Nobody Wants This Season 2: Kristen Bell & Adam Brody tackle life after the rom-com ending. Plus, juicy teases from Justine Lupe, Timothy Simons, & Jackie Tohn.
The critically acclaimed Netflix comedy series Nobody Wants This is back, and the honeymoon is officially over. The first season garnered three Emmy, three Golden Globe, and three Critics Choice nominations. In support of the new season, the cast – Kristen Bell, Adam Brody, Justine Lupe, Timothy Simons, and Jackie Tohn – gathered virtually for a press conference to tease a second season that trades in the rush of a new romance for the messy, hilarious, and deeply relatable realities of staying together. Season two of Nobody Wants This is now streaming on Netflix.
From Grand Gestures to Organizing Toothbrushes
Season one famously concluded with a classic, cinematic romantic comedy ending: Joanne chasing after Noah. But for executive producer and star Kristen Bell, that was just the beginning.
When asked if everything is now “happily ever after,” Bell offered a quick, witty dismissal of the rom-com fantasy. “It’s just like life. So, now they coast, and they are in love, with that feeling of butterflies and happiness forever.”
“They chose each other at the end of the first season, and the second season was just full of opportunity,” Bell explained. She was excited that creator Erin Foster “really grabbed it because now we have to organize where we keep our toothbrushes and how we meet our families, and how we merge our friends and how we compromise, and all the things that happen after the first three months of a relationship, believe it or not, are far more interesting and far funnier than the first three months.”
The central dynamic remains the clash between Joanne’s “fly by the seat of her pants, a little bit more impulsive” nature and Noah’s more “regimented and careful and constructed” personality.
“It has to be a constant compromise, and there is always friction, but the question is, can they find the love and affection and laughter through that friction?” Bell mused.
Adam Brody’s Rabbi Noah is facing his own personal and professional upheaval. At home, he’s excited but wrestling with a big, unresolved question: Joanne doesn’t want to convert. At work, he’s frustrated and adrift due to the arrival of a new, competitive rabbi played by Alex Karpovsky. The professional anxiety, Brody says, “really bleeds into each other, and so it does bring his home life into some upheaval too.”
The Big Issues: Religion & Self-Discovery
While the daily friction makes for great comedy, the core conflict from season one – the religious difference – is far from settled.
“There was a little miscommunication or debate about, ‘Did we punt the religious issue? Or did we decide? Did you decide? And are we good?’ And so, that’s not over yet,” Brody admitted, adding that the religious question is “probably, even more than their friends and family, still the biggest issue to work out.”
Bell elaborated that in season one, they only talked about the issue “to the degree that they could handle.” Now, those unaddressed details are back to haunt them. Ultimately, Bell sees all their challenges – from religious conversion to simple domestic details – as stemming from a single, universal anxiety: “‘Will I lose myself when I merge with this person?’ And I think every single, like, topic they’re dealing with is that same root emotion if you boil it down.”
Morgan’s Evolution & Sasha’s Show-Stopping Moment
The supporting cast is also front and center this season. Justine Lupe’s Morgan, Joanne’s sister, gets a significant emotional arc as she adjusts to life without her sister as her primary focus. Lupe, whom Bell affectionately called “Television’s secret weapon,” spoke about exploring the very familiar, albeit painful, storyline of sisterly codependency.
“There are these codependent relationships that we have in our twenties… and then there’s a bit of a crisis sometimes when they leave to go off with their romantic soulmates,” Lupe explained. She was eager to explore Morgan’s evolution as a woman who “doesn’t necessarily have all the tools to get through that kind of a process emotionally.” Lupe also delighted in reuniting with her Succession co-star, Arian Moayed, calling him “so talented and so kind and such a team player.”
Timothy Simons’ Sasha is a source of much-discussed drama, specifically his unexpected friendship with Morgan. The two are united as the “‘loser siblings’” of their respective families, sharing a similar worldview and status as the first-born but “not the golden child of the family,” according to Simons. Lupe added that their dynamic thrives on teasing: “I just read this thing about how people who are teased by their friends… sometimes they have the most healthy relationship, and I do feel like there’s something that comes with that.”
Simons also revealed the story behind his season two standout moment: an elaborate dance sequence to Ariana Grande’s 7 Rings. A self-professed non-dancer who feels like “a giraffe with human limb sewn on,” Simons decided to embrace the challenge head-on, taking five dance lessons. “I just thought if I threw myself into it, it would be better than if I tried to run away from it,” he said.
The move was so surprising it caught his co-star, Jackie Tohn (Esther), completely off guard. “I saw it for the first time while a camera was pointing at me,” Tohn exclaimed. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is Esther or not, but Jackie is screaming and jumping up and down ’cause this is so delicious and so well done.’”
Jackie Tohn’s Esther is also on her own major emotional journey this season, though Tohn was careful to avoid spoilers. Esther is still wading through the weirdness of Morgan and Sasha’s close connection, which Tohn loves to address. “I love her. I really love Esther. I mean, I’m a body broad, but she makes me look like a delicate tulip,” Tohn joked. “She just says everything she’s thinking, minces no words.”
Grounding The Rom-Com Genre In Real Life
The cast took a moment to reflect on how Nobody Wants This successfully modernizes the classic romantic comedy.
Bell believes the show brought “the rules of real life to a very settled-in-its-ways genre.” Rom-coms traditionally feature a formula – “They bump into each other on the street, and they accidentally spill coffee, and their hand reaches for the same cup.” – but creator Erin Foster saw that “that’s not how my girlfriends are dating and guy friends are dating.”
By infusing that reality into the structure, the show “exploded into something that really resonated with people and, I think, made them feel very seen,” especially in the age of dating apps.
Brody agreed that the key was grounding the story. “It still has those archetypal somewhat characters and structure… but that said, brought so much more everyday occurrences in real life into it in details,” making it more relatable.
Nobody Wants This: A Found Family
When asked about the cast’s incredible chemistry, Tohn was the first to speak, joking, “I think we’re laughing ’cause we didn’t do anything.”
Bell then used one of her signature “kids’ metaphors,” as Lupe pointed out, saying, “We were called into our first grade classroom. And they said, ‘You five are talking too much. Go sit in the corner.’ And we’ve been sitting in the corner ever since having a blast.”
The reality, Bell concluded, is that “We fell in love.” The cast realized they were “all kinda cut from the same cloth” and simply poured effort into their connection, leading to the palpable, enjoyable dynamic that carries the comedy and heart of Nobody Wants This through its highly anticipated second season.
Nobody Wants This Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
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Tessa Smith is a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved Film and TV Critic. On Camera personality and TV / Film Critic with 10+ years of experience in video editing, writing, editing, moderating, and hosting.