Adam Brody & Kristen Bell Improvised Their Nobody Wants This Meet-Cute
Rewatching this moment is so much better now.
It wasn’t just the Nobody Wants This script that made Noah and Joanne’s chemistry sizzle — actors Adam Brody and Kristen Bell brought their own unique charms to the star-crossed lovers. Showrunner Erin Foster recently revealed that the stars actually improvised Noah and Joanne’s meet-cute moment, and it all arose out of a silly mistake on Brody’s part.
In the first episode of Nobody Wants This, jaded podcaster Joanne meets the newly single rabbi Noah at a friend’s dinner party. Sparks fly pretty much immediately, especially after the two flirt as Noah struggles to open a wine bottle. Turns out, Noah’s inability to open the bottle was not in the script.
“We discovered in real time that Adam does not know how to open a bottle of wine,” Foster revealed at a Netflix FYC panel on Nov. 10, per The Hollywood Reporter.
“These two stayed in character,” she continued. “They leaned into this moment and it’s so special because it’s totally real and they kept the dialogue going. When [Adam says], ‘Oh embarrassing thing about me, I was a sommelier,’ that’s all just improv he came up with because he genuinely couldn’t open a bottle of wine.”
Apparently, the improvised scene initially went on much longer than was shown in the final edit, and Bell wishes viewers got to see more of it. “That scene was cut because it was originally like seven and a half minutes. We loved it. We were like, ‘Keep the whole scene,’” Bell said. “It’s lightning in a bottle.”
That on-the-fly moment set up the undeniable chemistry between Noah and Joanne all season long. Audiences fell for the unlikely couple so hard that a second season is already on the way. However, there’s still a bit of a wait before we can see what’s next for Noah and Joanne. Foster previously stated that the next season likely won’t premiere until the fall of 2025.
