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‘Nobody Wants This' Creator Erin Foster Set Out to Make Her Own ‘Fleabag' — Her ‘Really Sweet' Rom-Com Took Her by Surprise
Welcome to It's a Hit! In this series, IndieWire speaks to creators and showrunners behind a few of our favorite television programs about the moment they realized their show was breaking big. Erin Foster is pretty organized. She'd have to be, thanks to a packed schedule that includes many personal obligations (wife, mother, sister, friend) alongside a stuffed professional calendar (which includes her hit Netflix series 'Nobody Wants This,' which she created, plus podcasting, running clothing company Favorite Daughter alongside sister Sara Foster, and much more). More from IndieWire Everything to Remember from 'Squid Game' Season 1 and 2 'Matlock' Production Designer Adam Rowe on How Two Canceled Shows Gave the CBS Hit Its Scale So when we got on Zoom a few weeks ago to talk about the smash first season of 'Nobody Wants This' in the context of the current Emmy season, Foster was thrilled to hear that there was an agenda in place, mostly hinging on chatting through a favorite IndieWire question: 'When did you know this show was a hit?' Still, all that organization and planning soon went out the window, because in addition to being organized and busy, Foster is — much like her alter-ego on the show, Kristen Bell's Joanne — disarmingly honest. ''I don't know' is the not-fun answer,' Foster said with a laugh. 'I definitely didn't know when I first watched it in editing. When I was in the editing process, I was by no means like, 'Wow, get ready, everyone. I have a hit on my hands!' At all. I remember very clearly thinking, 'It's sweet, it's really sweet. I don't think that my friends will make fun of me. But I think they're going to be like, 'It's nice.'' I didn't know if the message I was trying to get across was going to come through.' But while most people would argue that Foster did get her message across — more on that message, and the very personal experiences that inspired it, below — the creator and Season 1 co-showrunner (she shared duties with Craig DiGregorio) was initially concerned that the general genre packaging around the series was different than she was expecting. 'It's sweet and it's soft,' she said. 'I set out to make 'Fleabag' and I ended up making a sweet rom-com. I was like, 'OK, it's not the edgy thing that I thought I was making, but it's actually really sweet.' Then it turned out that was its superpower.' But while the show, which follows Adam Brody and Bell as a seemingly mismatched but extremely appealing new couple, was a hit out of the gate — with strong critical reviews and big-time viewing metrics that pushed it to the top of the streamer's top 10 in its first week — it took Foster a little longer to realize what she had made. I told her that I realized it was breaking through by way of my own metric: my mother had watched it, twice in its entirety, before I had enough time to burn through its first 10 episodes. 'For me, it happened one little step at a time. It was inch by inch,' she said. 'It's different for me than it is for you, with your mom saying that to you, because I had lots of friends' moms saying that to me, too, but it's my show, so they're always going to say that to me. They're going to say, 'I loved your show. I watched it in one night!' It's very hard to gauge outside perception when you're at the center of it.' When Foster saw other celebrities — crucially, other celebrities that she does not personally know — saying in interviews or sharing online that it was their favorite show of the summer, that struck her too. 'That's weird to me,' she said with a laugh. 'I know who you are. You don't know who I am!' While it's relatively easy to measure success by way of stuff like total hours streamed or how quickly it was renewed for a second season (just two weeks after the first season was released, not too shabby), Foster's rom-com also succeeded in other arenas. Like, oh, reminding people just how much they love Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, and giving so-called elder millennials a potent dose of teen nostalgia packaged in something brand new. 'I can't let you call us 'elder millennials,' it's so mean! It is so mean,' Foster said when asked about tapping straight into her own generation with her inspired casting. 'I know that's what we're called. Not to brag, but I had breakfast with Adam when we were offering him the role, and I was sitting across from him and I'm like, 'Damn, this could really work. He is so cute, why don't people know about this?'' That doesn't mean that casting Brody as kind and sexy rabbi Noah and Bell as his more outspoken lady love Joanne was a slam-dunk from the start. 