Show creator Erin Foster called her husband, Simon Tikhman, “my muse.”
Most rom-coms might be too good to be true, but not Nobody Wants This. The new Netflix series, which follows the unlikely romance between podcast host Joanne (Kristen Bell) and rabbi Noah (Adam Brody), is actually based on the show creator Erin Foster’s life. She was inspired by her own love story with her husband, Simon Tikhman, whom she married in 2019.
“This show is based on the only good decision I ever made: falling for a nice Jewish boy,” Foster told Netflix’s 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.”
First thing’s first: Tikhman, though Jewish, is not a rabbi; he actually co-founded a music management company, per the Times. But he is very connected to his religion and culture. Foster remembered him telling her during one of their first hangouts, at a gym in 2018, “Whoever I marry, she has to be Jewish.” This posed a challenge for Foster, who considered herself to be agnostic.
The similarities between the couple and Noah and Joanne don’t end there. Foster and Tikhman also faced cultural differences between their families and upbringings. “And it wasn’t down to being Jewish and not Jewish,” Foster told Harper’s BAZAAR. “It was coming from immigrant parents—Simon’s parents are Russian Jews who fled the Soviet Union because they were Jewish. They had been married for 40-something years. And Sara [Foster, her sister] and I come from this very entertainment-centered Los Angeles family with lots of marriages and divorces.” (Foster’s parents are musician David Foster and model Rebecca Dyer. She and Sara have worked in and around Hollywood and the spotlight, having created the mockumentary Barely Famous and co-hosting The World’s First Podcast.)
“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,” she added.
Then there were the differences in their personalities, with Foster being more outspoken. “His parents weren’t really used to someone being so unfiltered, and uncensored, and saying how I feel all the time,” she told Bazaar. “That was not something that they were used to, and I wasn’t really used to being with parents where you have to be careful what you say and not swear around them. There was an adjustment period where they were like, ‘This is the person you chose to bring into our family? Are you okay, Simon? What are you thinking?’”
Eventually, as their romance progressed, Foster did convert during a 10-week process at American Jewish University, she told the Times. “Part of the conversion process was I would have to go with her every Tuesday night for four hours,” Simon said on The World’s First Podcast, per People. “It was probably the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done as a Jew. It was a real prideful moment for me.” They married in 2019.
“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 told IndieWire. “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.”
In fact, the end of the process, which comprised of rabbis questioning Foster’s intentions, helped draw a creative spark. Still thinking about the experience, she started writing a show about her and Tikhman’s story. She later sold it to Fox, per the Times, but her husband didn’t even know it was happening. She thought he’d be okay with it, but Tikhman, a more private person, “immediately panicked” over the news. (He’s cool with it now though.)
As for Foster’s sister, Sara was “really supportive” of Erin’s relationship with Tikhman, unlike the onscreen Morgan, who chafes against Joanne’s romance with Noah. “From the very beginning, it’s always been a seamless little throuple that we’re in, the three of us,” Erin said of Sara to Bazaar. “She and Simon have been really close since the beginning, but that’s not as interesting for TV.”
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Erin Foster and Sara Foster at a screening of Nobody Wants This.
While inspired by true events, the way they’re depicted onscreen sparked some debate, even with the series’ overall feel-good vibe. Following the series launch, some critics have called out the series for featuring stereotypes, especially when it came to Jewish women.
Foster responded to the backlash with a statement to the The L.A. Times. “I think we need positive Jewish stories right now,” she said. “I think it’s interesting when people focus on, ‘Oh, this is a stereotype of Jewish people,’ when you have a rabbi as the lead. A hot, cool, young rabbi who smokes weed. That’s the antithesis of how people view a Jewish rabbi, right?
“If I made the Jewish parents, like, two granola hippies on a farm, then someone would write, ‘I’ve never met a Jewish person like that before. You clearly don’t know how to write Jewish people, you don’t know what you’re doing, and that doesn’t represent us well.’”
She also added, “What I really wanted to do was shed a positive light on Jewish culture from my perspective—my positive experience being brought into Jewish culture, sprinkling in a little fun, [and] educational moments.”
