ROMANTIC COMEDIES ARE built on the strength of their leads, but its the supporting cast that helps them become classics. When Harry Met Sally is led by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan turning in some of the all-time great characters and performances of the genre, but the movie isn’t the same without the late Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher as their respective friends and sidekicks. Rhys Ifans shines in Notting Hill. Kathryn Hahn turned in one of her earliest, greatest performances in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Along Came Polly doesn’t come up in these conversations too often, but it would be sacrilegious to omit the fact that Philip Seymour Hoffman turned in some of his best work ever (seriously!) as Ben Stiller’s goofy, sardonic best friend.
Which is all to say: there’s a lot of importance to a rom-com’s supporting cast. Luckily, the rom-com of the moment, Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, understands that. The show is built on the back of its leads—played by the utterly charming Adam Brody and Kristen Bell—but its their respective sidekicks, played by Timothy Simons and Justine Lupe, who help the show transcend from a nice little thing into what may just be an instant classic.
Nobody Wants This keeps things simple; Simons plays Sasha, the married brother of Brody’s Rabbi Noah, while Lupe plays Morgan, the single sex podcaster sister of Bell’s Joanne. They’re friends and family. And both have relationships with the leads that immediately feel lived-in. These aren’t people they’re just getting to know, or new friendships; these people feel comfortable laughing with each other, asking each other anything, and confiding in each other. Think Tom Hanks and Dave Chappelle walking down the street in You’ve Got Mail; a friendship that just feels like the trust has been established long ago.
But what makes Simons and Lupe so wonderful in Nobody Wants This is the fact that they aren’t just wallpaper, or a sounding board for the leads to bounce thoughts and questions off of. They’re both fully-realized characters in their own rights, and they’re both really, really funny. It helps that both are veterans of hit HBO shows; Simons has mastered the art of being hilariously irritating and overconfident after his turn as Jonah Ryan in Veep, while Lupe did some of the most subtle and frequently hilarious comedic work as Willa Ferreyra, Connor Roy‘s escort-turned-wife in Succession.
Simons and Lupe get their own moments, away from Brody and Bell, in Nobody Wants Some, too. In one early episode, Sasha is relishing his rare time home alone, when he decides to take an edible and do what any movie-loving man from the age of 20-60 would do with a free night: watch Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning. But after he takes his edible and before he starts the movie, his tween daughter comes home desperately needing help with some boy trouble. Simons, a comedy veteran at this point, wonderfully navigates the storyline in a way thats both warm and funny, and leaves us trusting Sasha and wanting to see more of him.
In one later season subplot, too, Morgan is at a bar when she runs into Noah’s ex-, Rebecca (Emily Arlook). Morgan decides to hunt for intel in an interaction that winds up having multiple layers of deception, but thanks to Lupe’s own comedic skills, it becomes another moment where we find yet another character to trust and root for.
But perhaps the most interesting thing about Sasha and Morgan in Nobody Wants Some is when we see them come together, in what is, in a way, either some kind of enemies-to-lovers or enemies-to-friends or, well, something. When the pair first meet, Morgan finds Sasha obnoxious, accidentally telling their whole car so via a voice-to-text mishap; she’s also shocked to learn that he’s married.
As the show goes on, though, their bond grows stronger, especially after Sasha dubs the two of them the “loser siblings”—they could be great, and do their very best, but their parents and family always seem to lean toward the others. As they grow closer, both seem to question their burgeoning friendship just a little bit; Sasha says he’s only ever had one female friend before, and he married her, while Morgan admits to Joanne that she had a sex dream about Sasha.
The show ends with Sasha and Morgan as just that: friends. And as Apple TV+’s wonderful series Platonic (which stars Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) wonderfully put on display, it is possible for men and women to just be longtime platonic friends. Not everything needs to be headed in a romantic direction.
But that’s part of what makes the Sasha and Morgan dynamic in Nobody Wants This so interesting—they do have great chemistry, and it really seems like they do have a great connection. It would be really fun to see them get together, but, at the same time, we certainly don’t want to see Sasha’s family broken up—especially after his wife, Esther (Jackie Tohn), actually showed a considerable bit of character growth and development throughout the season as well. But the season does end with Esther (and Noah and Sasha’s mother) making evil eyes at Sasha speaking with Morgan… so, things could certainly come to blows in the very near future, even without any explicitly romantic overtures so far.
Historically, the only way to make these kind of situations work in rom-coms and have the audience feel good about it is to introduce other characters and make the case for all kinds of partner swapping; think Disney’s Enchanted for that one. But as we move toward hopefully getting a season 2 of Nobody Wants This, we’ll just have to hold onto what we’ve got with the magic of Sasha and Morgan, and see where it possibly goes from here.
