A rom-com with a charming, sexy rabbi? Turns out, everybody wants this.
Erin Foster makes her return to the television writers’ room with her new show “Nobody Wants This,” inspired by her real-life experiences of falling in love with her husband, Simon. The romantic comedy follows Joanne (Kristen Bell), an agnostic lifestyle podcaster in her thirties, as she navigates a budding romance with Rabbi Noah Roklov (Adam Brody), much to the dismay of their families.
Foster, who appeared on shows like “Gilmore Girls” and “The O.C.,” has also made a name for herself as a writer. She worked on The New Normal and, alongside her sister Sara Foster, co-created and starred in VH1’s “Barely Famous.” The sisters also host “The World’s First Podcast.” Now, Foster steps into the role of creator and executive producer with “Nobody Wants This,” which premiered with all 10 episodes on September 26.
In an interview with Unpacked, Erin Foster opened up about “Nobody Wants This,” her relationship with Judaism, and why she felt it was important to portray the conversion experience on screen.
“Nobody Wants This” is loosely based on Foster’s conversion experience
The show draws inspiration from Foster’s journey converting to Judaism. Joanne, who knows little about Judaism, dives into the culture and traditions as she navigates her relationship with Noah.
For Foster, basing the show on her own experiences felt like a natural choice. She found the conversion process fascinating, particularly the variety of reasons people choose to convert. Of the 23 people in her class, only three were converting for marriage, which sparked her interest in crafting a story about entering the Jewish faith.
“I thought being in the conversion process was just interesting. You meet really interesting people and they’re there for interesting reasons. They have fascinating stories, and I hadn’t seen a show like that,” Foster told Unpacked.
Given that Foster comes from the podcasting realm where she and Sara talk about their own lives, Foster had to switch her mindset while working on a piece of fiction. She had to sift through the most interesting elements of her conversion experience and decide what was too good not to put on TV and what was too personal to add.
“The people in my life didn’t sign up for this and my husband’s a super private person, and he didn’t really want me depicting our real family structures and dynamics, and the truth is, I kind of want to prove to myself that, you know, a real writer can write things that they haven’t experienced before, so I wanted to be able to take a little creative license,” she said.
Creating a Jewish atmosphere
The writers’ room of “Nobody Wants This” was filled with Jewish writers of differing religious and cultural backgrounds.
To create an authentic depiction of Jewish life, Foster enlisted Jewish writers with varying religious and cultural backgrounds. She also brought on Rabbi Steve Leder, the same rabbi who led her conversion, as a consultant. Leder reviewed scripts and provided feedback to ensure accuracy.
Building a Jewish atmosphere was important for Foster in authentically presenting Noah’s Jewish family and upbringing.
“I’m not the person to depict a Jewish family, because I grew up with a Jewish family, so it’s important to have people in the writers’ room who did so that they can pull from it, so it doesn’t just feel stereotyped but really like people’s lived experiences,” Foster said.
She believed that by getting those of different Jewish backgrounds and lifestyles, they would form a show that accurately presents what Jewish life looks like for many — which worked.
What’s also striking about “Nobody Wants This” is how the members of the Roklov family appear to practice different forms of Judaism. Noah’s older “loser brother” Sasha (Timothy Simons) blasts the rabbi’s love of Judaism as lame, and his overbearing mother Bina (Tovah Feldshuh) secretly indulges in prosciutto while maintaining a kosher façade. Noah, in contrast, embraces his faith, saying, “I play up the Torah bad boy vibe, but I’m all in on this thing.”
“Nobody Wants This” focuses on the outsider’s perspective
While Foster bolstered her writers’ room with many who grew up in Jewish households, she drew from her agnostic background while helping create Joanne. The world of Jewish Los Angeles is viewed through her eyes as someone not from the community, which is a perspective Foster has always gravitated toward.
“It’s interesting to learn about a culture from an outsider because it also makes the people on the inside really question things as well,” Foster said. “I married into a Russian Jewish family, and there are so many things that I ask questions about or pull experiences from, and they’re going ‘I’ve never even thought about that.’ That’s just like how we do things. And so sometimes it’s that person that really kind of makes you analyze the things you’re doing or what your traditions are.”
Something that she really wanted to focus on was that she made the choice to convert after she had built an adult life for herself. Foster met her now-husband when she was 35 and couldn’t imagine how she as a “fully formed person” would fit a new person and culture into her life.
“I started to understand and appreciate that it wasn’t ‘changing for a guy’ to find a way to be a part of something that was deeply meaningful to him and now is to me as well. … I wanted to tell a Jewish story, but from an outsider’s perspective for someone who chose Judaism,” she explained.
Joanne and Noah’s relationship is a passionate Romeo and Juliet story, but also fraught and complicated — often because of their cultural differences. Joanne and Morgan discuss their terrible taste in men and bad sex stories, which appalls his conservative family who was hoping Noah would marry the perfect rabbi’s wife.
However, throughout “Nobody Wants This,” Joanne and her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) force Sasha’s wife Esther (Jackie Tohn) and Bina to reevaluate their perceptions of her and her relationship with Noah.
Foster told Unpacked that she wanted to pull from her experience with her Jewish sister-in-law who helped her when she was still learning about Jewish customs. However, in Joanne’s case, Esther wants nothing to do with the new goy in town.