'I was a little bit nervous about this millennial [nostalgia] thing, this 'The O.C.' meets 'Veronica Mars' [casting], because I didn't want the show to be cheesy. I wanted the show to be really well-received and not cutesy. I didn't want it to feel soapy,' Foster said. 'I was a little bit nervous about that, and hesitant about it, but luckily I have people around me who are smarter than me that were like, 'Millennials are going to eat this up and this is great.' Once I got over my fear, I just leaned into it. And when I watched him on camera with Kristen, their chemistry is psychotic. I got lucky, because you can't plan that.' While much has been made of Joanne and Noah's first kiss, for Foster, that 'psychotic' chemistry and obvious romance are on offer almost immediately. When did she know she had really made the right casting choices? 'It's the walk to the car in the pilot [episode],' Foster said. 'That scene was always really, really, really important to me, and it never changed from my original writing of it. Well, the 'Fiddler on the Roof' joke was not mine, that was added later. Originally that line was, 'Say something rabbinical,' and he says, 'Never pay retail.' We changed it to, 'There's a fiddler on the roof,' because it really made us laugh. That scene, I really felt it. I just felt like this is exactly how I wanted the show to feel.' In the first episode, written by Foster and directed by Greg Mottola, brassy podcaster Joanne meets the more strait-laced and steady Noah at a pal's dinner party. That he's a rabbi is one of many things that surprises her, along with his easy charm and clear interest in getting to know her better. When Noah walks Joanne to her car at the end of the evening, their banter is thrilling, but so is the sense that Noah gets her. Even if that means fudging on what he's actually doing. 'I tried to come up with creative ways to get him to be sexy and romantic that's not cookie-cutter,' she said. 'It was like, he's being chivalrous and walking her to her car, but she's like, 'Don't walk me to my car,' and he's like, 'No, my car is right where your car is.' He has a plan, like, I know a girl like this isn't going to want me to walk her to her car, so I have to tell her that I'm walking both of us to our cars. Then, when we get there, I'm going to be like, 'Oh no, I got a space up front.' I didn't have to draw attention to it.' Small moments like that stand out throughout the series, which is based on Foster's own romance with her husband, Simon Tikhman. While Tikhman is not a rabbi (he's in the music business), he is Jewish, and Foster converted to the religion before they married in 2019. For many characters in the series, the pair's mismatched faith is one of the biggest obstacles for their relationship (a rabbi and an agnostic podcaster?!), but Foster's own experiences inspired plenty of other elements of the show, even if not everything is directly pulled from her life. 'Whatever's the best story is what goes on screen. It's not like it has to be true to life by any means,' Foster said. 'My husband's not a rabbi, so there's many things that I have to embellish and change. But I would say that my philosophies are in the show, my philosophies on love, my philosophies on relationships.' She's not just saying that. For Foster, 'Nobody Wants This' is funny, sexy, and romantic, but it's also based on some very personal and quite hard-won life lessons. 'My husband really represents, for me, this idea of a kind of man that I didn't know existed,' she said. 'It doesn't mean that he's perfect Prince Charming or anything like that, it just means that, as modern women, we have been made to believe — because it's true a lot — that you have two options. You have a spicy, sensual, exciting, exhilarating love with a toxic person, or you have a consistent, boring, regular safe option with a nice person. I was really scared of how to make that choice. I was probably going to go with the toxic person, as most women do, because rom-coms typically show us getting the toxic person to choose you and not be toxic anymore. In my experience, you can't get the toxic person to stop being toxic.' When Foster met Tikhman — just like when Joanne meets Noah — it forever altered her perception of what a relationship could be. And she wanted to see that on the screen. 'My relationship with my husband opened my eyes to this third option, which was emotionally healthy, confident, strong, honest, truthful, funny, romantic, but not a pushover,' Foster said. 