Erin Foster Addresses Backlash over the Depiction of Jewish Women in “Nobody Wants This”

"What I really wanted to do was shed a positive light on Jewish culture," she says in a new interview

Erin Foster created a Netflix hit with her new series Nobody Wants This, a show that's climbing Netflix's most-watched charts — and making fans fall in love with star Adam Brody again. But it also has its criticism.

Foster has received backlash for the show's portrayal of Jewish women. Brody plays Noah, a rabbi who falls for the agnostic podcast host Joanne (Kristen Bell). His Jewish family doesn't exactly welcome her with open arms. While the show's depiction of Noah's mother, an immigrant, touches on a few stereotypes, the majority of the detractors are concerned with the depiction of his controlling and nagging sister-in-law, Esther, and Noah's marriage-obsessed ex-girlfriend Rebecca, who starts wearing an engagement ring she found hidden in his locked desk drawer.

In a scene at the end of the first episode, Noah finishes giving a sermon and is accosted by mothers and aunts introducing their single daughters and nieces to the handsome, single rabbi. One even boasts, "She just got over shingles!"

The series "offers up the fantasy of the ideal Jewish man in Noah" but "seems to loathe Jewish women, who are portrayed as nags, harpies, and the ultimate villains of this story," Esther Zuckerman at TIME wrote. Jessica Radloff from Glamour wrote of telling her mom, “I can’t imagine any guy who watches this show who would then say, ‘I really want to date a Jewish girl!’ We come off as controlling, marriage-hungry women who want to plan dinner parties and alienate anyone who doesn’t share those same dreams.”

The story is inspired by Foster's own life. She converted to Judaism before tying the knot with now-husband Simon Tikhman. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, she explains that the storyline of the Netflix rom-com was very intentional.

“I think we need positive Jewish stories right now,” she explained. “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. That’s the antithesis of how people view a Jewish rabbi, right?”

Related: Is Nobody Wants This a True Story? How Erin Foster's Real-Life Love Story Inspired the Netflix Rom-Com Series

The Favorite Daughter co-founder continued, “If I made the Jewish parents, like, two granola hippies on a farm, then someone would write, ‘I’ve never met a Jewish person like that before. You clearly don’t know how to write Jewish people, you don’t know what you’re doing, and that doesn’t represent us well.’”

Foster said she hopes the 10-episode season offers a more lighthearted take on Jewish culture while still educating viewers on its challenges.

“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,” she added. “Because I don’t think people want that in the show.”

In addition to having an atypical Jewish rabbi as the star of the show, the Foster said she also wanted to show the common challenges people in the Jewish community face.

“It’s important that I had Noah’s parents in the show be immigrants because immigrant culture is very different than American Jewish culture,” she said. “Simon’s parents fled the Soviet Union because they were Jewish. That is a very different experience than someone who grew up in L.A., not being exposed to the kind of antisemitism that they were exposed to. It means something different. It’s a much more sensitive topic, and it’s much closer to their hearts.”

Related: Who Is Erin Foster’s Husband? All About Music Executive Simon Tikhman

“That is why I don’t feel that the parents are stereotypes as much,” she added. “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.”

Given the current war between Israel and Palestine, Foster shared that she didn’t feel like the right person to use the show to make a statement on that conflict.

“We’re definitely not the show to address the political climate of what’s happening in the world right now,” she explained. “That’s not what people are coming to our show to watch, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to tackle that issue because I didn’t grow up Jewish. I have a point of view on it, as a person in the world, but that shouldn’t be a part of the show. I don’t think that it’s OK to speak for so many people.”

Foster admitted that unlike Joanne and Noah's family, she and the Tikhmans “have a great relationship,” and although she wanted to depict a struggle many people go through when they aren’t Jewish and their significant other is, she is happy that wasn’t something she had to go through.

“They honestly never had an issue with me because me converting to Judaism was such an honor for them,” she gushed, joking. “To bring someone into the Jewish faith was the ultimate daughter-in-law move; it bonded us in such a great way.”

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Nobody Wants This is now available to stream on Netflix.

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