This Actor Was Almost Cast Instead of Adam Brody In Nobody Wants This

Nobody Wants This was very close to looking a lot different. Before finding Adam Brody to take on the role of leading man, the show’s creator and showrunner Erin Foster envisioned someone someone else taking on the role of hot rabbi Noah. She first offered the part to comedian Nick Kroll, known for Big Mouth. But when he passed on the part, Foster went on to see “every Jewish man in Hollywood” looking for the right person to cast as Kristen Bell’s love interest.

“There was just something validating to me about a comedian [like Kroll] as the lead that felt like, ‘Oh, I’m making a real comedy,’” she told The Hollywood Reporter in an Oct. 22 cover story. “It was a lot of my own insecurities as a writer.”

Kroll himself discussed his decision to pass on the part during a May episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast. “Literally, it was dead in the middle of when we were having our baby. There were a lot of elements that went into it,” he told Shepard, Bell’s husband.

“Have I regretted it? Watching Adam absolutely just [star in] one of the biggest shows on Netflix? And people fall in love with him all over again? Yeah,” he joked. “If you’ve asked me if I’ve watched it, I have not. I cannot watch it.”

Bell was rooting for Brody from the start. Apparently, she put together a reel of their previous work together to prove to Foster that they had chemistry. “I was like, ‘Guys, you’re going to need an ice pack while you watch these scenes,’” Bell told THR. “I just kept saying, like, ‘Trust me, Adam knows how to stare dopily at someone and so do I, and that’s kind of all you need.’ I mean, I’d love to tell you it’s real. It’s not. We both just know how to do it.”

Foster was open to it and sent the script to Brody. After a meeting on Zoom, Brody decided to take the role. “I was like, ‘Well, f*ck it,’” he recalled. “‘I really like her, I like this episode, and I love Kristen and it’s Netflix and there are a lot of reasons to just roll the dice.’”