Creator Erin Foster and show leads Kristen Bell and Adam Brody talked about the role of improv in the Netflix series, as well as accidentally reviving the rom-com genre, at a FYC panel in Los Angeles.
Kristen Bell as Joanne in ‘Nobody Wants This.’ Hopper Stone/Netflix
The flirtatious banter between Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Noah (Adam Brody) during Ashley’s (Sherry Cola) dinner party in episode one of Nobody Wants This immediately sets the tone for the will-they-won’t-they romance that ensues between the agnostic podcaster and the hot rabbi over the 10-episode Netflix series. It turns out a key piece of what made that scene so pleasing to audiences was completely unscripted.
“When Adam went to open the bottle of wine, we discovered in real time that Adam does not know how to open a bottle of wine,” series creator Erin Foster joked at a Netflix FYC panel in Los Angeles on Sunday.
“If I was a better actor, I would have learned how to open a bottle of wine before we shot it,” Brody chimed in before Foster praised his and Bell’s ability to capitalize on the moment.
“These two stayed in character,” she continued. “They leaned into this moment and it’s so special because it’s totally real and they kept the dialogue going. When [Adam says], ‘Oh embarrassing thing about me, I was a sommelier,’ that’s all just improv he came up with because he genuinely couldn’t open a bottle of wine.”
Added Bell, “That scene was cut because it was originally like seven and a half minutes. We loved it. We were like, ‘Keep the whole scene,’” she recalled. “It’s lightning in a bottle.”
The same could be said of the series as a whole, which quickly found its way to the No. 2 spot on Neilsen’s streaming charts the second week after it debuted. Bell credits a great deal of the show’s draw to how Foster shaped her character, which was a deciding factor in Bell coming on board as both series co-lead and executive producer.
Erin Foster, Adam Brody, Kristen Bell, Timothy Simons, Justine Lupe and Jackie Tohn at the Nov. 10 FYC event. Amy Sussman/Getty Images
“Erin is so uniquely a rule breaker in her own right,” Bell said. “There’s a sense that if you haven’t found love or your person or made all these life decisions by a certain age, something’s wrong with you and there are standards that we never challenge — like in your early 20s you should be meeting someone and then when you’re 27 you should know your career and it’s just not real life.”
Doing so was intentional, said Foster.
“What happens a lot is networks push this formula on you that if a woman is single at this age, when you meet her she’s just come off of a bender the night before with smeared eye makeup, she just had a one-night stand, she’s partying too hard and I was like, ‘That’s not who this girl is,’” she explained. “She’s just a person who hasn’t met her person yet and you don’t have to make her a mess. That’s the instinct, but all the women that we know who are Joannes, they’re actually fully formed people.”
Presenting Noah as an individual who was equally strong in his personal convictions was also important to Foster and Brody.
“When Adam and I had breakfast, he was telling me that he’s Jewish but didn’t grow up religious. So he was like, ‘Playing someone who’s really religious, if I’m going to play this role, I really want him to be all in on it. I don’t want him to be halfway in or one foot out the door. I want him to be really committed.’ And that wasn’t something I had really explored yet and thought about with the character,” Foster admitted. “So in the pilot when they’re walking to the car and Joanne says, ‘Are you by any chance wrestling with your faith?’ and he’s like, ‘No I’m all in on this thing,’ that’s actually a line that I added later because of my breakfast with him.”
The positive response to Nobody Wants This has earned it a second season. The approach, Foster said, will essentially be to stick with what works.
“I don’t personally think this is the show to make some artistic choice that sort of robs the audience of what they want; I know now what everybody wants,” she said unintentionally making a pun on the name of the series.
As for the notion that the popularity of the show has revived the rom-com genre, Foster confessed that that wasn’t her goal in writing the series, which is loosely based on her experience meeting her husband.
“I believe — whether it’s business, dating, friendships — whenever you go in with this intention of an outcome, it doesn’t work and you miss the mark,” she said. “I did not set out to bring back rom-coms. I didn’t even set out to make a rom-com. I was just telling a story that I would want to watch and that’s what happened. I think that anytime you do something with the right intention and you’re not thinking about the outcome, you have a better chance of making something good because you’re staying more present.
“I genuinely didn’t know if anybody was going to watch [the show],” Foster added. “Luckily, everybody did.”
