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Everybody Wants Adam Brody (Again)

Decades after ‘The O.C.’ made him an icon, the heartthrob-turned-character-actor stepped back into a romantic-TV lead—and found his audience waiting for him.

For every offbeat indie like The Kid Detective, there have been supporting roles in films like the horror favorite Ready or Not, memorable parts in awards-season movies like Promising Young Woman and American Fiction(both of which took home screenplay Oscars), and buzzy TV shows like Fleishman is in Trouble. Brody swears he “gave himself over to the writing” more often than not—often times he’d object to something until Bell and Foster shut him down with “No, this is hot, do it,” he jokes—but cites the episode where Noah endeavors to basically stash Joanne away in the woods at his Hebrew camp when his boss unexpectedly shows up, as one such instance where he had to walk it back a little. In a review for Time, TV critic Esther Zuckerman found characters like Noah’s mother, sister-in-law, and ex to be “one-dimensional nightmares who together fuel stereotypes,” describing them as “needy, overbearing, and nasty.” For Vulture, Fran Hoepfner got right to it, with a headline that asks if Nobody Wants This is “mildly antisemetic.”

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