Nobody Wants This found a creative way to nod at Adam Brody’s marriage to Leighton Meester during her season 2 guest appearance.
The hit show returned to Netflix on Thursday, October 23, with several star-studded appearances from Seth Rogen, Kate Berlant and Meester. In the fifth episode of the second season, Meester was introduced as a mom influencer named Abby from Joanne’s (Kristen Bell) past who hired Noah (Brody) for her newborn baby’s naming celebration.
Noah was trying to speak with Abby about the event when she interrupted him to film a video for her followers. Despite calling him “cute,” Abby wasn’t happy with the results of the shoot.
“She’s pretty. I’ll give her that,” Joanne told Noah, who replied. “Not my type.”
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While Noah wasn’t interested in Abby on the show, some viewers may be pleasantly surprised to learn that Brody, 45, and Meester, 39, are married off screen. The couple started dating after they reconnected on the set of 2011’s The Oranges, tied the knot in 2014 and have since welcomed two children.
After taking their relationship public, they have appeared together on Single Parents, River Wild and an episode of Meester’s new CW show, Good Cop/Bad Cop.
“My wife and I actually got married very fast after we started dating. That’s how sort of easy a decision it was for me and us,” Brody said on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show during a March 2023 interview. “I was never scared of the idea of marriage or kids. It always seemed like a route I would go [down] eventually, and I was excited to when it came together [and] when I met the right person.”
Brody said he knew he was interested in Meester right away, even though she needed a few “years” to see him in the same light. On an April 2023 episode of the “Popcrushed” podcast, he said, “She remained elusive to me for so long, you know, and aloof. I couldn’t get a total read because even though she professe[d] to have been interested in me and all those things — not only did she not pursue that, I mean, she was perfectly willing to let that never happen.”
Brody joked: “She was perfectly willing to let that message in the bottle return to sea at several points. [Leighton] says, ‘Oh, it’s because I knew if we did [date] it would be a thing.’ Or, like, ‘It’s too powerful.’”
Meester, who shares daughter Arlo, 9, and a son, 4, with Brody, previously spoke with Us Weekly about sustaining a healthy and happy marriage.
“I don’t think there’s any kind of secret. I think it’s individual,” she shared in December 2023. “In our case, I think we get along. We like each other a lot.”
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Before joining her husband’s Emmy-nominated show, Meester discussed her favorite scenes from Nobody Wants This.
“Honestly, all of it’s pretty good. I liked watching all the basketball stuff. I thought that was pretty funny,” she told TVLine in February. “Like I said, whenever I watch him on screen, I just forget it’s him, really, and this show is no exception.”
Meester had endless praise for Brody as an actor and her life partner.
“He’s my favorite actor, and he’s my favorite person. So the two of those things just make for a wonderful day at work,” she shared of collaborating on screen with Brody. “I get to be with my best friend, who I love and look up to. I always forget that I’m watching him when I am, and whenever I work with him, it feels very secondhand, and there’s so much love and trust. So I’m just grateful every time I get to be on set with him.”
She continued of Brody’s Noah and Bell’s Joanne: “I just am a huge fan of the show and of his work, and so, I, like most of the audience, was really rooting for the two of them, and I loved how deeply developed both the characters were and how they got to be these imperfect people, finding each other.”
Nobody Wants This is currently streaming on Netflix.
