Back for its second season, Netflix’s comedy series Nobody Wants This follows the unexpected romance between an agnostic podcaster, Joanne (Kristen Bell), and a progressive rabbi, Noah (Adam Brody)—but the show’s premise isn’t purely a work of fiction.
The Netflix hit was inspired by creator Erin Foster’s real-life love story with her husband, Simon Tikham.
Much like Joanne, Foster, who doesn’t remember growing up religious, fell in love with Tikham, who is Jewish. The couple met while working out at a Los Angeles gym in 2018 and got engaged the following year. Foster and Tikham married on New Year’s Eve in 2019 and have since welcomed their first child.
“This show is based on the only good decision I ever made: falling for a nice Jewish boy,” the 43-year-old writer and producer told Netflix’s Tudum in January 2025. “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.”
In Nobody Wants This, Joanne and Noah struggle to mesh their very different lives, with religion and family acting as the biggest barriers. This is somewhat similar to Foster’s personal experience.
Erin Foster and her husband had very different upbringings
On an episode of her podcast, The World’s First Podcast, which she cohosts with her sister, Sarah Foster, Erin explained she and her now-husband came from opposite backgrounds. “He came from a much more traditional place. I came from a more unconventional place,” Erin said. “When we got together we were like, ‘How’s this gonna work?’”
Like Brody’s Noah, Tikham is the child of Russian immigrants and was raised with the expectation he would marry a Jewish woman. Foster, on the other hand, grew up in the entertainment industry, and her parents, music producer David Foster and Rebecca Dyer, are divorced, as is the case with Joanne.
Erin Foster’s in-laws didn’t dislike her
In real life, however, Tikham is not a rabbi; he’s a music executive, and his mother wasn’t opposed to his union with Foster over religion, a major issue for Noah’s mother Bina (Tova Feldshuh). In fact, the only thing that Tikham’s parents initially struggled with was Foster’s personality.
“His parents weren’t really used to someone being so unfiltered, and uncensored, and saying how I feel all the time,” Foster told Harper’s Bazaar in September 2024. “And I wasn’t really used to being with parents where you have to be careful what you say and not swear around them.”
While it took some adjustment, Foster’s future in-laws eventually accepted her outspoken nature.
Erin Foster converted to Judaism
While Joanne appears hesitant about converting to Judaism by the end of the first season, Foster actually did convert before she got married. Prior to adopting the Jewish religion, she considered herself agnostic and wasn’t raised in any particular religion. So when Tikham asked her to convert, Foster agreed to do it, but didn’t feel very strongly about it.
“It was kind of like, ‘Yeah. Whatever. I’ll be Jewish,’” she explained to Harper’s Bazaar. “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.”
It was this experience that first planted the seed for Nobody Wants This.
Watch Nobody Wants This on Netflix
Nobody Wants This Season 2 arrived on Netflix October 23. Both seasons are now available to stream.
Catherine Caruso joined the Biography.com staff in August 2024, having previously worked as a freelance journalist for several years. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. When she’s not working on a new story, you can find her reading, hitting the gym, or watching too much TV.
