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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses review: The future is here -- but it needs a better battery
Is it the future yet? It's starting to look that way, at least if you judge by Ray-Ban's Meta AI glasses. These fairly ordinary-looking spectacles pack a wealth of technology: cameras, microphones, headphones and an AI assistant that sounds like actress Kristen Bell. (Seriously. Intentionally. It can also be made to sound like Awkwafina, John Cena, Dame Judi Dench or Keegan-Michael Key. I am not making any of this up.) The result is something fairly remarkable: glasses that can not only capture and identify what you see, but also replace earbuds for music, phone calls and more. This isn't a new idea, but the Ray-Ban Meta is by far the best execution of it I've ever seen — and one of the most affordable at $299. However, while I'm sold on the idea of smart glasses, there's still work to be done — mostly in the areas of design and battery life. So, should you consider putting a pair on your face? Here's my Ray-Ban Meta review. First things first: The Ray-Ban Meta glasses start at $299, but that's for clear, non-prescription lenses. I tested the Wayfarer style (a classic for anyone familiar with Ray-Ban sunglasses); there's also a Skyler option for those seeking a different look. You can opt for Transition lenses (the kind that automatically darken when you're outdoors) for an additional $80, but keep in mind there's still the matter of your prescription — if you have one. If you do, you can order the glasses directly from Amazon, then take them to a Lenscrafters or Sunglass Hut store to get prescription lenses added. You also have the option of ordering directly from Ray-Ban, supplying your prescription details and choosing any lens options you might want. As you might expect, the more options you add, the higher the total price. I wear progressives; those plus Transitions and a few other add-ons would have put my total bill at around $1,000. Thankfully, Ray-Ban does accept most insurance. And you might be able to find more affordable lens options at one of the partner stores. I'll just note that the last time I bought new regular frames and progressive lenses (with all the bells and whistles) from an optical center, the price tag before insurance was approaching $800. Frames alone can easily cost $200-$300 (ripoff though that may be), so $299 for the Ray-Ban Metas strikes me as a pretty decent deal — especially considering what they're capable of. To look at the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer is to see a familiar-looking frame, one with a barely noticeable camera embedded in one corner and thicker-than-average arms (aka temples). The latter are arguably the only giveaway you're wearing smart glasses; unless someone looks closely, they might never know. That said, I find the design a little chunky overall, the thick black plastic a little bolder than I prefer. But that's just me; others have told me the frames look stylish, or at least similar to what a lot of people are wearing these days (myself included). And these were a review sample; I'd definitely have chosen a different color given the option. I did struggle a bit with the weight: at 2 ounces, they're definitely heavier than my everyday glasses, which weigh just 1.2 ounces. (Note that Meta's specs indicate 1.7 ounces; my scale says otherwise, but that could be the result of my fairly thick progressive lenses.) Although I wouldn't describe them as uncomfortable, I definitely noticed them more. Speaking of noticing things, privacy is often a concern with camera-equipped smart glasses — specifically, the privacy of others unaware you might be snapping photos or recording video. To remedy this, the glasses have a small white front-facing LED in the right corner, opposite the left-corner camera. When you take a picture or start a video, the LED lights up. Obviously this is a battery-powered product, and Meta took an interesting approaching to charging: There's no dock or power cord, but rather a traditional-looking leather case. Just drop the glasses in and an embedded LED ring lights up orange to indicate charging. (It shows green when done.) I have mixed feelings about this. The case is stylish, but also bulky and inconvenient; it's literally the only charging option, so you have to keep it close at hand. At minimum, Meta should offer a simple USB-C charging cord (one that connects directly to the glasses) you can use for travel, and I'd also like to see some kind of dock for desk or nightstand use. This might be less of an issue if the glasses had better battery life. Unfortunately, depending on your usage, they're going to require recharging in just four hours — possibly less. For example, during the course of 90 minutes, I recorded a one-minute video, listened