'I knew how much it blew my mind. I'm like other women, I have a strong personality, but I want an equal partner, someone I can't walk all over, but someone who lets me be myself. I was really excited to show a love story with that kind of guy, because I want every woman to end up in the same kind of marriage I ended up in, which is healthy and fun.' When translating that to the show, Foster didn't get precious about making tweaks and changes to true stories, all the better to serve Joanne and Noah's story. Consider the genesis of the sixth episode in the first season, titled 'The Ick,' in which Joanne feels turned off by Noah trying to impress her family. 'I got the ick with my husband early on because I just got spooked. I got spooked that he was being really nice, and he was trying really hard with my friends and family, and he really wanted this to work out. Those are really nice things,' she said. 'Somehow, it scared me. I had gotten the ick a million times in my life, 'Oh, he's got salad dressing on his mouth, I can't marry him.' The littlest thing can turn you off from someone because they falter in some way. But I never had a guy on the other end of it stop me and be like, 'Don't do that. What are you doing right now? That is stupid. I'm not going to feel embarrassed because I want your parents to like me. You should feel embarrassed.' He really just called me out on it. That was obviously very attractive to me.' The 'ick' that Joanne feels in that moment might be silly or stupid, but it's also deeply human and enormously relatable. That makes it both funny and worth sharing, the kind of entertainment that sticks with you, because it's pulled from the truth. 'I fell madly in love with my husband, and then this really dumb thing made me think that I actually never wanted to be with him again because I wasn't mature enough in that moment to see past the way he said 'Prego' or whatever,' Foster said. 'That's a made-up thing, but the idea of that is true. It's not that I'm proud of being that way, but that's the human experience. I was fucked up and I had bad habits, and I was lucky enough to find someone that my brand of crazy worked for.' As Foster prepares for the series' second season to hit the streamer in October — a season she already promised IndieWire won't hold back on all the stuff its audience already loves, including both romance and comedy, naturally — she's intent on keeping up that kind of honesty, even when it can be a little tough. 'I'm not all the way there, but I'm pretty comfortable exposing my flaws, and when you personalize something, it helps people connect,' Foster said. 'I am willing to do that, because it also makes me feel seen.' The first season of 'Nobody Wants This' is streaming on Netflix. Best of IndieWire 2023 Emmy Predictions: Who Will Win at the Primetime Emmy Awards? 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series
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‘Nobody Wants This' Season 2 Netflix Premiere Date Revealed, Creator Promises ‘Romantic and Funny' Outing
Netflix know that a lot of somebodies want this. The second season of 'Nobody Wants This' will premiere October 23. The show first dropped on the streamer last September to sparkling reviews, with IndieWire's Proma Khosla praising the chemistry between leads Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. The show, created by Erin Foster, finds Joanne (Bell, also an executive producer) and Noah (Brody) in a would-be conventional love story complicated by Noah's position as a rabbi. Popular podcaster Joanne isn't just not Jewish, she's also unreligious generally — as is her entire non-traditional family. As Noah and Joanne attempt to acclimate to each other's worlds, and Joanne explores converting, things get complicated — to put it lightly. More from IndieWire The Cast and Crew of 'St. Denis Medical' Found Joy and Warmth in the Show's Hospital Setting 'The Gilded Age' Season 3 Trailer: A New Generation Rises as Carrie Coon Tries to Secure Her Status in High Society 'Nobody Wants This' was renewed back in October, but the drop date was not revealed until the June 1 Netflix FYSEE L.A. Emmy event at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles. The evening featured a screening of the pilot followed by a live taping of Foster's 'The World's First Podcast' with Foster, Bell, Brody and fellow cast members Justine Lupe, Timothy Simons, and Jackie Tohn. Stephanie Faracy, Michael Hitchcock, Tovah Feldshuh, Paul Ben-Victor, Emily Arlook, Sherry Cola, and Shiloh Berman will also return for the next batch of episodes, and guests stars will include Miles Fowler, Alex Karpovsky, Arian Moayed, and Bell's 'Gossip Girl' co-star Leighton Meester. Foster based the series on her own life. The actress, writer and podcaster converted to Judaism after falling in love with her Jewish now-husband, Simon Tikhman. Last year, Foster discussed her experience with IndieWire. 'There were about 23 people [in my conversion class] and only three were converting for marriage, which tells you there was 20 very interesting stories going on in that room!' she said. 'And I thought it was just interesting. I hadn't ever seen anybody explore that area, and I thought it'd be cool.' Last month, Foster told IndieWire that Season 2 of 'Nobody Wants This' would be 'romantic and funny.' 'I'm not in the business of depriving people of what they want on a show like this, and making some like, artistic choice to rob you of what you want to see. I really tried to stay on point with Season 1, [it] was all these firsts, first kiss, first date, and this is going to be the next four to six months of the relationship what that looks like,' she said. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See
