How Netflix’s ‘Nobody Wants This’ was inspired by creator Erin Foster’s real-life love story

Foster and Tikhman met at a gym in 2018 and began dating soon after. They told the Los Angeles Times that the first time they hung out, Tikhman said, “Whoever I marry, she has to be Jewish.”

Foster told Harper’s Bazaar that she “had always grown up around a lot of Jewish friends and never was attached to a religion.”

She decided to convert and the couple married on New Year’s Eve in 2019.

During a recent episode of her podcast “The World’s First Podcast,” which she hosts with her sister Sara, Foster said that she and her manager Oly Obst started talking about the idea shortly after she started the conversion process.

Foster initially sold the show concept with her starring as Joanne, but she didn’t tell Tikhman that it was inspired by their romance.

“This show is based on the only good decision I ever made: falling for a nice Jewish boy,” Foster told Tudum. “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.”

After writing the pilot script and pitching it, Foster said that “everyone passed” — then Netflix expressed interest, Bell got attached as the star, and Brody got cast as Noah.

The show is a ‘love letter’ to Foster and Tikhman’s relationship, but Joanne and Noah aren’t copies of them

One of the biggest commonalities is Joanne and Noah’s early apprehension about how their relationship could possibly work given their different worldviews.

“We didn’t come from similar backgrounds,” Foster said of her and Tikhman on her podcast. “He came from a much more traditional place. I came from a more unconventional place. When we got together we were like, ‘How’s this gonna work?'”

That question looms over the entirety of “Nobody Wants This,” and without spoiling the finale, there’s plenty more to mine if the show gets renewed for a second season.

“Nobody Wants This” is streaming on Netflix.