to about 30 minutes of audio, answered some text messages and had a few chats with Meta AI. Then I checked the battery level in the Meta AI app: 60%. The battery level continued to drop even after I took off the glasses, folded them up and set them on my desk. Despite being in "standby" mode, the battery level dropped overnight to 14% from 51%. Thus, unless they're actually recharging inside their case, they're consuming power — even if you're not wearing them. Needless to say, these can't be your all-day glasses, or at least your all-day smart glasses. Of course they'll continue to help you see, even with a dead battery, but imagine heading off to work in the morning and losing access to your headphones, cameras and AI assistant, all before lunch. If there's any upside here, it's that the Ray-Bans can recharge to nearly 50% after just 20 minutes in the charging case (which itself promises eight full charges), but what do you do in the meantime? (One option: Carry your regular glasses in the case and wear them while these are charging.) This is the major problem with the product, and it's a big one — which is unfortunate because it's pretty great in most other respects. Worth noting: I'm also in the process of testing the Solos AirGo V glasses, which use ChatGPT in place of Meta AI but are fairly similar otherwise. They can last up to 10 hours while playing music — so I'm confused as to why the Ray-Bans have such poor battery life. (Note: Right before I published this review, Meta announced a new pair of smart glasses from a new partner: Oakley. Rated battery life: 8 hours. That adds to what I consider inexcusable power performance from the Ray-Bans.) As noted earlier, I consider these glasses to be half wearable camera and half headphone, with an AI assistant baked in for good measure. Let's talk about some of the specs associated with those features, then dive into the specifics. 12-megapixel camera 32GB of onboard storage Open-ear headphones 5 microphones Bluetooth 5.2 Wi-Fi 6 IPX4 water resistance Touch controls (In case it's not already clear, these have no display to speak of; they're not AR or VR glasses like the Apple Vision Pro or Meta Quest 3.) Imagine snapping photos or videos while on vacation or at a special event, without having to pull out your phone — without even having to lift a finger. You can activate the glasses' camera via a simple voice command: "Hey, Meta, take a photo." There's also a button on top of the right temple; a single click grabs a snapshot, a longer press starts video recording. That's a pretty powerful benefit, though there are a few limitations. First: no selfies. Second: While the camera captures whatever is in your field of view, there's no actual preview to know exactly what you're getting. No zoom, either. And videos are limited to three minutes, max, something to note if you're trying to capture, say, a kid's performance in the school play. In my testing, I found that the glasses worked really well for the kind of "reveal" videos popular on Instagram and TikTok, like when you start out looking at the ground and then slowly pan up to show a waterfall or some other natural wonder. But for anything longer, where you want to stay focused on a fixed subject, it's not great having your whole head as the "viewfinder," because your natural inclination is to look around from time to time — resulting in jarring footage. That's something to keep in mind if you plan to use the livestream feature, which works via the Facebook or Instagram app. I tested the glasses with the latter, despite having never livestreamed anything before, and got up and running with just a few easy taps. But once again, the resulting footage was shaky and, to my thinking, hard to watch, because I move my head a lot more than I do my phone. It's much easier to get stable video with the latter. Take note, too, that while the camera's image quality is pretty good overall — suitable for viewing on your phone and sharing on social media — it lacks the sharpness you'd expect from a 12-megapixel sensor. You can preview photos and videos in the Meta app, but to actually offload them from the glasses for sharing or full-resolution viewing, you need to connect the latter to your Wi-Fi network — a fairly quick process, but still an extra step. There's also the option to automatically import media when the glasses are charging, which is useful. There's another big benefit to the glasses' camera, and that's being able to instantly identify what you're seeing. I'll come back to that in the AI section, below. The Ray-Ban Meta's headphones are kind of miraculous — two tiny down-firing speakers built into the temple arms right where they start to curve over your ear. That's pretty far from your listening holes, yet these things sound amazingly good. Maybe not quite on par with the best open-ear headphones, but close — I was perfectly happy with the quality of music I heard while walking the dog, gardening and so on. (As noted above, the Solos AirGo V — despite having vastly superior battery life — sounds like tinny AM radio in comparison.) There's a bit of resulting "bleed" here, meaning others might be able to hear what you're hearing, but they have to be standing fairly close. Ultimately, I was amazed to discover that eyeglasses could sound nearly as good as headphones — and all the disappointed about the battery life. I'd love to be able to wear these all day, without needing earbuds or the like for podcasts, Zoom calls and so on. The glasses have arguably the best touch controls I've ever used: You can drag your finger along the outside of the right temple to raise or lower volume, tap to pause/play, double-tap to skip to the next track and so on. Each interaction is met with a little "tick" sound so you know it's registering. And because the touch area is very wide, spanning a good stretch of the arm, you're not likely to miss hitting it — which I've found to be the case with most open-hear headphones (and their comparatively tiny touch areas). I did encounter one small issue when watching videos: the audio was a bit out of sync. This was fairly noticeable in TikTok, less prominent in Netflix, but definitely there. It's not uncommon — I've seen this with some earbuds and headphones as well — but there's usually a software toggle (such as "game mode") to help compensate. At this writing, there's no such option in the Meta AI app. Meta AI performs many of the same voice-activated tricks as Alexa or Siri. It can raise or lower audio volume, place calls, send and read messages, tell you the date and time, deliver a weather report, identify the song you're hearing over the loudspeaker (a la Shazam) and so on. By default, it gives you fairly terse responses to any general-information inquiries, which I think is smart; if you say, "Hey, Meta, tell me about the Battle of Trafalgar," you don't necessarily want a 10-minute rundown. And after the initial response, you can say, "Tell me more" (no "Hey, Meta" required), to get additional information. I did experience a few AI glitches. For example, when I said, "Hey, Meta, help me with my glasses" (per the AI's own suggestion), the response was, "To get help with your glasses, say 'Hey, Meta, help me with my glasses.'" I got stuck in this comedic loop indefinitely. That kind of thing tends to get worked out over time, with software updates, but my more immediate request is for better integration with existing ecosystems (namely, my phone). I tested my glasses with an iPhone 16e; although you can ask Meta to set a reminder, it doesn't integrate with the iOS Reminders app; it relies on its own internal software. Similarly, it's limited in what notifications it can share: Anything I already have scheduled in Reminders won't get announced through the glasses. You can't add calendar entries, either; no "Hey, Meta, schedule a meeting with Bob at 10 a.m. tomorrow." And this isn't just an iOS limitation; it's true on Android as well. Overall there's fairly little integration with apps. So if this is just a sort of Alexa/Google/Siri wanna-be AI, what's the point? The camera. You can ask Meta to describe what you're seeing, give you a summary of the book you're holding, recommend recipes when you peer inside your fridge, translate text from a different language and much more. For blind and partially sighted users, there's incredible value in being told what's in front of you, be it an object you're holding in your hand or the overall scene in general. (Again, this is where battery life rears its ugly head; anyone who starts to rely on this for real-world assistance could run into trouble if the glasses run out of juice.) On the whole, Meta AI works fairly well, limitations notwithstanding. While the five available celebrity voices are a rather odd mix (and all AI-simulated, which itself is kind of crazy), I really dug having Keegan-Michael Key as my assistant. There are also three "company players" if you'd rather stick with a non-famous voice. Because this is a fairly high-profile feature, I wanted to give it some extra attention. To start, I used photo-recognition language translation ("Hey, Meta, translate what I'm seeing") on a page written in French; it did an impressive job reading it to me in English. However, it's an all-or-nothing performance; you can't force the glasses to focus on, say, a particular area of a menu; it would attempt to translate the entire thing, which would likely be confusing (and time-consuming) to hear. So this is more useful for a street sign or poster, something with relatively few words. Speaking of translation, there's also a new live-translation feature that arrived just as I was finishing my testing. When someone speaks to you in a different