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‘Nobody Wants This' Creator Erin Foster Set Out to Make Her Own ‘Fleabag' — Her ‘Really Sweet' Rom-Com Took Her by Surprise
Welcome to It's a Hit! In this series, IndieWire speaks to creators and showrunners behind a few of our favorite television programs about the moment they realized their show was breaking big. Erin Foster is pretty organized. She'd have to be, thanks to a packed schedule that includes many personal obligations (wife, mother, sister, friend) alongside a stuffed professional calendar (which includes her hit Netflix series 'Nobody Wants This,' which she created, plus podcasting, running clothing company Favorite Daughter alongside sister Sara Foster, and much more). More from IndieWire Everything to Remember from 'Squid Game' Season 1 and 2 'Matlock' Production Designer Adam Rowe on How Two Canceled Shows Gave the CBS Hit Its Scale So when we got on Zoom a few weeks ago to talk about the smash first season of 'Nobody Wants This' in the context of the current Emmy season, Foster was thrilled to hear that there was an agenda in place, mostly hinging on chatting through a favorite IndieWire question: 'When did you know this show was a hit?' Still, all that organization and planning soon went out the window, because in addition to being organized and busy, Foster is — much like her alter-ego on the show, Kristen Bell's Joanne — disarmingly honest. ''I don't know' is the not-fun answer,' Foster said with a laugh. 'I definitely didn't know when I first watched it in editing. When I was in the editing process, I was by no means like, 'Wow, get ready, everyone. I have a hit on my hands!' At all. I remember very clearly thinking, 'It's sweet, it's really sweet. I don't think that my friends will make fun of me. But I think they're going to be like, 'It's nice.'' I didn't know if the message I was trying to get across was going to come through.' But while most people would argue that Foster did get her message across — more on that message, and the very personal experiences that inspired it, below — the creator and Season 1 co-showrunner (she shared duties with Craig DiGregorio) was initially concerned that the general genre packaging around the series was different than she was expecting. 'It's sweet and it's soft,' she said. 'I set out to make 'Fleabag' and I ended up making a sweet rom-com. I was like, 'OK, it's not the edgy thing that I thought I was making, but it's actually really sweet.' Then it turned out that was its superpower.' But while the show, which follows Adam Brody and Bell as a seemingly mismatched but extremely appealing new couple, was a hit out of the gate — with strong critical reviews and big-time viewing metrics that pushed it to the top of the streamer's top 10 in its first week — it took Foster a little longer to realize what she had made. I told her that I realized it was breaking through by way of my own metric: my mother had watched it, twice in its entirety, before I had enough time to burn through its first 10 episodes. 'For me, it happened one little step at a time. It was inch by inch,' she said. 'It's different for me than it is for you, with your mom saying that to you, because I had lots of friends' moms saying that to me, too, but it's my show, so they're always going to say that to me. They're going to say, 'I loved your show. I watched it in one night!' It's very hard to gauge outside perception when you're at the center of it.' When Foster saw other celebrities — crucially, other celebrities that she does not personally know — saying in interviews or sharing online that it was their favorite show of the summer, that struck her too. 'That's weird to me,' she said with a laugh. 'I know who you are. You don't know who I am!' While it's relatively easy to measure success by way of stuff like total hours streamed or how quickly it was renewed for a second season (just two weeks after the first season was released, not too shabby), Foster's rom-com also succeeded in other arenas. Like, oh, reminding people just how much they love Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, and giving so-called elder millennials a potent dose of teen nostalgia packaged in something brand new. 