Series creator Erin Foster has just wrapped the second season of her Netflix smash hit, “Nobody Wants This.” No, really, just: the team behind the Adam Brody- and Kristen Bell-starring romantic comedy, based on Foster’s own life and marriage, called cut Monday night at midnight, LA time. Eleven hours later, Foster was on Zoom with IndieWire to talk about the success of the first season of the show (with Foster’s full interview set to arrive on IndieWire in the coming weeks, we promise) and to tease as much as humanly possible about what’s going to unspool in the upcoming, and much-anticipated sophomore season.
Right away, Foster has a promise and a vow: it’s going to be more of what people love. And why shouldn’t it be? The show, which hit the streamer last fall, was an instant hit (hitting the number one slot on Netflix’s own lists within its first full week in release and earning glowing critical reviews in the process), the kind that reminded people of what real on-screen chemistry looks like, even when (or perhaps especially when?) the deck is seemingly stacked against its stars, in ostensibly mismatched Hot Rabbi Noah (Brody) and agnostic podcaster Joanne (Bell).
“It’s gonna 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,” Foster told IndieWire. “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.”
So, no time jump? Nope, Foster said, the second season will pick up a week or two after the events of the season finale, when Noah firmly picked Joanne, even knowing it is likely to cost him a much-desired head rabbi job. “It’s like, they’ve made that decision. He’s chosen her. Now what?” Foster said.
And what of the show’s other kinda-sorta-maybe-oh-no flirtation between Joanne’s (single) sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) and Noah’s (married) brother Sasha (Timothy Simons)? More of the same, it sounds like. “They live in a little bit of a gray area, they exist in a gray area,” she said. “It’s like, ‘We don’t want this, but do we want it? Is there something there? No, there’s nothing there. There’s kind of something there, but it’s nothing.’ It’s kind of like that.”
Elsewhere, Foster hopes that this season’s cavalcade of guest stars, some of them already announced (like Leighton Meester, Miles Fowler, Alex Karpovsky, and Arian Moayed) and a few of them still being kept secret, will delight fans. And, yes, she swears she’s snuck in some easter eggs for Brody and Meester super-fans (the couple has been married in real life for over a decade).
“I definitely threw in a couple funny lines between Adam and Leighton, for the audience,” she said. “And I really hope people — no, I know people — are gonna appreciate it.”
Brody and Meester are not the only real-life lovebirds working on the series together, as Foster’s own husband and Noah inspiration, music executive Simon Tikhman, has also offered his skills to the show. “We have amazing music, we’re doing a soundtrack this year, like an official soundtrack,” Foster said. “My husband Simon is actually involved in it, because his record label is on Interscope, and they’re doing the soundtrack. We have unreleased music from huge stars.”
The season season will also be guided by a pair of new showrunners, Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan, who take over from Foster and Craig DiGregorio, who served in that capacity for the first season. For Foster, who remains an executive producer and the creative voice of the show, it’s been a positive change.
“We have a new team in place, we have some new showrunners and people that are that I’m partnered with in Season 2,” she waid. “We had great people last year, and we have great people this year, and we have a bigger team at the top. … Season 1, you’re kind of nervous at how things are gonna go, so Season 2, I was able to have more people that I trusted around me that I could be like, ‘OK, you got this on set. I can go to a Favorite Daughter [her clothing brand] meeting if I have to.”
Another change? She’s not pregnant this time! Still, Foster remembers those days of shooting the first season while preparing for the arrival of her first child with lots of fondness. “Being pregnant was honestly a huge gift, because it balanced everything out,” she said. “Every time it got really hard at work, I reminded myself, ‘I’m bringing a person to the world, and that’s more important.’ And every time I was really nervous being pregnant, like, what if something goes wrong, I was distracting myself with work stress. It was kind of a blessing.”
Season 2 of “Nobody Wants This” will start streaming on Netflix on a to-be-announced 2025 date.
