The irony of the title of Erin Foster’s Netflix series Nobody Wants This is that by the end of season one, everybody wanted it — “it” being the romance brewing between Kristen Bell’s Joanne and Adam Brody’s Rabbi Noah. But at the start of the show, audience buy-in had to happen fast, so Foster got inventive to establish their mutual interest when they first meet at a house party in the pilot. “This is a romantic comedy, and there are only so many ways you can create the meet-cute,” she says. Here’s how Foster wrote this one.
Courtesy of Netflix
Foster wrote the script based on her own story of meeting her Jewish husband. Originally, Joanne walks into Ashley (Sherry Cola)’s party wearing a bathrobe, but “one of our producers thought that made her seem unwell,” Foster admits, laughing. It was later, during a punch-up session in the writers room, that the idea for a lavish fur coat came to be. “One of the writers was like, ‘Two words: chin-chilla,’ and it made us laugh so hard. We were like, ‘It has to be a chinchilla for a coat.’ ”
Courtesy of Netflix
“I was kind of inspired by La La Land,” Foster says of this moment. “I wanted to create a scene where you have them walking to a car the way you do when you go to a house party and you have to walk down the street in the hills that would feel very classic Los Angeles. I’m always trying to come up with creative ways to get Noah to be romantic in an unexpected way: This scene was an opportunity for him to tell a little lie so that he can be chivalrous and walk her to her car and then admit that his car was right in front.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Noah’s response to Joanne “tells us a lot about who he is because you see that he’s this decent, good-natured, honest person who comes from a really conventional family,” says Foster, who also used this moment to show his views on Judaism. “I really like to sprinkle in little bits of Jewish knowledge without being heavy-handed about it, because those are the little things that made me interested in Judaism. I always felt there was something that I wasn’t in on. What is this feeling you have? What are you connected to? What is this God that you feel protected by? How do I get in? So, I put those words into Joanne’s mouth.”
Courtesy of Netflix
“It was really important to me that it felt really romantic and, in a lot of ways, it’s Noah’s scene,” Foster says of how she wrapped this moment. “We’re really putting him on a platter for people and saying, ‘Message to all men: This is what we want. Walk us to our car, and don’t be overly obvious about it.’ I didn’t want him to ask for her phone number and be obvious. I wanted him to be a little mysterious.” Kissing on the first meeting was also out of the question, Foster adds, particularly because Noah hadn’t completely resolved things with soon-to-be-ex Rebecca (Emily Arlook) yet. “I didn’t think that was the right way for these two people to start. Then you’re never really going to be on their side,” she says. “I wanted Noah to display self-control and be like, ‘I’m going to do this the right way.’ “
Courtesy of Netflix
Again drawing from her experience as an agnostic woman meeting her Jewish husband, Foster leaned into her own dating behavior for Joanne’s dialogue here as well. “Because she’s scared of having a crush on this person, she’s trying to get in front of possibly getting burned and let him know everything about her right up front that would maybe scare him off,” she explains. “If I say it, then you can’t say it, and that’s something I’ve done in my life. I would intentionally lead with something that might be alarming to someone because I was scared of being judged for it.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Foster was careful about how Joanne was presented onscreen. “I never wanted her to be a caricature in a sitcom where you meet her and she’s stumbling out of a party at 5 a.m. with a beer bottle and hungover,” she says of the character loosely based on herself. “While some people see her as this chaotic, messy person, she’s just scared to fall in love, and she’s at an age where she doesn’t really want to have to compromise who she is. She has a lot of wiring from her childhood that is causing problems in her adult life. She’s trying to unlearn a lot and trying to love someone like Noah.”
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
