For Erin Foster, success didn’t come easy. Before creating Netflix’s Emmy-nominated Nobody Wants This, she had racked up more than a decade of rejections in Hollywood. At the Televerse Festival FYC panel for the hit series, Foster was candid about how many projects she’d attempted before one finally broke through.
“It’s like my 14th project,” she said. “I got really used to failing and really used to something being special to me, but not special to anybody else. You don’t know when you’re so close to it if it’s going to resonate. And I just got very lucky with this cast.”
Those years of setbacks made Foster doubt whether her unconventional vision could translate. Nobody Wants This is built on small, hyper-real moments — conversations that feel more like lived experience than scripted comedy. “In the past, I’ve had feedback like, ‘It feels like a play,’ or, ‘Not enough is happening,’” Foster explained. “There aren’t big comedic moments. I don’t write traditional jokes. So sometimes I thought maybe it would just be too small. The irony is it ended up being so big.”
That clear but risky approach attracted Kristen Bell, who earned her first Emmy nomination for playing Joanne. Bell recalled being both intrigued and nervous when she first read Foster’s script. “Erin had such a creative vision that hadn’t really been done before — slower and more hyper-realistic,” she said. “I didn’t trust myself at first. I’d keep asking her, ‘Did I do that right? Is there enough here to make someone stay on this channel?’ And she’d say, ‘Calm down, it’s enough. Trust me.’ And she was right.”
That trust led to one of television’s most talked-about scenes of the year: Joanne and Noah’s kiss at the end of the second episode. What Foster described in the script as “the best kiss in the history of the world” turned into a viral moment.
“Max pressure,” Bell admitted, laughing. “We were so nervous to get it right. Adam [Brody] is such a present actor — you can throw anything at him and it feels real. We talked a lot about how to choreograph it. Everything fun to watch is anticipatory, so we wanted to stretch it out as much as possible. His hand came up slowly, then mine followed. Comfort can be incredibly passionate, and that’s what we wanted the audience to feel.”
The kiss landed so powerfully that it even stunned Bell’s husband, Dax Shepard. Watching from afar with friends, Shepard sent Bell a voice memo in the middle of the scene. “They were screaming,” she said. “He was so excited for these two characters to kiss. That says a lot.”
Foster confessed her minimalist stage direction came partly from discomfort. “I don’t know how to write romance novel lingo,” she said. “So I just wrote, ‘Really amazing kiss.’ But there was strategy. I didn’t want him to initiate — it felt more appropriate that she would. And I wanted it to surprise the audience, like when you’re on a date and you think, ‘Wow, we’re really not going to kiss,’ and then it happens.”
That moment didn’t just click with viewers — it exploded. GIFs of the kiss circulated across social media, fan edits went viral, and the scene became emblematic of the show’s slow-burn romantic style.
For Foster, the scene’s success felt especially rewarding after years of doubt. “Failing isn’t as fun as this,” she said with a grin. “If this had been my first show, I might have thought I was just going to make hits forever. But because it took me so long, I can really appreciate it. It’s very surreal.”
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