On New Year’s eve of 2018, Erin Foster, the creator of “Nobody Wants This,” the show in which Adam Brody plays a hot rabbi who falls in love with a non-Jewish woman, Joanne, played by Kristin Bell, got married under a big floral chuppah.
“The rabbi who converted me, Rabbi [Beaumont] Shapiro, is so cool and made the ceremony feel so personal and relatable instead of being generic,” Foster told Vogue at the time. “We laughed and cried through our personal vows.”
While Joanne meets her dream Nice Jewish Boy at a mutual friend’s dinner party, Foster met her NJB, the entertainment executive Simon Tikhman, at the gym, where the two made out in the parking lot secretly so as to not affect the dynamics at the sacred space for many Angelinos.
So many details of their relationship can be seen echoed in the relationship between Joanne and Noah. Tikhman gave a big bouquet of sunflowers to Foster’s mother the first time he met her. Noah’s parents are Soviet refugees like Tikhman’s. Like Joanne, Foster hosts a podcast with her sister, Sara Foster, who is also an executive producer on the show and runs the Favorite Daughter fashion brand with her (they had Rabbi Shapiro on for an episode). The lead rabbi of Foster’s synagogue, Rabbi Steve Leder, actually served as a consultant for “Nobody Wants This.”
Like Joanne, Foster had a stint as a lesbian, dating Jewish DJ Samantha Ronson. Gossip mags said the amicable break-up happened because Foster wanted to get married and Ronson did not. (She’s also dated “One Tree Hill” star Chad Michael Murray.)
Like Joanne, Foster’s parents are divorced. Her father is famous music executive David Foster, who is married to Katharine McPhee — the singer performed at Foster and Tikhman’s wedding. He was previously married to Linda Thompson and Yolanda Hadid, which means Foster is a former stepsister to some pretty famous names like Brody and Brandon Jenner and Gigi and Bella Hadid. Though Foster and her sisters were raised by their mother after the divorce, and grew up fairly distant from their famous father (Foster has watched his daughters’ show and called it “fantastic”).
Unlike Joanne — as of yet, at least, though season two of “Nobody Wants This” is coming — Foster is now Jewish. She’s a happily married mother to a daughter named Noa Mimi, the beautiful Hebrew name that became especially meaningful this year thanks to now-released hostage Noa Argamani, but has always held significance as a biblical figure with roots in the Hebrew word for movement.
When asked about what percentage of the show actually borrows from her life, Foster, 42, said that the emotional truths are all there, but the characters are different. Unlike Joanne, Erin grew up surrounded by Jewish people, going to Rosh Hashanah dinners and never feeling particularly separate from the culture. She was struck by how different Tikhman’s parents, as Soviet refugees who faced real-life antisemitism, were from the Jews she grew up with, and how precious their Jewish identity was to them. She told The Hollywood Reporter, “My in-laws, unfortunately, are very nice to me, so there’s no fun material to mine from that. I think I’ve been threading the needle perfectly, so far.”
Tikhman, a music producer and not a rabbi, is a fairly private person, though he does come on Sara and Erin’s podcast, The World’s First Podcast, from time to time. Erin told Vulture that when she started working on the show, originally called “Shiksa,” she didn’t tell him about it for a while. When she did, he was caught off-guard: “He was like, ‘Wait, sorry — you’re writing a show making fun of my family?’”
Foster has led quite a storied life before she became a TV writer. She never tried to follow her father’s footsteps into the music industry, but she acted in shows like “Castle,” “The O.C,” “Gilmore Girls” and “House.” She’s been a professional TV writer for over a decade now, having first worked as staff writer for the NBC sitcom “The New Normal” before working with her sister on the VH1 series “The New Normal,” where the two starred as sort of ridiculous alter egos of themselves, two semi-famous sisters starring in a reality show. The two have also worked as creative heads of the dating app Bumble and have partnered on many an entrepreneurial project. They started The World’s First Podcast in 2021, and the Favorite Daughter brand during the pandemic.
When it comes to criticism about the representation of Jewish women in “Nobody Wants This,” Foster has defended herself by saying she filled her writer’s room with Jews of all backgrounds, and that the bad portrayals have more to do with comedy tropes than Jewish tropes. Foster is clearly adept at creating and embodying very “extra” female characters. She has said that she plans big story arcs for both Esther (Jackie Tohn) and Rebecca (Emily Arlook) in the upcoming season(s?) of the show.
While Foster does not think the show has anything to do with Israel-Palestine, she does have a highlight on her Instagram account about Israel, and has been outspoken in support of Israelis since October 7, 2023. She’s said that it took her a while to understand just how much being Jewish is a part of her after her conversion. “I understand now, sitting here five years later, you don’t feel Jewish until you’ve been Jewish,” she said. “When I see antisemitism, I think I’m Jewish. I have felt more Jewish since I converted because of the lived experience way more than learning about it in a classroom and learning the date and meaning of a holiday. Existing in 2024 with what’s going on in the world, that makes me feel Jewish.”
And it might run in the family. Foster’s mother, model Rebecca Dyer, who raised her daughters in a home without religion after growing up in a religious home, said she feels like she too has a “Jewish soul” and according to Foster “keeps threatening to convert,” especially after the success of the show (Dyer recently visited the Nova exhibit in LA where she was mobbed by excited “Nobody Wants This” fans). Foster’s response? “Ok mom, go ahead. Do it.”
