How Netflix’s ‘Nobody Wants This’ was inspired by creator Erin Foster’s real-life love story

Kristen Bell and Adam Brody as Joanne and Noah on “Nobody Wants This.”

Viewers are charmed by Netflix’s latest hit comedy series “Nobody Wants This,” which shot to the No. 2 slot on the streamer’s Top 10 list for English-language TV in the week of its debut.

The show follows Noah (Adam Brody), an attractive and newly single rabbi, and Joanne (Kristen Bell), the outspoken host of a sex podcast, as they have a meet-cute and determine if they can have a successful relationship despite their differences in lifestyle and religion.

With a 92% critics score and 88% audience rating on review-aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, it’s a certified hit; according to Netflix’s Top 10 data, its 10-episode season has been viewed for 45.7 million hours since its September 26 premiere. The series already seems destined to join Netflix’s pantheon of new rom-com classics, after the streamer ushered in a new era of fresh, modern rom-coms with hits like “Set It Up and “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before.”

Like any good rom-com, the series is partially a feel-good fantasy. But “Nobody Wants This” still manages to feel plausible and relatable — and that’s because it’s loosely based on creator Erin Foster’s own experience falling in love with her husband, Simon Tikhman.

Erin Foster got the idea for ‘Nobody Wants This’ in 2019 while converting to Judaism

Simon Tikhman and Erin Foster in September.

Foster and Tikhman met at a gym in 2018 and began dating soon after. They told the Los Angeles Times that the first time they hung out, Tikhman said, “Whoever I marry, she has to be Jewish.”

Foster told Harper’s Bazaar that she “had always grown up around a lot of Jewish friends and never was attached to a religion.”

She decided to convert and the couple married on New Year’s Eve in 2019.

During a recent episode of her podcast “The World’s First Podcast,” which she hosts with her sister Sara, Foster said that she and her manager Oly Obst started talking about the idea shortly after she started the conversion process.

Foster initially sold the show concept with her starring as Joanne, but she didn’t tell Tikhman that it was inspired by their romance.

“This show is based on the only good decision I ever made: falling for a nice Jewish boy,” Foster told Tudum. “But I realized that being happy is way harder than being miserable — there’s nothing to complain about. So, I created this show based on all the ways that finding the right person can be so hard.”

After writing the pilot script and pitching it, Foster said that “everyone passed” — then Netflix expressed interest, Bell got attached as the star, and Brody got cast as Noah.

The show is a ‘love letter’ to Foster and Tikhman’s relationship, but Joanne and Noah aren’t copies of them

Bell as Joanne and Brody as Noah on “Nobody Wants This.”

“It’s kind of a love letter to our relationship,” Foster said of “Nobody Wants This” on her podcast.

Like Joanne, Foster is a podcast host. But unlike Noah, Tikhman is a record-label owner and talent manager, not a rabbi. However, Foster modeled Brody’s character after Tikhman.

“Simon is my muse,” she said on her podcast, explaining that she wanted Noah to similarly be emotionally evolved and available, chivalrous, romantic, and confident.

“I really wanted him to have rizz,” she said.

On the show, Joanne and Noah’s family members hugely oppose their relationship, hence the title “Nobody Wants This.” But in interviews, Foster has made it clear that Tikhman’s family welcomed her. Foster also clarified that Joanne’s podcast cohost and sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) is not based on Sara.

“I intentionally made the characters really different than the people are in real life because I didn’t want to get divorced,” Foster told Today.com.

Brody and Bell as Noah and Joanne on “Nobody Wants This.”

One of the biggest commonalities is Joanne and Noah’s early apprehension about how their relationship could possibly work given their different worldviews.

“We didn’t come from similar backgrounds,” Foster said of her and Tikhman on her podcast. “He came from a much more traditional place. I came from a more unconventional place. When we got together we were like, ‘How’s this gonna work?'”

That question looms over the entirety of “Nobody Wants This,” and without spoiling the finale, there’s plenty more to mine if the show gets renewed for a second season.