“I was very much an outsider, and my sister-in-law and I are like, best friends now, but in the beginning, I watched this dynamic [like Joanne and Esther],” Foster said. “I thought it’s so interesting when you’re an outsider and you come into this community and you pray your sister-in-law is gonna guide you through it, but they might not want to.”
‘The world needs a sexy rabbi’
For the character of Noah, Foster wanted a sweet and charismatic rabbi — a modern take on the “nice Jewish boy” trope. “I think the world needs a sexy Jewish rabbi as a leading man. We are starved for it,” she joked.
She remembers loving the movie “Keeping the Faith” in which Ben Stiller played “the cool rabbi” and felt that it was a concept that she would love to modernize. Brody, who came to fame playing Jewish teen heartthrob Seth Cohen in “The O.C.” in the early aughts, was the only choice for 2024’s sexy rabbi.
Foster gravitated toward his sarcasm, lovability, humor, and sensitivity. Brody was the man who women would swoon for and their moms would want to make him a brisket.
“It was so important to me that the Noah character wasn’t neurotic, because we’ve seen enough of that. I didn’t want the nebbishy, neurotic Jewish rabbi we’ve seen. I wanted a confident, funny, charismatic, sexy, hot guy who also is really down with his faith,” she added.
For Brody to transform himself into a devoted rabbi, he jumped into research. Even though the actor grew up in a Jewish household, he had not been back into a synagogue since his bar mitzvah. To prepare for the role of a quasi-adult version of Seth Cohen, he attended a Shabbat dinner and services, listened to podcasts, watched movies, and read books, delving into topics ranging from the Torah to the Holocaust to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I walked away from it with a much better understanding of the rituals, but at the same time, what I really enjoyed and was perhaps my lasting impression was a deeper understanding of the history of the people from the Bible,” Brody said.
For Bell, who grew up in a Jewish suburb of Detroit, becoming Joanne was a process of unlearning aspects of Judaism. The actress estimated that she attended 50 bat mitzvahs in middle school and can bless the challah, saying “I had to forget a lot of what I know and try and look in on it like an outsider.”
Judaism in “Nobody Wants This”
“Nobody Wants This” shines in its depictions of Judaism throughout the show as Noah attempts to show Joanne how “cool” Judaism is. The show has an episode that’s a loving homage to Jewish summer camp, teen crushes, and women’s empowerment.
The teen girls that give Joanne a reality check at camp, adoringly refer to Noah as the “hot rabbi” and provide viewers the perfect reminder about the magic of summer camp. Joanne has a loving impromptu Shabbat candle lighting at a restaurant after making her own havdalah candles.
The bat mitzvah of Noah’s niece is not only a rager, but also a reminder that Jewish parties can be festive and a time for joy.
Foster told Unpacked that her husband also tried to make Judaism fun for her at the beginning of their relationship and she wanted to show off all the amazing parts of the culture. However, her favorite part of Judaism that she wanted to imbue in the show is the opportunity to make your own decisions about interpretations and it’s up to you to choose to be Jewish.
“I do think Judaism is cool, and I experienced that when I went through the conversion process, when I learned about it. I think it’s really cool to have a religion where you are allowed to question everything. You’re allowed to doubt things, you’re allowed to argue about things, you’re allowed to question things,” Foster said.
“I see Judaism as a religion where we’re just asking you to do the best you can … I think that that is cool because it’s modern, and it’s an inclusive way to express faith, and it makes it more accessible to more people. And that really should be the goal of a religion to make it as easy as possible for people to implement it into their lives,” she added.
“Nobody Wants This” is a story about change
While the star-crossed relationship between Noah and Joanne based on their backgrounds takes center stage for most of “Nobody Wants This,” Foster believes the interfaith aspect of their relationship is not the most important part. Instead, she wants viewers to focus on what brings them together — and the lengths they are willing to go to be together.
“Telling a story where you have a modern woman who is progressive, who is independent, who is self-made and ambitious, but who also does want to fall in love and is willing to change some things about herself to find a good, healthy person, I think that that is bigger than interfaith,” Foster said.
At its heart, “Nobody Wants This” is a story of change and growth for Joanne, who begins the story stunted in many ways. No moment is truer to that than when she chooses at the end of Season 1 to not convert to Judaism, a plot point that Foster said wasn’t always part of the plan.
That decision became evident as the writers continued developing the first season and Foster realized that Joanne was ready to accept the responsibility of becoming a Jewish woman just yet. She wasn’t at a point where she would voluntarily be Jewish.
“When I converted to Judaism, they asked me, ‘If your husband and you got divorced, would you continue to be Jewish and raise your kids Jewish?’ And I hadn’t even considered that at the time, and so at the time, I kind of just lied,” Foster said. “I hadn’t been Jewish yet. I hadn’t lived the experience of being a Jewish person out in the world. I had just learned about it in a classroom, and that doesn’t make you Jewish. Living as a Jewish person makes you Jewish.”
“For Joanne, by the 10th episode, she wasn’t there yet, and I didn’t want to force it because it wouldn’t be realistic to the character. And I wanted her to be willing to risk the relationship in order to be truthful to herself,” she continued.
