‘Nobody Wants This’ Creator Erin Foster Defends Show After Claims It Depicts Jewish Stereotypes

The creator of Netflix‘s hit series Nobody Wants This is responding to criticism about the way the show depicts Jewish people. Social critics have taken to the media to express dismay at what they consider “stereotypical” depictions of Jews on the show, according to the Los Angeles Times. The sitcom, which stars Adam Brody (who is Jewish) as a character named Noah and Kristen Bell as Joanne, tracks the budding romance of a modern rabbi and an agnostic podcaster.

The series creator, Erin Foster, converted to Judaism after meeting her husband, Simon Tikhman (who is not a rabbi), who wanted to marry a Jewish woman. Foster loosely based the series on her own life and relationship. She told the Times that she was taken aback by the outcry.

“I think we need positive Jewish stories right now,” Foster said. “I think it’s interesting when people focus on, ‘Oh, this is a stereotype of Jewish people,’ when you have a rabbi as the lead — a hot, cool, young rabbi who smokes weed.” She added that if she felt she’d depicted a Jewish family differently, people would criticize that, too.

Jessica Radloff, who wrote a book about The Big Bang Theory, disagrees. In an op-ed for Glamour, she initially praised the show’s humor and depiction of a couple in their early 40s. She just had an issue with the rest of the premises. “While I love Noah’s commitment to Judaism, and just the fact that he’s one of the best TV boyfriends I’ve seen in some time, I can’t say the same about the other Jewish characters on the show — primarily the women,” she wrote. “Would it be too much just to see Jewish characters in shows without feeling othered?”

She added that she complained to her mother, “We come off as controlling, marriage-hungry women who want to plan dinner parties and alienate anyone who doesn’t share those same dreams.” And she broke down her complaints about the depiction of each Jewish woman the show, describing a scene set in a temple in which Noah’s mother rejects Joanne for being “a shiksa,” an action at odds with Judaism’s teachings to welcome others. “At a time when antisemitism is at the highest levels we’ve seen since the Holocaust, scenes like this hit me hard,” she wrote.

Foster told the Times that scenes like that were dramatized because “in a TV show, you have to have conflict.” Like her husband’s parents, with whom she said she had a good relationship, the character Noah’s parents are immigrants. “I don’t feel that the parents are stereotypes as much,” she said. “Immigrant culture can be very insular and fearful of outsiders, and there’s a good reason for that. I wanted to play into that because it’s an added layer of cultural differences between these two people.”

Others have criticized Nobody Wants This, as well. Deadline notes that writer Allison Josephs wrote an op-ed for Jew in the City, the website she founded, claiming “the xenophobia of the Jews, especially of the Jewish women, was rampant in the show.” And David Bashevkin, a rabbi and Jewish scholar, had commented on X that the trailer had “a whole lot of classic Jewish stereotypes.”

Elsewhere in her Times interview, Foster said it was important to her that the actor who plays the rabbi should be Jewish and reacted to the way the show has been received during a time of heightened antisemitism around the world. “I have a point of view on it, as a person in the world, but that shouldn’t be a part of the show,” she said. “I don’t think that it’s OK to speak for so many people. What I really wanted to do was shed a positive light on Jewish culture from my perspective — my positive experience being brought into Jewish culture, sprinkling in a little fun, [and] educational moments about things in Judaism that I love without it being heavy-handed. Because I don’t think people want that in the show.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Brody said he appreciated playing a rabbi on Nobody Wants This. “I thought it was very charming, and I also liked the idea of playing a rabbi,” he said. “Even though I’ve played Jewish characters before, I’ve never played somebody so faith-based. So to lean into that side of it, and something very different from my own personality, I thought would be interesting.”