Latest news with #NobodyWantsThis
Newsweek
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
The Emmy Race Is On—Here's Who's Leading
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Emmy nominations won't be announced until July 15, but the campaigns are in full swing. (June in Los Angeles is basically one big "For Your Consideration" event every single day.) The big question is, who will be nominated? From Kathy Bates in Matlock to Adam Brody in Nobody Wants This and literally the entire cast of The White Lotus, Newsweek has had so many potential nominees on the Parting Shot Podcast with H. Alan Scott. So make sure you're subscribed to never miss some of the best chats in entertainment news. Emmy nomination season is here, with Severance, The Bear, and The White Lotus leading the prediction pack. Expect a mix of returning favorites and buzzy newcomers—and a few inevitable snubs. Emmy nomination season is here, with Severance, The Bear, and The White Lotus leading the prediction pack. Expect a mix of returning favorites and buzzy newcomers—and a few inevitable snubs. Getty Images DRAMA CATEGORIES: CAN ANYONE STOP SEVERANCE? Severance is likely to be a big contender, but don't count out new entries like The Pitt and Paradise. In the acting categories, Noah Wyle (The Pitt) and Kathy Bates (Matlock) are likely winners. Everyone has been talking about them all season, and both of their shows are brand new and very buzz worthy. But don't count out Sterling K. Brown (Paradise) or even Gary Oldman (Slow Horses). Other names that would be nice to see in the mix are Jon Hamm for Your Friends & Neighbors and Melanie Lynskey for Yellowjackets. Also, Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid's Tale) and Penn Badgley (You) should get some recognition for the finales of their respective shows. But the one series you can expect to be all over the drama categories: The White Lotus. Expect most of the cast, including Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Aimee Lou Wood and Parker Posey, to get nominated. Will they win? Unlikely, considering the less than thrilled reaction to the season, but they will certainly be recognized. COMEDY CATEGORIES: WILL GHOSTS FINALLY GET RECOGNIZED? Ghosts has consistently been a hit in the CBS' lineup, and yet it has never received much love from the Emmys. (Which is crazy considering that CBS announced earlier this year a two-season renewal for the hit comedy, a rarity these days for any show, let alone a network sitcom.) Asher Grodman, who plays Trevor on the series and is one of the potential nominees from the show, talked about this on a recent episode of the Parting Shot Podcast. It's seriously about time this incredible ensemble cast gets some Emmys love. Besides Ghosts, expect lots of mentions of new entries like The Studio and Nobody Wants This to be among the Emmy nominees. In addition to these new entries, past winners like Hacks, The Bear and Abbott Elementary will likely pick up multiple nominations. While it's no surprise that Jean Smart from Hacks will be nominated (and likely win), this could be Hannah Einbinder's year to finally win in the Supporting category. She had a stand-out season this year, and her name is the one that keeps coming up in many of these FYC conversations happening in Hollywood. Another show that deserves more attention is Mid-Century Modern. The entire cast is worthy of nominations, but Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer are the most likely to pick up nominations. Also, don't count out the love people have for Linda Lavin, who died while the show was still in production. Other worthy contenders in the comedy categories include Sharon Horgan's Bad Sisters and Wendi McLendon-Covey's incredible performance on St. Denis Medical. (It's one of the funniest shows from last year and she's yet to ever get any Emmys love. It's her time.) It would also be incredible to see Somebody Somewhere finally get some love. Bridget Everett's small town comedy ended this year, but it had so much heart and humor that hopefully its small but loud fanbase are screaming loud enough to help it finally pick up a nod. TV MOVIE AND LIMITED SERIES CATEGORIES: HAS ADOLESCENCE KILLED THE MONSTERS? Going into awards season, for a long time it seemed like Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story was going to dominate all categories. Then Adolescence debuted and everyone couldn't stop talking about it. At this point, it doesn't look like anything is going to stop Adolescence's momentum. That said, you can expect Monsters to pick up nominations for literally everyone involved, including Nicholas Alexander Chavez, Cooper Koch, Javier Bardem, Chloë Sevigny and Ryan Murphy. But there's one person from Monsters who really deserves some recognition: Leslie Grossman. She's been consistent in so many of Murphy's projects and always delivers, but she especially delivered in Monsters. Another one to watch out for is Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. Renée Zellweger's