It was Nobody Wants This’s devoted dad demographic that first tipped off Kristen Bell. “I started hearing from all of these people who told me, ‘I just started the show because my dad told me about it,’ ” the star and executive producer says of the moment she realized her hot-rabbi-meets-cool-podcaster romantic comedy was connecting with more people than she initially realized. “So many people’s dads watched! Dads were telling their kids, ‘You have to watch this show!’ It wasn’t just rom-com fans. It wasn’t just critics. That’s when I knew.” 

They had the rest of us at “hi,” the first word Rabbi Noah (Adam Brody, Fleishman Is in Trouble) and Joanne (Bell, The Good Place) say to each other at a dinner party, while navigating a problematic wine cork and even more problematic chinchilla jacket. Over the course of 10 episodes, we swooned for the kiss, cringed at the ick, and pondered what it would be like to run into a clergy member at a sex shop. 

We also fell hard and fast for Nobody’s other somebodies, whether Joanne’s fiercely loyal and occasionally foot-in-mouth sister Morgan (Succession’s Justine Lupe), Noah’s dopey but protective brother Sasha (Veep’s Timothy Simons), or Sasha’s refreshingly blunt and intensely caring wife Esther (GLOW’s Jackie Tohn).

Now, on the heels of the show’s incredible success, a second date (some call it a season) is in the works, reuniting an ensemble of actors that have fallen hard for one another. “We just enjoy each other so much,” says Brody. “I know these are early days, but we’re not young kids. We’re stable. And I would imagine if we go a long time, we’ll still feel that way. I just really, really, really like everyone.” 

This cast is a tight group, supportive and silly. They’re the kind of crew who show up to Lupe’s baby shower (her daughter was born one month before Season 1 premiered) one minute and, all active members of the group chat, laugh at the many memes and inside-joke Photoshops that Simons sends the next. “If I was reading an article and I heard an actor say ‘We all just love and support each other,’ I would start to gag,” says Tohn. “But it is the case. There are no duds.” 

Quite the opposite. Nobody Wants This is the rare romantic comedy that is as much about the ensemble as it is about the central couple. That made it all the more crucial to assemble the right cast for creator Erin Foster’s semi-autobiographical comedy, which was inspired by her own real-life love story and conversion to Judaism. 

Though first to sign on, Bell wasn’t initially sure she could pull off playing Joanne, the say-everything relationship podcaster modeled after Foster. “I know my lane. I’m goofy and quirky and sure, I could be dressed up like a pretty, cool girl. But my core doesn’t feel like that,” she says. “I thought, ‘I’ll blow my hair out a lot.’ That’s what cool girls do.”

She was far more certain that Brody was the only man for this particular rabbinate. “For me, it was such a no-brainer that the unimaginable charm Noah would have to have could only be [brought by] Adam Brody,” she says. Meanwhile, Brody heard about Foster’s show before there was even a script, and the prospect piqued his interest. “I knew it was Kristen, it was a romantic comedy,” Brody recalls. “I decided there were so many good things going on, I would take the leap and I should be so lucky. And I was.” 

But without fleshing out their respective universes with an ace ensemble, “a rabbi and a podcaster” merely reads like the start of a joke. For the über-important sibling roles, Brody and Simons chemistry-tested to make sure the boys’ bond came through, as did Bell and Lupe for the podcasting sisters inspired by Erin and Sara Foster. Fresh off of Succession, Lupe immersed herself in The World’s First Podcast with Erin & Sara Foster to get a sisterhood vibe check ahead of her first audition opposite Bell. “The first time you read with someone, it’s like a first date, so there was a certain level of nerves. But I remember feeling like if I just focus on [Bell] and I stay out of my brain, I’m not going to have to fake or force anything because she’s so good,” Lupe remembers. “The chemistry read was the first time that I met her, and I remember it so vividly: I was sitting on the couch waiting to go in, and she came out and goes, ‘So I’m a big fan.’ And immediately I was like, ‘Oh, this person’s just delightful. Her intention is just to make me feel warm.’ ” 

Simons and Brody also found an easygoing brotherhood. “It doesn’t always happen, but with Adam, there was something that existed from the first chemistry read — that odd brother relationship. I loved that Noah is clearly the golden child in the family, but Sasha is the firstborn,” Simons says. “And it’s not really a source of conflict. They actually do love and respect one another.” An unexpected connection could also be found in the budding friendship between Simons’s Sasha and Lupe’s Morgan, bonded by being the designated “loser siblings.” “We’ve lost our respective loves, in a certain way. Our siblings are our best friends, so they’re leaning on each other in that act of losing their everyday companions,” says Lupe. 

