As the nights get darker and the weather gets colder, we’re finding ourselves immediately on the hunt for some escapism in the form of new comfort shows to distract ourselves from the less Instagram-friendly parts of autumn time.
So Netflix’s new rom-com Nobody Wants This (and, for that matter, the long-awaited third season of Heartstopper) has come along at the ideal moment.
Much of our weekend was spent devoted to following Joanne and Noah’s unconventional love story, and apparently we’re not the only ones, as the series has been hovering around the top of Netflix’s most-watched list since its release last week (held off the top spot by only Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menéndez Story).
Perhaps what makes Nobody Wants This so gripping and relatable is the fact it’s actually based on the story of a real relationship.
Nobody Wants This showrunner Erin Foster (the daughter of 16-time Grammy-winning composer and music industry executive David Foster) met her husband Simon Tikhman at a gym in Los Angeles in 2018, with the pair eventually tying the knot a year later.
Their relationship shares plenty of similarities between the fictitious one played out by Kristen Bell and Adam Brody in Nobody Wants This, with Erin converting to Judaism prior to their wedding.
“When I met Simon, he said it would be important to him to marry someone Jewish and asked me if I would convert. It was kind of like, ‘Yeah. Whatever. I’ll be Jewish’. It didn’t really mean anything to me at the time,” she admitted to Harper’s Bazaar.
She continued: “But then when I went through the process and went to the converting classes at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, it was this really fascinating, expansive, cool world.”
However, while certain details from the show are lifted straight from Erin and Simon’s relationship (the awkward dinner in episode six with those sunflowers being one specific example), there are some key differences.
Perhaps the biggest of them all is the fact Simon is not a rabbi but a music manager and record label CEO.
In an interview with Vulture, Erin made it clear that her real-life in-laws were much more accepting of her than their on-screen counterparts, albeit they were “sceptical”.
“I was not the dream daughter-in-law, but he has an amazing family, and they had to get used to me one way or another,” she added to Harper’s Bazaar. “And now we’re all really best friends, and so close, and we’re all so lucky to have each other. But it was tricky in the beginning, for sure.”
“Those aren’t real moments,” she added of Joanne’s experiences with Noah’s family.
Like Kristen’s character, Erin does have her own podcast, though, co-presenting The World’s First Podcast with her actor sister, Sarah.
During a recent episode, Erin said she had set out to create a character inspired by her husband who was “emotionally available, chivalrous [and] old-fashioned”, but also “really funny and confident” with plenty of “rizz”.
“We didn’t come from similar backgrounds,” she added. “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?”
Erin also told Harper’s Bazaar of her now-husband: “We couldn’t have been from more different worlds, and those different worldviews really put us in a unique position to have … not conflict, but challenges moving forward and starting a life together.
“We thought it would be ripe territory for a relationship show, looking at and analysing challenges in a relationship that felt very true to life, and not these sort of blown-out-of-proportion, manufactured challenges.”
Nobody Wants This is now streaming on Netflix.