now it’s like, what does that look like and how do you bring your two worlds together? And I have always felt in real life that the real relationship is figuring out how to merge your lives. It’s like, do I like your friends? Do you like my friends? Do you like each other’s families? How do you want to spend a weekend together? And I used to always think that the goal was to go to a dinner with a couple where you both equally want to be there, right? It’s not like, I’m doing this for you with your friends and you’re doing me with my friends, but you really have a shared world. And that’s not something I ever had until I was with the person I’m married to. And so, a lot of that stuff I put into Season 2.
DEADLINE: When we left them at the end of Season 1, Noah has made a choice to not be the head rabbi so he can be with Joanne. Are we finding them right back at that moment again?
FOSTER: Yeah, it’s right around that time. We’ve had different discussions about, is it one week? Is it a week and a half? Is it two weeks? It’s around that time, but it’s not picking up from the same night.
DEADLINE: What’s it been like having Jenni and Bruce take over as showrunners. What have been the dynamics of that change this season?
FOSTER: The truth is my role didn’t change. There are some people who didn’t come back for Season 2 who were there for Season 1 and new people who came in, but my role really stayed very consistent. For me, the title of roles doesn’t really matter. It’s much more about the dynamic that I have with the people that I’m creating the show with, and my creative partners. And Jenni Konner has been amazing. I think a testament to her experience on Girls — it really shows what she’s capable of doing when she has a partner who is the voice of a show telling their story and how she can support it. And Jenni’s really, really good at that and so I got so lucky. I know that there are certain narratives about that, but that stuff is- none of it’s even real. It’s so funny. There’s no demotion or I’m here again Season 2 in the same role I was in Season 1. And I think that some people just like to create some kind of story around something that’s not really there.
It takes a lot to not jump in and correct things, but at the end of the day, it’s like so few people are paying attention to that. And I always just feel like whenever my ego starts to perk up and go, “Well wait a second, I did this or I did that,” it’s like, “Don’t waste your time in that area.” It’s all about the final product, regardless of how you get there. And I get credit for a ton of things that I don’t do [laughs], and so I don’t need to start evening the score.
DEADLINE: In my small way I relate to that. I think there’s so much grace in just letting these things go and letting the group effort just be enough.
FOSTER: By the way, it’s not in a small way, this applies to every aspect of every life. I really believe every conflict is the same conflict that everybody else experiences. Different situations, but it’s always the same sh*t.
DEADLINE: People feel so connected to this story. Knowing that all eyes are on what you’re going to do, it is that sophomore situation where you’re like, I know that people really want me to deliver. So how do you approach that?
FOSTER: When I first got into the writers’ room for Season 2, I felt that weight of making sure the stories we were telling were big enough and powerful enough and impactful. And then as time went on, we just kind of treated it like a regular any other writers’ room and just told the stories that we cared about. And I always have a pretty strong intuition about a story, if I feel like it’s right for the show or wrong, if I feel connected to it, if I feel like other women will connect to it and see themselves in that, and what they want to see and feel. And I learned so much Season 1, seeing what people grabbed onto. I watched all the TikToks, I saw ‘Healthy Love’. OK, that’s something people really are yearning for — a show about healthy love and meeting someone later in life. That’s something people really grabbed onto. And so those were the themes that I made sure we paid attention to, and gave energy to.
DEADLINE: I think the show has a really hopeful message that healthy love does exist and meeting in real life rather than online is a possibility. It also feels like a sort of hearkening back to the romantic comedies of the ’90s.
FOSTER: I mean, I met my husband in real life, and we were both on the same dating apps and never saw each other or never swiped right on each other. I mean, my age range may have been out of his window. He was looking for people really younger than me maybe. I think that the tough thing about dating apps — and I was on dating apps and I had relationships from dating apps — is I think that there’s many flaws in that system, but I think one of them is that if you are searching for your partner based on a list of things, it’s really easy to say no to the right person.
