Kristen Bell and Adam Brody have opened up about the making of one of Nobody Wants This’ most instantly-iconic moments.
The pair play burgeoning couple Joanne and Noah in the hit Netflix rom-com, which has been hovering around the top of the platform’s chart of most-watched shows since it began streaming last month.
One moment from the series that’s really captured people’s attention is the characters’ very first kiss, which viewers are already saying deserves an immediate place in the romantic comedy hall of fame:
Speaking about the kiss in question, Kristen admitted that getting it right on screen was a “daunting” process, as they script specifically describes it as “the world’s greatest kiss”.
“We were like, ‘OK, we’ve got to pull that off’,” the Frozen star recalled to MTV. “I think if you really were to break it down mathematically, the kiss is not the important part – it is the anticipation that you’re letting the audience live through that builds. And we just took our time.”
Adam agreed that the kiss was a “nice counterpart” to the more fast-paced first kisses prominent in romantic comedies, where “they slam together at the same time, and all of a sudden it’s on”.
“This was the opposite of that,” he said.
Creator Erin Foster also told Entertainment Weekly she was inspired by the kiss between Matt Damon and Minnie Driver in Good Willing Hunting.
“It was really important to me to have a really cool, playful first kiss for them,” she said. “When I was writing, I kept thinking of Good Will Hunting, when they go on their first date and they’re having hamburgers and french fries and they have food on their face, and they’re like, ‘Let’s do the first kiss. Let’s just do it now and get it out of the way’.
“I found it to be such a different kind of first kiss, and it was still so romantic, but conversational and realistic and fun and flirty.”
Erin added: “I really wanted to just create a moment that gave you those kinds of anticipatory, exciting feelings. And there’s not a ton of ways left to have first kisses in a show. People have done it a lot of different ways. So it’s hard to not land on something that feels familiar.”
So far, Nobody Wants This has received near-unanimous praise (aside from one recurring criticism), and has been at the number two spot on Netflix’s most-watched chart for over a week, held off the top position only by Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menéndez Story – a very different project altogether.
Nobody Wants This is inspired by the early stages of Erin’s own relationship with her now-husband, and the showrunner recently shared her take on calls for Netflix to recomission the series for a second season.