Also not too happy about the siblings’ revelry is Sasha’s wife, the keep-no-thought-inside Esther, who almost wasn’t played by Tohn. The actor had initially planned to read for Rebecca, Noah’s more mild ex-girlfriend, until she went hiking in the Hollywood Hills with a close friend, who had other thoughts. “I think my exact words were, ‘Don’t you dare read for Rebecca,’ ” Bell says, who has been friends with Tohn for almost two decades. “Then I attempted to be a professional and said to my fellow producers, ‘I need to sit out of the auditions for Esther because I will absolutely be biased.’ ” 

Tohn immediately knew her real-life BFF and future onscreen frenemy was onto something. “It’s really rare when you find a role that you’re like, ‘Oh, this one is me. This one has to be me,’ ” she recalls. “But honestly, as an actor when you feel that way, it still doesn’t go your way 99.999999 percent of the time.” That made the celebration all the sweeter when she got the gig. “I was screaming and jumping up and down,” she says, “and it was absolutely the most exciting freaking thing ever.” 

A couple of weeks into shooting the first season, when cast members got a chance to watch a rough cut, they quickly realized that they were making something that everybody could really want. “As good as I thought it [would be,] it was even better,” Brody recalls. “We were doing some banter in the pilot and in my head I was going, ‘Am I just so obnoxious?’ I definitely didn’t know that it was going to feel really good watching it.” The Noah and Joanne scorch was even more of a shock. “Kristen and I had worked together twice before, both in romantic situations, and nobody was like, ‘Wow, the chemistry!’ When I was in a scene, I wasn’t like, ‘This is on fire,’ ” he says. “I didn’t know you’d watch this and want these people to be together so badly and feel like the attraction is palpable.” 

Could he possibly be referring to the second episode’s passionate (and now iconic) kiss? The one written in Foster’s script to be “the best kiss either of them have ever had”? The one that made actor-comedian Dax Shepard, Bell’s husband, send a gushing voice memo to her while watching in real time? “I thought, ‘Wow, if I can make my husband forget it’s me doing that kiss, we’re onto something,’ ” Bell says. As Tohn puts it, “I mean, those two are kissable mfers. Let’s be real with ourselves.” 

They are also flawed, dorky, and insecure, while knowing how and when to show up for the most important people in their lives. In other words, they’re grownups. “Honestly, more than anything, I love that this show is about adult humans living in the regular world,” Simons says. From taking a weed gummy before realizing your kid isn’t actually out for the night, or bringing the worst possible porcine gift to meet your new boyfriend’s kosher parents, or discovering what it means to have a healthy relationship despite everything telling you to run, Nobody Wants This finds the fun — and funny — in figuring things out. “One thing that people seem to be so pleased by is that they are older and yet it doesn’t come with a ton of baggage. It just is what it is,” says Brody. “And you can still find love, and it can feel like first love even.”

Season 1 ends with Noah chasing down Joanne in his niece Miriam’s Bat Mitzvah shuttle, with Joanne left wondering how a relationship this unlikely could actually work. Noah doesn’t have a great response, but something about the relationship is clearly working in a larger sense, at least from an audience and critic’s point of view: The series netted nominations at this year’s Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Critics’ Choice Awards, where Brody took home the award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. Season 2 is underway, with Girls alums Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan joining as showrunners and executive producers, alongside creator and fellow executive producer Foster, plus new exciting faces joining the on- and offscreen friend group, including Miles Fowler (Bottoms), Alex Karpovsky (Girls), Arian Moayed (Succession, Inventing Anna), and Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl). “It’s flattering when people say, ‘Hey, is there a part for me on Nobody Wants This this year?’ ” Bell says. “Now I want to [create] new parts to cast everybody because I’m a people-pleaser.” 

Will the new cast be recruited to the cast chat? “Think twice before you get involved in that one,” Lupe jokingly warns. “Sometimes you throw something out and nobody bites,” says Simons. “But every once in a while, a good bit comes up and you see everybody piling on and then you’re like, ‘Alright, we’re in the pocket now.’ ” And this cast knows precisely what that feels like. 

A version of this story appears in Queue Issue 20.