Kristen Bell never anticipated everybody loving ‘Nobody Wants This’: ‘There’s so few times in your career when you feel that lightning thing’
Kristen Bell remembers the moment she had an inkling that Nobody Wants This might hit different. Screeners of the Netflix rom-com series had been sent out to press over the summer prior to its Sept. 26 launch.
"I started getting calls like, 'We've never seen a response this rabid from critics before,'" Bell tells Gold Derby. "So that immediately changed what our press tour looked like. They were like, 'Well, you're gonna do quite a bit more press than you thought you were going to do. So please block off the entire month of August and the entire month of September to get out in front of the show because we think it could be a real hit.'"
And it was. The series became an immediate sensation its first weekend and was quickly renewed for a second season. For Bell, a veteran of beloved but little-watched shows like Veronica Mars and The Good Place, the overwhelming reception was a career first.
"Whenever I've taken anything, I never anticipate dramatic success. I just I try as hard as I can to make it believable and hopefully funny — or depending on the tone, grounded or broad — I just try to do my best creative work while maintaining having fun on set, which I think is an incredibly high priority for me. I don't think I do good work when I'm not having fun. But no, I don't think I could have anticipated this at all," she says. "There's so few times in your career, or even in your life, when you feel that lightning thing, right? Where all of a sudden the whole world knows about one thing. It's a very cool feeling. I can attribute it to so many tiny building blocks, but I'm just very grateful."
SEE Adam Brody's Hot Rabbi on Nobody Wants This is the role he has 'procrastinated a lifetime for'
Created by Erin Foster and inspired by her marriage, Nobody Wants This follows the interfaith romance between Joanne (Bell), an agnostic podcaster, and "hot rabbi" Noah (Adam Brody). Besides the religious obstacles in their way, this is also the first real adult relationship for Joanne, a messy dater who has mined her love life for material for the sex and dating podcast she co-hosts with her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe). "What I liked so much about the dynamic was I was able to see clearly Joanne was a child and Noah was an adult until they switch," Bell says. "But initially, Joanne is messy and can't really commit or doesn't know how to hold things down together. And Noah has all these adult attributes, like stability that she gravitates towards. And she wants that. She just doesn't know how to get it."
The actress, who's received Golden Globe, Critics Choice, and Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations for her performance, views Joanne's Season 1 journey as not just one of falling in love, but also a "journey of self-discovery," sparked by Noah. Joanne "wants to talk about everything from every angle, and that's very interesting from a critical thinking perspective," Bell notes. "I think those people are really cool. But for Joanne, I think it started to, later in life, bite her in the butt because she's looking at so many different perspectives and questioning everything. She's using that as an excuse not to identify her own values and who she is. I don't think she had any sense of who she was at the beginning of the show."
Joanne makes her first grown-up decision in the finale, when she decides she's not ready to convert to Judaism and doesn't want to make Noah choose between her and becoming head rabbi, telling him not to come after her. He does, naturally, and kisses her. The clarity in Joanne's decision probably would not have happened if the characters, like so many onscreen relationships, were in their 20s with much different perspectives and less life experience. Though not stated, Joanne and Noah are in their late 30s, like Foster was when she met her husband.
"I was hesitant to play this character, because when you read it and you're familiar with what the rom-com formula is and the structure, you want to see young people falling in love. I was like, 'Is that OK that we're older?'" Bell recalls asking Foster. "And she was like, 'Yeah, absolutely.' Like, it never blipped for her. But what I ended up seeing was there is a huge demographic of people that want to see that because it's their representation. And I don't know how I missed it because I have friends who were in their late 30s, early 40s, who are dating and looking for love. And to miss that entire demographic, it's not great. You need to write for all of the people out there. And so I think it was very refreshing to see Erin really stick to her guns."
While Netflix had suggested Bell for Joanne, it was Bell who suggested Brody for Noah. The two are friends and have worked together before, playing exes in the 2013 film "Some Girl(s)" and love interests when Brody guest-starred on Bell's Showtime series "House of Lies." The O.C. alum has long "been one of my favorite people to watch perform," Bell says, adding that she and her husband Dax Shepard always ask aloud why isn't Brody in more stuff whenever they see him in something. She also knew she'd be doing elder millennials a solid with a double nostalgia punch. "I hoped that the sleight of hand nostalgia that could be given with Veronica Mars and Seth Cohen would draw people into the show without them even knowing why."
Most importantly though, Brody, like Bell, is really good at staring into someone's eyes. The duo's sizzling chemistry can't be quantified, but Bell will try to do so anyway. Chemistry, she explains, is "a game of emotional mathematics," and it's all about the anticipation of a big moment, not the moment itself. Joanne and Noah's first kiss is agonizingly drawn out as Noah instructs her to put down her ice cream and purse before he slowly cradles her face and leans in.
"I don't personally think anyone cares about the kiss," Bell states. "The kiss is actually the smallest thing that could happen, and the lead-up is really, really important... the 45 seconds before the kiss, I think, are pretty paramount. Adam's really good at taking his time as an actor. He doesn't rush stuff. And so I think we both kind of laughed and rolled our eyes when, to paraphrase what was written in the script, [it said] 'They have the best kiss of all time that's ever been experienced in the history of history.' And we were like, 'Oh, OK, great. How are we going to pull this off?' But we just talked about the lead-up and how slow we should go, because the moments where we're about to kiss, that's where people start to get those real butterflies in their stomach. If we had kissed immediately, or if it had been way more passionate and he had, like, ravished me, I don't think it would have worked."
Season 2 is currently in production and has loaded up on guest stars, including Brody's wife and Bell's fellow Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester. Since all of Bell's Gossip Girl work was voiceover, this marks the first time the two share a scene together. Meester plays Abby, Joanne's middle school nemesis who's now an Instagram mommy influencer.
"Can I tell you something? The world has been absolutely sleeping on what a comedian Leighton Meester is," Bell says. "She was so funny on set. I was I was beside myself just because I was like, 'Oh, my God! I never knew. I never knew what a brilliant comedian you were.' She was bringing ideas and she was improving stuff that was making me break. She was so good and fun to work with. I mean, thankfully, she said yes. I would have been really bummed if she didn't want to do the show, but we're very excited about her."
Meester's husband on the show is played by Joe Gillette, the real-life boyfriend of Jackie Tohn, who plays Esther. "We had a lot of fun with that on set, where I'd say, 'Adam, who is that?' And I'd look at Joe, and he'd say, 'Oh, that's my wife's husband.' Or look and everybody was somebody else's husband's boyfriend or wife's girlfriend. But we also have Miles Fowler this year, who is an incredible addition. He's so, so good. And Arian Moayed. We've maintained, which is important in my book, that the people who work on this show are fun and lovely and joyful to be around. And that makes me really happy. And I think we certainly feel like we've hit the jackpot this second season."
Nobody Wants This Season 1 is streaming on Netflix. Season 2 will premiere later this year.