Erin Foster, creator of everybody’s favourite Netflix show right now, has responded to backlash that Nobody Wants This depicts stereotypes of Jewish people. There’s been some serious debate about the representation of Jewish people, especially Jewish women.

Jessica Radloff wrote in Glamour that “we come off as controlling, marriage-hungry women who want to plan dinner parties and alienate anyone who doesn’t share those same dreams.”

The story was inspired by Erin Foster’s real life love story with her husband: She converted to Judaism before their 2019 wedding, and described her relationship with the religion as “different” to her born-Jewish colleagues who worked on the show.

via Netflix

In defence of her Jewish-centred series, she said: “I think we need positive Jewish stories right now. I think it’s interesting when people focus on, ‘Oh, this is a stereotype of Jewish people,’ when you have a rabbi as the lead. A hot, cool, young rabbi who smokes weed. That’s the antithesis of how people view a Jewish rabbi, right?

“If I made the Jewish parents, like, two granola hippies on a farm, then someone would write, ‘I’ve never met a Jewish person like that before. You clearly don’t know how to write Jewish people, you don’t know what you’re doing, and that doesn’t represent us well.’”

It’s not unreasonable to say that the Jewish women in Nobody Wants This do come across as the stereotypes Jessica Radloff describes in her article, but Erin Foster actually had very different experiences with the women in her real-life husband’s family. She admitted that she has a “great relationship” with her mother-in-law, and “they’ve never had an issue with me because me converting to Judaism was such an honour for them.” Her decision to convert was “the ultimate daughter-in-law move” in their eyes.

However, she noted that “in a TV show, you have to have conflict.” It was important to her that Noah’s parents were immigrants because “immigrant culture is very different than American Jewish culture.”

Erin explained the story behind her husband Simon’s Jewish upbringing: “Simon’s parents fled the Soviet Union because they were Jewish. That is a very different experience than someone who grew up in L.A., not being exposed to the kind of antisemitism that they were exposed to. It means something different. It’s a much more sensitive topic, and it’s much closer to their hearts.”

Because of this, Erin doesn’t agree that the parents are stereotypes in Nobody Wants This at all. She presses that there’s “good reason” why immigrant culture is insular and fearful of outsiders, and used the show to explore the hardships they face.

via Netflix

Her main aim of the show was to “shed a positive light on Jewish culture from my perspective — my positive experience being brought into Jewish culture, sprinkling in a little fun, [and] educational moments about things in Judaism that I love without it being heavy-handed.” Yes, she might have received backlash, but it seems her intention was very far from that.