Lighting Love in LA: How “Nobody Wants This” DP Adrian Peng Correia Lit Netflix’s Coziest Rom-Com
The moment Nobody Wants This became one of Netflix’s most beloved romantic comedies comes at the end of the second episode. Rabbi Noah (Adam Brody) and podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell) have been glancing off one another in an uneasy will-they-or-won’t-they start to their relationship that finally ends in a kiss over ice cream. But it’s not just any kiss, Joanne later tells her sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe), but the greatest kiss of her life. And we believe her.
Created by Erin Foster and loosely based on her own relationship, the unlikely pairing of a rabbi and a shiksa podcaster seems like a budding romance that could only happen in Los Angeles, a city the show makes feel tangible. That first kiss happens at night, on the street, beneath lights from a movie theater marquee twinkling overhead. The scene feels arrestingly real, which is just what the show’s cinematographer, Adrian Peng Correia (The Walking Dead, Quiz Lady), wanted. The romance between Joanne and Noah builds despite meddling siblings, his aghast parents, and their own misgivings (plus Joanne’s bottomless pool of hang-ups and idiosyncrasies). However, despite their setbacks, they are still beautiful people living beautiful lives. For Correia, that meant two things: he wanted the actors to appear a bit larger than life, while giving the show overall a deeper look than its genre usually suggests.
We spoke with the cinematographer about making limited lighting work, shooting to take advantage of serendipitous moments, and approaching the series’ lead actors differently to best bring the audience along on their romance.
Was it planned from the outset to make this show look more cinematic than we typically expect from romantic comedies?
From a lighting perspective, for Greg [Mottola, one of the show’s directors], and for me, too, it was important that we had a show that had real guts for the look of it. It’s not a soft or shallow-looking show, even though it’s supposed to be about beautiful people and beautiful spaces. There’s an idea that I latched onto about this kind of messy elegance that the show should have. It didn’t have to have that incredibly polished sheen that sometimes comes with romantic comedies. We wanted it to have a little bit more of an edge, so sometimes the highlights were a little too hot, the contrast is a little heavy, the skin tones have real guts and information in them, and there’s a lot of color in those faces. From the get-go with Greg, the intention was to craft a look that was specific.
Did you choose locations where you could use lighting really strategically, like with the kiss everyone talks about at the end of episode 2?
The mandate from the show was that they wanted to try to go into these spots and just shoot them straightaway. So it was like, no dollies, no lights bigger than what you could plug into a wall. It was very contained in terms of the ability to run and gun, but it still gave it this crafted look. In that kissing scene, when we walked up, being underneath those hot top lights in the theater, we weren’t allowed to touch them at all. We couldn’t even put any softening agents on them, any kind of diffusion to make it more palatable. We just had to expose for what the street was, and then strategically hide some lights to work.
How did you do that?
It’s all motivated by the practical environment. The lighting around that theater is a mix of warm tones and this really pretty vibrant purple neon. That’s why there are still these highlights and these blooms, which we tried to create artificially to give a world around them. When he tells her to put down her ice cream, there was this sense that they’re walking through this natural nightscape in Los Angeles that doesn’t feel heavily crafted, but they just happen to stop at this spot that gives them this kind of cocooning of light that works to the romanticism of that moment. We just enhanced it with our lighting when we went to close-ups. So it was strategic, opportunistic, and a happy accident all at once.
Earlier in the episode, how did you build up to that moment?
It literally says “the best kiss in the world” in the script. You really have to have the moment sing, so you have to build that relationship in 102 pretty quickly. Cinematically, I think we did a really good job of giving that episode balance, so that when that kiss does come, the audience feels a connection between the two of them. Part of that is allowing those two performances between Adam and Kristen to share the spotlight. The one thing I really love that not everybody talks about is Noah’s quiet confidence. We didn’t get too close to him, because he had a certain gravity that radiated this ease of energy. We gave him a little bit more space in his frames, and we were a little bit more immediate with Kristen’s close-ups. Adam’s choice to hold her face, that was in the moment. I remember at the first rehearsal, Kristen specifically saying, “Yes, hold the face.” You could see it in her close-up, how she opens up just a bit more to the camera. It was an electric episode.
How did you light the dinner scene where Joanne and Noah first meet?
It looks like it’s night, but it’s actually afternoon. We had to heavily bring down all the lights and tent the front of the house to make it feel like nighttime. That was a pretty extensive amount of grip and lighting and hiding sources. When they had their meet-cute and he broke the cork in the bottle, that was the last take. They just kept improvising. It’s so naturalistic, funny, and beautiful because they made it work within the context of what happens in the take. And if you don’t cross-shoot that, you’re never gonna get those same matching reactions at the same time. When they go to the actual dinner party outside, we knew we would get tons of light play in the background from the city behind them. There were some practical lights and some heat lamps around them, and then it’s basically one four-foot tube light lighting that whole table and one four-foot little light box. So it’s two lights lighting that entire scene, basically.
What were you shooting on?
We shot with anamorphic lenses, and that was specifically a note from Greg Mottola. He had just shot a pilot that he used them on, and he thought it would really aid in giving a bigger look to a romantic comedy. The lensing with the choice of this heavy kind of cinematic look gave it this real weight and and scope, even in the close-ups. When we found a particular set of lenses from Panavision that we thought encapsulated that, it was really a eureka moment.
The characters’ faces are really beautifully lit, particularly in evening settings. How did you do that?
That’s the thing with comedies. Obviously, you want the settings to look wonderful, but you really want the audience to connect to people’s faces. There’s a tendency sometimes with digital cinematography in particular to allow this sheen of softness and beauty to come around a face, and we didn’t want that to be our show. We wanted it to have this heavier contrast with more color over the face, from highlights to shadow. I’m a big fan of classic screwball comedies from the 1930s and 1940s. There’s a reason why people like Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard, and Claudette Colbert are lit a little bit brighter in space. Is it strictly a reflection of reality? No, but it does reflect a kind of classic Hollywood tenet I believe in, which is stars should look like stars. When people look like they’re in a movie, I think that actually helps the audience translate that kind of whimsical, romantic, stylized nature of what a romantic comedy is supposed to be. I don’t think reality helps romantic comedies. I think they need to feel bigger, and they need to look bigger.
Were you limited by the genre at all?
It all starts with how you look at the material. If you’re looking down on a show or if you’re looking down on a genre, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it. There’s a reason why they’re successful, and just because something is popular doesn’t mean it doesn’t have artistic intent. When that scene happened between Adam and Kristen with the bottle and the cork, I remember turning back to Craig [DiGregorio], the showrunner, and saying, ”I feel like we have a show.” There’s a certain energy and lightness that happens that you see and feel immediately, and I really love that about comedies.
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Featured image: Nobody Wants This. (L to R) Kristen Bell as Joanne, Adam Brody as Noah in episode 105 of Nobody Wants This. Cr. Adam Rose/Netflix © 2024
