How “Nobody Wants This” Creator Erin Foster Finally Found Success Writing About Herself

After 15 years of chasing what television networks wanted—workplace comedies, procedurals, whatever was trending—actress and writer Erin Foster had almost given up on her writing career.

“I had a lot of setbacks as a writer,” Foster says. “Some of those were like, ‘You’re not a good joke writer’ and ‘You write things that feel sort of like a play—it’s just people talking and there’s not enough plot.’ So there were a lot of times that I really second-guessed what path I was going to go down.”

With rejections piling up, Foster began questioning whether she was cut out to be a television writer at all.

Then something unexpected happened: she fell in love, converted to Judaism, and found herself living the kind of quietly content life that seemed antithetical to good television. It was her producing partner who finally saw what Foster couldn’t—that her most personal story was also her most universal one. The result was Nobody Wants This, Netflix’s breakout romantic comedy, which proved that audiences were hungry for authentic, warm storytelling that happened to be drawn directly from Foster’s real life. 

Foster’s journey from trying to write what she was being told would sell to writing about something deeply personal that ultimately became a hit illustrates a fundamental truth about creative work: sometimes the story you’re afraid to tell is exactly the one the world needs to hear. In our conversation, she opens up about the long road to finding her voice, the courage it took to mine her most personal experiences, and how writing authentically finally unlocked the success that had eluded her for over a decade.

We have to start with how your own life informed your show…

I’ve been a writer for 15 years, and I’ve tried many times to write shows about topics that networks want me to write about—workplace comedies, female cop comedies, whatever the thing is. And it just didn’t really hit for me. So, I went through a long journey of what my career path was meant to be. Am I a writer? Am I a good writer? Can I only write about things that I’ve been through? When I met my husband and we got into our relationship, I didn’t realize it was good for TV at all. In a lot of ways, I was very uninspired by it because I was really happy and I was really content, and it was very normal and lovely. And I didn’t really know what about that would be funny. I was really used to writing about my pitfalls.

What finally got you to try to turn your fundamentally positive experience into a show?

It wasn’t until my producing partner and manager said to me, while I was converting to Judaism, “This is a show. This is very interesting.” And so then that got the wheels turning, but it took a long time for me to realize if this was a good idea or not.

How did the casting come together? Were Kristen Bell and Adam Brody attached from the beginning?

Nobody was attached. When I sold the show to Netflix, I had already written the pilot, and, technically, I was attached to be the star of the show. But by the time we sold it to Netflix, I was really trying to get pregnant and had been going through years of fertility issues. That’s just where my head was at. So, when they made it really clear that they had no interest in me being the star of the show, I was like, “Great. I would love to be a mom anyway.” They knew very quickly that Kristen was who they wanted in that role. They had worked with her before; they knew how well she did on their platform. She was attached pretty quickly, really immediately, when we got to Netflix.

What about Adam Brody?

And then from there, we auditioned basically every single hot Jewish man in America who can act. And I have to give Kristen credit that in the very beginning, she said, “This is Adam Brody.” She’s like, “You can audition as many people as you want, but I promise you it’s Adam Brody.” We auditioned so many guys. There was not one single audition from really talented people where I felt like “this is him.” It just never happened. And Adam and Kristen—these people don’t audition. They’re too big for that. So, my wanting to audition people wasn’t a matter of not believing in Adam. It was just like, I want an opportunity to see what chemistry we can come up with, or maybe there’s some outside-the-box unexpected person that you wouldn’t think of in this role. But in the end, we got really lucky with Adam and Kristen. It’s just perfect.

It was refreshing to see Adam Brody play a Jewish character who wasn’t neurotic. Was that intentional?

It was very important to me that he not be neurotic. I did not want to create this nebbish neurotic stereotype of a Jewish man. That’s why it annoys me when I get shit for stereotypes in the show. Like, tell me what stereotype Adam Brody falls into for a Jewish rabbi. You’re not going to find it.

The show captures a really cozy side of LA. How did you choose the locations?

We got really lucky that we could shoot in LA at all. That’s very rare and very expensive, and it reflected in our budget. It was hard to shoot. But I got lucky because Kristen and Adam both live in LA with their kids, and neither of them is going to move to Vancouver for three months. When we were going to shoot in LA, it was really important to me that we shot on locations and not on stages. Personally, I can feel the difference. I know that you can still shoot outside sometimes, but I just can feel a stage. I can feel fake light coming through a window, and you know it’s not a real house. I just can’t stand the way that feels. So I begged and pushed for locations.

How did you decide which neighborhoods the characters would live in?

I think, similar to New York, when you talk about a neighborhood, you know what kind of person lives in that neighborhood, if you’re generalizing. So I tried to nail down what parts of town these people grew up in. I landed on Noah probably growing up in Sherman Oaks. His parents are immigrants from Russia, immigrant Jews. And I think that they probably live in a big, nice house in the Valley. And I think they live in Los Feliz because Silver Lake is too hipster for them. West Hollywood’s too basic. Santa Monica’s too young families, and Venice is too earthy and beachy. So, Los Feliz felt like a good middle ground to take place.

Did making the show change your relationship with LA?

I grew up in LA, and I hated it. I never thought I liked the city, and I always wanted to live somewhere else. I never thought I would create a show highlighting the great aspects of LA. And the truth is I kind of realized how much culture LA actually has by making this show—highlighting it and finding things to highlight. Because LA gets a bad rap for not really having any culture. So getting to highlight some of it was kind of cool.

How do you absorb the unexpected success of the show?

I don’t know. I mean, the show’s level of success blows my mind. It really is crazy, especially because I’ve had a lot of failures in my writing career. So I was very ready for that and prepared for it. So it means a lot to me. I’m really, really appreciative and grateful. And I feel really lucky that the things that make sense in my head also translated to the screen because everybody thinks that what they’re writing is meaningful, and they hope that people are going to connect to it. I also gave birth two weeks after we wrapped last year. So I was pregnant during the process. And then my water broke while I was on a music spotting session and editing. And so when the show came out, I had a two-month-old baby, and I was deep in the newness of motherhood, and it really helped offset the chaos that was happening.

What’s your approach to season two after this unexpected success?

So, I really try to focus on what’s important, which is my family and the opportunities I have. Getting anybody to care about something I write is the coolest thing ever for me. So I feel like I’ve already won. I feel really lucky. I just hope that people are happy with season two because the success of season one happened completely accidentally, and I don’t know what I did. So I tried to do it intentionally in season two, and I hope it worked.

Featured image: Nobody Wants This. Executive Producer Erin Foster in episode 102 of Nobody Wants This. Cr. Stefania Rosini/Netflix © 2024