'I can't let you call us 'elder millennials,' it's so mean! It is so mean,' Foster said when asked about tapping straight into her own generation with her inspired casting. 'I know that's what we're called. Not to brag, but I had breakfast with Adam when we were offering him the role, and I was sitting across from him and I'm like, 'Damn, this could really work. He is so cute, why don't people know about this?'' That doesn't mean that casting Brody as kind and sexy rabbi Noah and Bell as his more outspoken lady love Joanne was a slam-dunk from the start. 'I was a little bit nervous about this millennial [nostalgia] thing, this 'The O.C.' meets 'Veronica Mars' [casting], because I didn't want the show to be cheesy. I wanted the show to be really well-received and not cutesy. I didn't want it to feel soapy,' Foster said. 'I was a little bit nervous about that, and hesitant about it, but luckily I have people around me who are smarter than me that were like, 'Millennials are going to eat this up and this is great.' Once I got over my fear, I just leaned into it. And when I watched him on camera with Kristen, their chemistry is psychotic. I got lucky, because you can't plan that.' While much has been made of Joanne and Noah's first kiss, for Foster, that 'psychotic' chemistry and obvious romance are on offer almost immediately. When did she know she had really made the right casting choices? 'It's the walk to the car in the pilot [episode],' Foster said. 'That scene was always really, really, really important to me, and it never changed from my original writing of it. Well, the 'Fiddler on the Roof' joke was not mine, that was added later. Originally that line was, 'Say something rabbinical,' and he says, 'Never pay retail.' We changed it to, 'There's a fiddler on the roof,' because it really made us laugh. That scene, I really felt it. I just felt like this is exactly how I wanted the show to feel.' In the first episode, written by Foster and directed by Greg Mottola, brassy podcaster Joanne meets the more strait-laced and steady Noah at a pal's dinner party. That he's a rabbi is one of many things that surprises her, along with his easy charm and clear interest in getting to know her better. When Noah walks Joanne to her car at the end of the evening, their banter is thrilling, but so is the sense that Noah gets her. Even if that means fudging on what he's actually doing. 'I tried to come up with creative ways to get him to be sexy and romantic that's not cookie-cutter,' she said. 'It was like, he's being chivalrous and walking her to her car, but she's like, 'Don't walk me to my car,' and he's like, 'No, my car is right where your car is.' He has a plan, like, I know a girl like this isn't going to want me to walk her to her car, so I have to tell her that I'm walking both of us to our cars. Then, when we get there, I'm going to be like, 'Oh no, I got a space up front.' I didn't have to draw attention to it.' Small moments like that stand out throughout the series, which is based on Foster's own romance with her husband, Simon Tikhman. While Tikhman is not a rabbi (he's in the music business), he is Jewish, and Foster converted to the religion before they married in 2019. For many characters in the series, the pair's mismatched faith is one of the biggest obstacles for their relationship (a rabbi and an agnostic podcaster?!), but Foster's own experiences inspired plenty of other elements of the show, even if not everything is directly pulled from her life. 'Whatever's the best story is what goes on screen. It's not like it has to be true to life by any means,' Foster said. 'My husband's not a rabbi, so there's many things that I have to embellish and change. But I would say that my philosophies are in the show, my philosophies on love, my philosophies on relationships.' She's not just saying that. For Foster, 'Nobody Wants This' is funny, sexy, and romantic, but it's also based on some very personal and quite hard-won life lessons. 'My husband really represents, for me, this idea of a kind of man that I didn't know existed,' she said. 'It doesn't mean that he's perfect Prince Charming or anything like that, it just means that, as modern women, we have been made to believe — because it's true a lot — that you have two options. You have a spicy, sensual, exciting, exhilarating love with a toxic person, or you have a consistent, boring, regular safe option with a nice person. I was really scared of how to make that choice. I was probably going to go with the toxic person, as most women do, because rom-coms typically show us getting the toxic person to choose you and not be toxic anymore. In my experience, you can't get the toxic person to stop being toxic.' When Foster met Tikhman — just like when Joanne meets Noah — it forever altered her perception of what a relationship could be. And she wanted to see that on the screen. 