In real life, Joanne and Noah would never swipe right on each other. They wouldn’t have ever thought they were a match. But the truth is, your match and your person is just a feeling. And you can’t get that from a slideshow.
In real life, Joanne and Noah would never swipe right on each other. She would be like, “I’m not going out with a rabbi.” He would be like, “I’m not going out with some podcaster who talks so openly about her life and is sex positive. That’s not my vibe.” They wouldn’t have ever thought they were a match. But the truth is, your match and your person is just a feeling. And you can’t get that from a slideshow. And it’s so easy to hear the stats on someone and think in a rational, logical way about if they’re right or wrong for you. But love isn’t like that. So I didn’t think about making a show about people meeting in real life. It happened that my husband and I did, and I was always really appreciative that we met that way. We wouldn’t have gone out if we’d been on an app.
There could be a woman in LA who’s 38 years old and has two kids and is divorced and has a great career. That woman is going to be so intimidating to a man if he’s looking at her stats. He might go like, “Whoa, that’s a lot. I can’t handle that.” But if he were to meet that woman out in the world, bump into each other at a bookstore, meet at a friend’s dinner party and is taken with her and feels something, those things don’t matter.
Being single is f*cking hard, and it’s also can be obviously fun, but it’s hard. But it’s like when you’re really sick of it, you start to change yourself so that you can meet the right person. And once I got to that point where I was sick of it, I’m sick of going out with the wrong person, I’m sick of liking the wrong person, I’m sick of seeking out the relationship that is going to be harmful to me. Then you open yourself up to this whole other crop of people that you counted out before, and your person’s probably in that crowd.
DEADLINE: Speaking of real-life romance, obviously everyone is so excited to see Leighton and Adam on screen together. She’s said her character is Joanne’s middle school nemesis. How did you come up with that?
FOSTER: Well, the story came first, and then we were thinking of who to cast in that role. And I think I had just seen Leighton maybe at the People’s Choice Awards. She’s so cute. She’s so adorable and funny and quirky and cool, and they have a sweet relationship. And she was really on my mind after that, and I think she’s obviously so talented. And then we have this episode, and there was this role of this girl named Abby. I want to give credit to Jenni, I think Jenni on a chat when we were talking actresses, and she was like, “Leighton for Abby?” And we were all like, “Wait a second, that’s a really good idea.” Then we asked Adam first how he felt, and he was like, “I love it. If it’s funny, see if she responds to it.” And so I quickly went into the scenes and tried to beef up the character as much as I could and give her as much fun [as possible]. And there’s an extra scene now. They didn’t have any scenes alone with each other originally. And so then I went in and I was like, “OK, I’m going to give them a scene alone and kind of throw in a couple moments that people would grab onto and have fun with.” But I really think it was Jenni’s idea to cast her. She’s got a very good casting brain and it worked out perfectly. I mean, Leighton is so funny.
DEADLINE: I can’t wait. You’ve also got Alex Karpovsky who worked with Jenni and Bruce on Girls. He’s playing a rabbi character. Is that right?
FOSTER: Yeah. Jenni has really great relationships with people she’s worked with forever and loves to bring them back around. And she’s really good at that. And so it was cool to see them together. It was very early on in the season, and Alex was awesome. He was great.
DEADLINE: How many seasons in your head have you mapped out in a dream world?
FOSTER: I don’t really get too distracted by thinking that way because you learn so much in real time. I’m going to learn so much when I watch Season 2 with everybody, right? I’m going to learn so much of what people grab onto, how people react, and that’s going to help inform what happens next. So I don’t know, five seasons sounds great.
DEADLINE: If you had to sort of log line Season 2 for me, how would you describe it?
FOSTER: I would say that Season 1 was “will they, won’t they?” And Season 2 was “how will they?”
The post ‘Nobody Wants This’ Creator Erin Foster Talks Season 2 Timeline; Leighton Meester And Adam Brody Together On Screen appeared first on Deadline.
