‘Nobody Wants This’ — Or Do They? Season 2 Plans and What’s Next for Netflix’s Rom-Com
Editor’s note: This story contains spoilers for “Nobody Wants This,” including the ending.
It’s a bittersweet happily ever after for Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Noah (Adam Brody) on “Nobody Wants This.” In the season finale, after a bat mitzvah break-up, rabbi Noah follows Joanne home and tells her he can’t live without her, giving up his shot at the big rabbi job in favor of his relationship with his gentile girlfriend. Cue a big kiss — and obvious groundwork for a Season 2, which creator and executive producer Erin Foster is hopeful about.
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“We’re getting a really positive response,” Foster told IndieWire prior to the September 26 Netflix premiere. “And so I think the conversations have definitely started to happen about a potential Season 2. The story in Season 1 unfolds really slowly. And so I think if there is a Season 2 I would want to just kind of pick up where we leave off and continue to take it slow, because I don’t want us to get too far ahead of ourselves. I mean, I want my show to be on the air as long as possible!”
The question of Joanne’s possible conversion to the Jewish faith is a big question mark going forward for the rom-com. In Season 1, she briefly considers it, but ultimately decides things are moving too fast to make that kind of commitment right now. But when creating the show, Foster — who did wind up converting in real life for her now-husband — was clear she wanted to name the option so fans weren’t just watching the show thinking, “Uh, there’s an easy solution here.”
“I hate when there’s a TV show that you’re watching as a viewer, and you’re [thinking], ‘Just ask the question!'” she said. “Like, ‘This is all very solvable; just ask her to convert’ and then every story goes away. I hate that. And so if people watching it think, ‘This is a really easy solve, just convert to Judaism,’ I wanted to address that, because it’s not the easy solve. You don’t just say, ‘Oh, well, I’ll just convert!’
“She would become a rabbi’s wife or a rabbi’s girlfriend, and that’s a huge responsibility,” Foster continued. “And you have to also remember that Joanne is someone who’s not going to fake it, so if she doesn’t believe it, she’s not going to live it. So just converting on paper wouldn’t really change anything, because she would be abandoning herself. There was a lot of conversations with the network about how, as soon as you acknowledge conversion, the show’s over, and I felt really strongly that we should acknowledge it, because the audience is gonna be thinking about it, but also explain how complicated that is, and that Joanne’s not there yet — and if she’s not there yet, do they have a future?”
“Listen, I know that when I signed up to convert, I said to my fiancé at the time, if I go through this and I don’t connect with what I’m learning, I’m not gonna do it,” she said. “If I haven’t bought into this thing by the end, then I am not gonna do it, because it has to feel right. And that’s who Joanne is.”
Despite the up-in-the-air nature of the central couple’s long-term future, Foster was clear she wanted to end Season 1 with a scene that would make romantic-comedy aficianados happy.
“I fully understand some people who make the artistic choice to not give the audience what they want, but I don’t think this is that kind of show,” Foster said. “I don’t want people walking away frustrated or annoyed. I think this is the kind of show where you want to get the thing you’re there to get and I wanted to give people that moment of, ‘We choose each other, but everyone knows we’re giving up a lot to choose each other, so how are we gonna do it?’ And that, to me, felt like a realistic but still satisfying ending still with conflict, so you have somewhere to go.”
It’s not happily ever after, but for viewers, it’s pretty dang close.
“Nobody Wants This” is streaming now on Netflix.
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