‘Nobody Wants This’ costume designer Negar Ali-Kline on maintaining the authenticity in the Netflix romantic comedy
When costume designer and celebrity stylist Negar Ali-Kline first heard about what would become Erin Foster’s breakout Netflix hit “Nobody Wants This,” she knew it would be a special project.
“I felt like I had to do this project, which is very rare,” Ali-Kline tells Gold Derby during our Meet the Experts: TV Costume Designer panel. “I don’t know that I’ve ever felt like that having read something.”
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Based on Foster’s own life, “Nobody Wants This” focuses on a successful podcaster named Joanne (Kristen Bell) who falls in love with a rabbi named Noah (Adam Brody). Complications quickly arise, however, since Joanne isn’t Jewish – and Noah needs to be in a relationship with a Jewish woman if he wants to continue on his path as a rabbi. (The project was originally called “Shiksa,” a term used to describe a non-Jewish woman.) The show is set in Los Angeles, where Ali-Kline grew up, and the location was essential to her choices as the costume designer.
“I knew these characters, they just jumped off the page for me,” Ali-Kline says. “I felt like I had people in my life who were very similar. So my inspiration was Los Angeles itself. I wanted to show Los Angeles in a very authentic way.”
For Ali-Kline that presented itself in small but crucial ways. One character wears a T-shirt from the restaurant Casa Vega, a famed Mexican eatery familiar to Los Angeles residents. The designers Ali-Kline chose were L.A.-based as well. Ali-Kline even drew on her own experience where possible. Season 1 of “Nobody Wants This” culminates at a lavish bat mitzvah for Noah’s niece, and Ali-Kline says she was attending similar events with her son in real life while working on the show.
“I was dropping him off at these bar and bat mitzvahs, looking at what all the girls were wearing and what the parents were wearing, so that I could just do my research there,” she says. “So it was really nice to have that.”
In interviews, Foster said she wanted “Nobody Wants This” to showcase the Jewish community in a way not previously seen on television and with a modern bend. Ali-Kline says that brief was of utmost importance for her work – as was the input of Steve Leder, the former senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles.
“We wanted to make sure that we got all the nuance,” Ali-Kline says of keeping the show and its costumes authentic to the Jewish community. “We took a lot of care, especially with Noah’s family. They’re Russian immigrants and there are different things about being Russian and Jewish versus American and Jewish. And so we wanted to make sure that we incorporated all those subtle things with Noah’s family. We tried to be as authentic as possible and we were very mindful of that.”
“Nobody Wants This” streams on Netflix.
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