‘Like Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, I’m dating someone Jewish – the reality is very different’

Netflix’s much-loved rom-com series Nobody Wants This is back for season 2, bringing more dating dilemmas and crackling chemistry.

The series explores the relationship between Joanne (Kristen Bell), a woman who isn’t Jewish, and Noah (Adam Brody), a man who not only is Jewish but is also a Rabbi (and known widely as ‘Hot Rabbi’).

While the show is loosely based on the true love story of its writer, Erin Foster, it is a fictional tale that’s swept rom-com lovers off their feet. However, for Marin Haugo, the story is very close to her reality.

The New York-based matchmaker, who’s engaged and is converting to Judaism, speaks to Metro about how the portrayal of an interfaith relationship in the programme compares to her experiences… and there were some major differences.

Marin met her now-fiancé, Harrison Forman, in 2023, before they started dating a year later. Ironically, they both work in the dating field, as Harrison is a creator who specialises in dating.

‘I’ve made so many faux pas while converting to Judaism’

At the time of our interview, Marin is on week seven of her Jewish conversion course, a journey that she’s sharing on TikTok.

‘As I’m documenting becoming Jewish, I make so many faux pas,’ she says while speaking to us via video chat from her apartment.

‘I say the wrong thing. It was [recently] Yom Kippur, and I said: “We celebrated Yom Kippur”. And people are like: “You don’t celebrate Yom Kippur. It’s a day of atonement.” It’s a heavy day. It’s not a day where you’re celebrating Christmas or something.’

In Nobody Wants This, Noah’s family are fairly religious. While Marin admits her fiancé’s family aren’t as conservative as Noah’s, she related to Joanne’s efforts to navigate this ‘different culture with deep traditions and origins’.

In one particularly memorable moment from season one, Joanne buys a charcuterie board for Noah’s mother as a gift… without realising that it contains pork, which is not Kosher.

Noah’s mother and sister-in-law act in a consistently frosty manner towards Joanne. But Marin had a completely different experience when meeting her in-laws.

‘The first season of Nobody Wants This was unfair to Jewish women’

‘It was very much like: “Welcome, we’re so excited to have you, you’re gonna make our community more expansive, you’re gonna make our community better,”’ she recalls.

‘I think that would be my biggest note on season one. I didn’t think that was quite fair to Jewish women.’

As is the case with TV shows, details are exaggerated to make the stakes higher and the stories more engaging.

However, the first season of Nobody Wants This received criticism for the portrayal of Jewish women, as they were depicted as being ‘manipulative’ and ‘the ultimate villains of this story’.

In the Netflix show, Joanne is called a ‘shiksa’ – a disparaging term that’s used to describe a non-Jewish girl or woman. It’s said with some vengeance by Bina (Tovah Feldshuh), Noah’s mum, who makes no secret of the fact that she strongly disapproves of Joanne as a partner for her son.

‘The word “shiksa” is bad – it’s not commonly used’

‘That didn’t happen to me,’ Marin tells us. ‘People weren’t openly being like, “You’re a shiksa,” or they weren’t openly being like, “Who are you, why are you here?”

‘That’s where my experience really differed. It was probably 99% welcoming.’

Metro also spoke to Rabbi Oliver Spike Joseph, a chaplain in London and a Masorti Rabbi, a denomination of Judaism that he says ‘sits quite neatly in the middle of the broad spectrum that is Jewish life’.

Once a Rabbi in LA, like Noah, he agrees with Marin, admitting that he found it ‘a bit of a stretch’ that Joanne would be called a shiksa.

‘It’s a bad word. It’s not a good word. It’s said out of hate, or anger, or really wanting to put the person down,’ he explains. ‘It’s not a word that you would find commonly used.’

As a Rabbi in London, Rabbi Oliver runs interfaith courses for young couples to help them ‘think about what a mixed-faith relationship means’.

‘The Jewish faith is a broad spectrum’

Based on his experience, I ask him if it’s likely that a non-Jewish person might receive a similar reception to Joanne in Nobody Wants This if they were to date someone who’s Jewish.

He has his doubts, stating: ‘By the point at which somebody decides that their life partner is going to be somebody from outside the community, in the broader sense, that’s already been in the making for years.

‘That’s somebody who’s a little bit towards the outside of the community and has made choices about how they live, the friendship group they have, and the kind of people they date.’

Rabbi Oliver’s suggestion is that a non-Jewish partner is therefore ‘less of a surprise’ to the immediate family.

However, he acknowledges that it ‘does become a little bit more complicated when you get one step removed, the cousins and the aunties’, admitting that the behaviour then gets ‘harder to control’.

As Marin and Rabbi Oliver both point out in their chats with me, the Jewish faith is a broad spectrum – from Orthodox to Reform, practices and expectations can vary massively.

Therefore, experiences of entering an interfaith relationship with a Jewish person will depend on where everyone sits on this spectrum, and the individuals within each family.

Nobody Wants This seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on Netflix.

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