'My relationship with my husband opened my eyes to this third option, which was emotionally healthy, confident, strong, honest, truthful, funny, romantic, but not a pushover,' Foster said. 'I knew how much it blew my mind. I'm like other women, I have a strong personality, but I want an equal partner, someone I can't walk all over, but someone who lets me be myself. I was really excited to show a love story with that kind of guy, because I want every woman to end up in the same kind of marriage I ended up in, which is healthy and fun.' When translating that to the show, Foster didn't get precious about making tweaks and changes to true stories, all the better to serve Joanne and Noah's story. Consider the genesis of the sixth episode in the first season, titled 'The Ick,' in which Joanne feels turned off by Noah trying to impress her family. 'I got the ick with my husband early on because I just got spooked. I got spooked that he was being really nice, and he was trying really hard with my friends and family, and he really wanted this to work out. Those are really nice things,' she said. 'Somehow, it scared me. I had gotten the ick a million times in my life, 'Oh, he's got salad dressing on his mouth, I can't marry him.' The littlest thing can turn you off from someone because they falter in some way. But I never had a guy on the other end of it stop me and be like, 'Don't do that. What are you doing right now? That is stupid. I'm not going to feel embarrassed because I want your parents to like me. You should feel embarrassed.' He really just called me out on it. That was obviously very attractive to me.' The 'ick' that Joanne feels in that moment might be silly or stupid, but it's also deeply human and enormously relatable. That makes it both funny and worth sharing, the kind of entertainment that sticks with you, because it's pulled from the truth. 'I fell madly in love with my husband, and then this really dumb thing made me think that I actually never wanted to be with him again because I wasn't mature enough in that moment to see past the way he said 'Prego' or whatever,' Foster said. 'That's a made-up thing, but the idea of that is true. It's not that I'm proud of being that way, but that's the human experience. I was fucked up and I had bad habits, and I was lucky enough to find someone that my brand of crazy worked for.' As Foster prepares for the series' second season to hit the streamer in October — a season she already promised IndieWire won't hold back on all the stuff its audience already loves, including both romance and comedy, naturally — she's intent on keeping up that kind of honesty, even when it can be a little tough. 'I'm not all the way there, but I'm pretty comfortable exposing my flaws, and when you personalize something, it helps people connect,' Foster said. 'I am willing to do that, because it also makes me feel seen.' The first season of 'Nobody Wants This' is streaming on Netflix. Best of IndieWire 2023 Emmy Predictions: Who Will Win at the Primetime Emmy Awards? 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series
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10-06-2025
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Comedy TV Writers on the Importance of Filming in Los Angeles, Sharing Soundstages and the Power of the Will They/Won't They Relationship
For 'Nobody Wants This' creator/executive producer Erin Foster, when it came time to figure out where to shoot her Netflix comedy 'Nobody Wants This,' she had some leverage in her back pocket: Star Kristen Bell. 'Shooting in L.A. is hard and really expensive,' Foster told the audience on Thursday at Variety's A Night in the Writers Room event. 'We were only able to shoot in L.A. because Kristen Bell has kids here that are in school here. And she's like, 'I won't shoot anywhere else.'' More from Variety Don't Forget 'Severance' Star Tramell Tillman This Emmy Season Why Nicola Coughlan Is the Soul of 'Bridgerton' and Deserves an Emmy Nomination 'Last of Us' Creator Craig Mazin Reminds Angry Fans That Pedro Pascal Lives On, Even if His Character Doesn't: 'He's Alive and He's in Literally Everything Else' Foster said Netflix and 20th TV, which is behind 'Nobody Wants This,' quickly agreed. 'They're like, 'well, then we're shooting where you want to shoot,'' she told the A Night in the Writers' Room audience. 