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Adam Brody knows he’s a different kind of celebrity now than he was in his 20s — and he can tell just by the people who come up to him on the street.
“As a 45-year-old, it’s gotten a lot easier,” says the Emmy-nominated star of Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, who got his big break on teen soap The O.C. playing heartthrob Seth Cohen back in 2003. “I just feel much more adult in how to interact and how to chaperone the interaction. I can quickly judge how much time do I give this? How authentic is this person being? Also, the demographic coming up changes and is older in general, so I guess they’re polished too.”
Brody remains a certified dreamboat for millennial women who devoured The O.C. and are now in their 40s, too — guilty as charged — and it’s one of the many irresistible powers driving Nobody Wants This. The rom-com, created by Erin Foster and based on her own life, focuses on the early stages of an interfaith relationship between an agnostic podcast host (Kristen Bell) and an engaging rabbi (Brody). A breakout hit for Netflix, the series, which debuted in September of last year, landed three Emmy nominations: best comedy and first-time nods for Brody and Bell, both of whom emerged as teen stars in the early 2000s (Bell was the titular Veronica Mars).
For Brody, the recognition he’s getting for Nobody Wants This — including a Critics Choice Award win earlier this year — can be a bit of an out-of-body experience. But it’s also like being invited in on an iconic ritual he’s seen performed many times but has never been a part of. It’s also a little different from, say, the Teen Choice Award he received in 2005 for The O.C., complete with an enormous surfboard statue. “No disrespect to the Teen Choice Awards, but they were on Fox, we were on Fox. I’m not saying it was rigged, I’m just saying… I was old enough to take it with a grain of salt,” he tells me, admitting the awards were left behind in his dressing room when The O.C. ended in 2007.
On today’s special weekend edition of the Prestige Junkie podcast, Brody looks back a bit but also to the present. He’s just wrapped filming on the second season of Nobody Wants This, which returns in October. We go deep into how he builds his character of Noah, a “hot Rabbi” whose attachment to tradition is represented by his wristwatch, and whose Star of David chain might just come across as a regular cool guy chain with the right outfit.
“I get a lot of creative satisfaction from a wardrobe fitting,” he tells me, detailing his efforts to make Noah’s clothing feel realistic but within the slightly polished, glossy world of the show. “We do a lot less texting than you would in real life,” he admits, “and a lot more ‘I need to go talk to you in person.’”
Hear the whole conversation on today’s episode of the show, and remember that Prestige Junkie After Party subscribers can see the full video version of my interview with Brody right now. Plus, if you missed it yesterday, paid subscribers got to see our first-ever fall festival movie draft, where Ankler Media’s deputy editor Christopher Rosen, This Had Oscar Buzz co-host Chris Feil and I went deep on the fall festival lineups and Oscar hopes of several upcoming titles. If I do say so, it’s a can’t-miss episode — and you can watch it right now. All you have to do is subscribe for just $5 a month! Details here, see you at the After Party.
