Fans of Netflix's hit rom-com Nobody Wants it swooned when Adam Brody lovingly took Kristen Bell's face in his hands. for the first time their characters locked lips.
But if series creator and showrunner Erin Foster had had her way in the first place, Brody's character, Noah Rocklov, aka “The Hot Rabbi,” would have been played by comedian Nick Kroll.
Foster opened Hollywood Reporter about how “every Jew in Hollywood” auditioned for the role of the wisecracking Rabbi Noah, who begins an unlikely romance with Joan, the equally sarcastic host of Bell's sex podcast and a staunch agnostic.
Foster recalled approaching Kroll about the role. But Kroll refused. This felt like a setback for Foster, who based the series on her true love story with her husband, music director Simon Tichman.
“For me, there was something compelling about a comedian (like Kroll) in the lead role, and I felt like, 'Oh, I'm doing real comedy,” Foster told THR. “That was a big part of my own insecurities as a writer.”
In a May conversation with Bell's husband Dax Shepard in the podcast “Armchair Expert”, Kroll said he didn't take the role because “literally it was dead in the middle when we had the baby. And so I just think there were a lot of elements that went into it.”
“Do I regret it? Watching Adam just star in one of the biggest shows on Netflix? And people fall in love with him over and over again? Yeah,” Kroll joked.
Meanwhile, Bell urged Foster to consider her longtime pal Brody for the role of the rabbi, even going so far as to film a video highlighting the chemistry between her and Brody in the Showtime series House of Lies and the 2013 film. “Some girls.
“I thought, 'You guys are going to need an ice pack while you're watching these scenes,'” Bell joked to THR. “I just kept saying things like, 'Trust me, Adam knows how to look at someone blankly, and so do I, and that's kind of all you need.' I mean, I wish I could tell you that it's real. This is wrong. We both just know how to do it.”
Foster liked what she saw. She sent Brody the script. They then got on Zoom to discuss the possibilities. Although Foster was unable to answer some of Brody's pressing questions about the direction of the show at the time, Brody liked her.
“I thought, 'Well, damn it,'” Brody said. “I really like her, I like this episode, I love Kristen, and this is Netflix, and there are a lot of reasons to just roll the dice.”
The cast filmed the first two episodes of the first season and then took a break so Foster and her team could study the footage. Brody and Bell also got a sneak peek at these early scenes.
Brody told THR that he was “amazed” by the “magic” he and Bell created on screen.
“There was an energy to it, a kind of sexuality that I wasn't sure about when we did it,” he recalled. “When I made jokes, I would ask, 'Will this make me shut up or is it adorable?'
It turns out that the audience wanted “Nobody Wants This.” According to THR, the show debuted on September 28, 2024 and was ranked among the top 10 streaming services in 89 countries.
As for the show's second season, which debuts on October 23, viewers can expect more intense dialogue and steamy kisses from Bell, Brody, and maybe a few other characters.
“Erin said, ‘We’re going to give the people what they want,’ and I thought that was really cool,” Bell said. “She said, 'You don't want this to become a murder mystery—you just want the bubblegum flavor to last forever, and we'll do our best to make that happen.'