'We got very lucky that she wants to be home with her kids. She wants to come to work, she wants to live in LA. She picks her kids up from school and it's important to her.' Four of the seven shows on the A Night in the Writers' Room comedy panel shoot in Los Angeles, which was heartening, given how important keeping production in Los Angeles has become a key topic in the industry right now. On Season 4 of 'Hacks,' much of the action was located in Los Angeles — allowing the show the chance to showcase more of the city's landmarks. 'We are very proud that we have shot the show since day one in Los Angeles,' Statsky said. 'Our crew is based here, and feel really lucky to be here. It's really important to us to keep production here. And so it was really great to make a season that got to show LA, and got to show the Universal backlot. It was really lovely and important to get to do that.' Shooting in L.A. alongside other local productions also allows for something else a bit unexpected: Surprise crossovers. On Episode 4 of this season's 'Hacks,' Deborah (Jean Smart) is out late partying with her assistant Damien (Mark Indelicato) at a gay dance club — but after hitting her head while dancing in a cage, she's rushed to an emergency room. Eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed that ER looked familiar: 'When Deborah goes to the emergency room, that's the 'St. Denis Medical' set,' 'Hacks co-creator, co-showrunner and EP Jen Statsky revealed. Both Max's 'Hacks' and NBC's 'St. Denis Medical' are Universal TV series that film on the Universal lot, so it made sense to borrow their stage. 'That's an exclusive!' quipped 'St. Denis Medical' exec producer Eric Ledgin. (And it wasn't the only crossover between the two shows this season: 'Hacks' star Rose Abdoo also guested as a nurse on 'St. Denis Medical.') Among other unexpected crossovers revealed during A Night in the Writers' Room: Since they both shot in Toronto, it turns out 'What We Do in the Shadows' executive producer Sarah Naftalis and 'Overcompensating' creator/exec producer/star Benito Skinner shared the same crew. The comedy panel opened with a discussion about the state of the sitcom — and how recent successes like 'Nobody Wants This' and 'St. Denis Medical' were positive signs that the genre still has legs. That momentum really began a few years ago with the success of 'Abbott Elementary' — and EP/co-showrunner Justin Halpern admitted it felt weird to have a hit broadcast comedy in the 2020s. 'We were told network TV was dead when we pitched the show and, you know, we're still on the air,' he said. 'It may be dead, but we're there among the corpses. There's a bunch of people out there who still like writing comedy, still like making comedy, and we've found each other. I always tell the writers it's like the zombie apocalypse and we're in a room where there's food. There's bloody hands going up against the wall, but we've made it so far.' Fellow broadcast comedy EP Ledgin admitted that 'it's weird when you've worked in the business long enough to have been on canceled shows that would be a runaway hit now, by the numbers they got 10 years ago… it was more relief than anything to be like, 'thank God this worked. I'm not insane. I can keep doing this.' I'm grateful, but it also feels like you're in this weird bubble where I almost feel bad and guilty about having steady job!' 'Abbott' produced 22 episodes this season, while 'St. Denis' produces 18 — normal episodic orders for broadcast, but the kind of volume that stunned the producers on streaming series. 'That sounds really hard!' Foster said. 'Sick to my stomach. All I thought was, 'you make so much money than I do,' but it's so much more work!' Comedy is also having a moment because of people are looking for a pleasant escape given the political nightmare currently gripping this nation. Plus, some of these shows boast multigenerational appeal — in particular, 'Abbott,' 'St. Denis' and 'Animal Control.' 'I'll sometimes forget that, and we'll have a racy storyline,' admitted Fox's 'Animal Control' showrunner/EP Tad Quill. 'Then some dad I know will be like, 'Hey dude, I was just watching that with my 7-year-old, that's not cool!' Skinner said his deeply personal Prime Video comedy might not be for everyone. 'People are like, 'I can't watch this with my parents,'' he said. 'I was worried about some of the specificity of it, because this was my experience in the closet… instead, I'm being met with so many messages from people who I think saw themselves in the show and maybe saw themselves not only in my character, but in this nostalgic world of college, and being able to laugh at that cringe time in their life.' Speaking of shows taken from personal experience, Foster wrote 'Nobody Wants This' based on her own experience marrying a Jewish man. The show follows Bell's character Joanne, as she starts dating a rabbi (Adam Brody). It all worked out for Foster and her husband, but will it work out for Bell's and Brody's couple? And how long can they tease that out? 