return as Bridget Jones was a hit for Peacock and well, when it comes to awards, nobody ignores Zellweger. (We couldn't either, we made her our cover story when the film premiered.) Expect the two-time Oscar winner to be a first-time Emmy winner. Another is Jesse Armstrong's Mountainhead. This all-star cast will almost certainly pick up nominations, but there's one member of the cast who truly deserves a nomination: Cory Michael Smith. His performance is literally haunting and we chatted with him about it on the Parting Shot Podcast. The Emmy nominations will be announced on July 15, and the 77th annual Emmy Awards will air on CBS on September 14. Subscribe to the Parting Shot Podcast with H. Alan Scott and the For the Culture newsletter for all the latest in pop culture and entertainment news.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘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
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘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
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘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
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
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Leighton Meester Jokes All the Recent Excitement for Her and Husband Adam Brody Is an 'Embarrassment of Riches' (Exclusive)
Leighton Meester and Adam Brody are amidst a career renaissance Meester has joined The Buccaneers season 2 while Brody led the 2024 hit Nobody Wants This The Gossip Girl alum tells PEOPLE, "It's an embarrassment of riches"If there's one couple in Hollywood that everyone is currently enamored with, it's Adam Brody and Leighton Meester. The two longtime TV stars have been at the center of renewed excitement — a renaissance, if you will — especially over the past year with Brody, 45, starring in the buzzy series Nobody Wants This, which recently wrapped production on season 2 in May. Meester, 39, meanwhile, most recently starred in Good Cop/Bad Cop before joining The Buccaneers, which returns for season 2 on Wednesday, June 18. While promoting the Apple TV+ period drama, Meester tells PEOPLE, "It's an embarrassment of riches. It's just really good," before quipping, "That's not so eloquent, but yeah, it's good." She explains, "It's nice to be working and it's nice for people to see the work you do. Obviously, that's kind of the hope. But so much of the time you do the work and then no one sees it." In this particular case, however, "everyone also loves what you guys are doing, so it's really very exciting." In October 2024, less than a month after Nobody Wants This became a certified hit on Netflix, Brody's former O.C. costar, Rachel Bilson, told PEOPLE that the "Adam Brody renaissance" was "well deserved." She added, "I mean, he is awesome. He's the best." Even Brody himself admitted that he was aware of the attention, telling The Hollywood Reporter following the show's success that "I've gotten a lot of interesting stuff. My email is fuller than it was." While speaking with PEOPLE the actor acknowledged that the reception to the show was a welcomed one. "I knew that we had something that worked, but I had no idea the sort of wide swath of people that would enjoy it. That has been an absolute pleasant surprise,' he said in November. "I've been doing this a long time, and it doesn't happen often, whoever you are. So it's very gratifying and exciting." Creator Erin Foster hyped up her new character, telling PEOPLE in April that the Gossip Girl alum is "a comedic genius." Foster added, "She's so funny. She blew our minds. We were like, 'Do, like, we write more of her in?' " Not to be left out, Brody also had high praise for his wife. "I'm always impressed, and I'm always so proud," he recently said of seeing Meester in her element while filming season 2. "It's fun to bring her in and show off her talents." is now available in the Apple App Store! Download it now for the most binge-worthy celeb content, exclusive video clips, astrology updates and more! "She does it all," he continued. "I think she surprises me with how funny she is, and then, at the same time, can go as deep as anyone." Speaking to PEOPLE about Meester joining The Buccaneers season 2, Christina Hendricks says, "I was very excited when I heard of the casting of Leighton because I was a big fan already. And I thought it was clever casting on their part, knowing that the audience was going to get very excited about." On the series, Meester plays Nell, whose arrival to England upends the lives of Nan (Kristine Frøseth) and Patti St. George (Hendricks). "One of the things I was most excited about was to unpack all the family drama. There's so much that happens in season 2," Frøseth, 29, tells PEOPLE, with Hendricks, 50, teasing that things "keep unraveling and it just keeps getting darker." Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. The Buccaneers season 2 premieres Wednesday, June 18 on Apple TV+, with episodes dropping weekly. Read the original article on People