'At some point she has to convert and say yes, and those things have to move forward,' Foster said. Netflix was concerned about that happening too soon, however, because, the thought went, 'then the show is over. But as someone who did convert to Judaism when I got married, there are so many things that come up once you say yes to this. That's just the beginning. Because then all of a sudden you're faced with all of these different philosophies and traditions. I'm excited to tell that next step of the story.' Over at 'Abbott,' bringing Janine (Quinta Brunson) and Gregory (Tyler James Williams) together after a few seasons of 'will they or won't they?' meant chronicling what really was their first truly mature relationship. 'I think it was fun for us to be able to just write stories about, how do you exist in these relationships?' he said. 'Janine had only ever had sex with one person before she was with him. We make a big point of that in the show. She really has no life experience.' 'Animal Control' has juggled two 'will they or won't they,' while on 'Hacks,' it's been a question of whether Deborah and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) will ever truly be pals. 'It's a 'will they or won't they' in terms of, will Deborah allow herself to have one friend?' Statsky said. On 'Overcompensating,' the question becomes, can Benny (played by Skinner) figure out how to be true to himself? 'In telling a coming out story, I also thought, it's TV so we have some time — but not that much time,' Skinner said. 'I liked that I could finally show just how confusing this felt for me and also have people who are not queer come to it and be like, 'that feels very similar to an experience of trying to find myself.'' As for 'What We Do In the Shadows,' if the question was whether the show's vampires would ever learn anything or exhibit any sort of growth, the series finale proved it was a resounding no. But that was the perfect way to end the show as well. 'How do you end a series about people who literally don't give a shit whether things continue or not? That lowers the stakes,' Naftalis said. That's when they came up with the idea of the show's documentary crew — the one that had been documenting the characters for the past six years — deciding to pack it up. 'We felt like having the documentary end gave us an opportunity to essentially work through all the things we as writers were feeling about the show ending. 'The conceptual joke of the whole series is they're making a documentary about an entire lifestyle that's supposed to be hidden,' she added. 'It felt like in the final season you sort of had to deal with that. We really wanted the finale to feel like we were just starting any old episode, and have it feel abrupt and remind the viewer that you have been watching a documentary the whole time.' The reviews for the finale were strong — and Naftalis said 'we feel really good about it.' Watch the full panel above. Best of Variety Emmy Predictions: Documentary Programs — Nonfiction Races Spotlight Pee-wee Herman, Simone Biles and YouTube Creators 25 Hollywood Legends Who Deserve an Honorary Oscar New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week
Express Tribune
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Netflix announces Nobody Wants This season 2 release date with Kristen Bell and Adam Brody
Netflix has officially announced that Season 2 of its hit romantic comedy series Nobody Wants This will premiere globally on October 23, 2025. The announcement came during an Emmys FYC event celebrating the show's first season. Inspired by the real-life story of creator Erin Foster, Season 1 followed an unlikely romance between Joanne (Kristen Bell), an outspoken agnostic podcaster, and Noah (Adam Brody), an unconventional rabbi. The season concluded with uncertainty as Joanne admitted she wasn't ready to convert to Judaism, leaving their future unresolved. The original cast will return for the second season, joined by new additions including Leighton Meester as Abby, an Instagram mommy influencer and Joanne's childhood rival. Miles Fowler, Alex Karpovsky, and Arian Moayed are also set to appear in new roles. Netflix renewed the show shortly after its September 2024 debut. Foster described the response to the series as a "career highlight" in an interview with Variety, crediting the cast, crew, and producers for helping bring her vision to life. Since its launch, Nobody Wants This has developed a strong fan base, largely due to the chemistry between its lead characters. Erin Foster returns as executive producer alongside her sister Sara Foster. Newcomer Nora Silver joins the team this season, with Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan serving as showrunners.