language, it's translated in real-time. Well, almost: While listening to a few YouTube videos in French, the translation lagged behind what was being said, often to the point where it seemed like the glasses couldn't keep up. Or there would be a pause of several seconds while the person continued speaking, and then I'd get a quick dump of translation, which made it difficult to concentrate on what I was hearing versus what I was seeing. Thus, I'm not sure I'd use this to try for actual conversation (though you could do that if the other person was also wearing Meta glasses); it seems better for short bursts, like someone giving you directions or answering a simple question. At this writing, there are four languages available — English, French, Italian and Spanish — and to use any of them, you must first download a language pack within the Meta AI app. In return for that bit of advanced planning, you get to use live translation offline (meaning you don't need to be connected to the internet). The Meta Ray-Ban AI glasses showed me the future. With their classic Wayfarer design, impressive camera, surprisingly good open-ear audio and affordable price tag, they made the case for smart spectacles you'd want to wear full-time. Now we just need a battery that makes that possible. I don't want to have to keep that bulky case with me at all times and don't want to have to dock the glasses in there every 3-4 hours. The point of all this is that if you're already wearing glasses anyway, wouldn't it be great if they could play music and record video and answer questions? Yes! But when they can't do those things all day, you add a hassle factor that I suspect will frustrate most users. Thus, I think Meta needs to at least double the battery life before these Ray-Bans can be considered for full-time use. I'm also hopeful the next version of this product will be a bit lighter (a challenge given the ask for a bigger battery). But mark me down as someone who's very eager to see these things happen.
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kristen Bell, Tina Fey, Bridget Everett, and the best of our Emmy Comedy Actress interviews
Over the past two months of Emmy campaigning, Gold Derby has spoken with several contenders in all categories. Now with voting underway ahead of the July 15 unveiling of the nominees, we have compiled nine interviews for stars vying for Best Comedy Actress, including: Kristen Bell (Nobody Wants This), Bridget Everett (Somebody Somewhere), Tina Fey (The Four Seasons), Kate Hudson (Running Point), Margo Martindale (The Sticky), Wendi McLendon-Covey (St. Denis Medical), Melissa Rauch (Night Court), Natasha Rothwell (How to Die Alone), and Allison Tolman (St. Denis Medical). Read on for highlights from each interviews and links to watch our full video Q&As. More from GoldDerby 'Hope for the best, prepare for the worst': 'Overcompensating' breakout Wally Baram on making her acting debut, defiling prop toilet The case of Leslie Abramson vs. Marcia Clark: Ari Graynor and Sarah Paulson on 'defending' their characters In Pixar's 'Elio,' Easter eggs are literally written in the stars - will you be able to spot them all? Created by Erin Foster and inspired by her marriage, the show follows the interfaith romance between Joanne (Bell), an agnostic podcaster, and "hot rabbi" Noah (Adam Brody). "What I liked so much about the dynamic was I was able to see clearly Joanne was a child and Noah was an adult until they switch," Bell tells us. "But initially, Joanne is messy and can't really commit or doesn't know how to hold things down together. And Noah has all these adult attributes, like stability that she gravitates towards. And she wants that. She just doesn't know how to get it." Watch our complete interview with Kristen Bell. In the HBO Max comedy series, Everett plays Sam, a true Kansan on the surface, but, beneath it all, struggles to fit the hometown mold. Grappling with loss and acceptance, she discovers herself and a community of outsiders who don't fit in but don't give up. "Sam is just trying to learn to exist in these new parameters," Everett says. "You get a little bit older, people start coupling up, and if you're not one — a party of three is just a little different. That's life, so you just acclimate." Watch our complete interview with Bridget Everett. Fey is the star, producer, and writer of the Netflix comedy, which is a remake of the original 1981 film from star, director, and writer Alan Alda. 'It was a really conscious effort to work in a different tone,' Fey says. 'We wanted to evoke the tone of the original movie. At the same time, we knew we were doing eight episodes for streaming, so we felt like we needed just enough story energy to feel like we were cliff-hangering and pulling people one episode to the next. It was a challenge for all of us to be restrained about where we put jokes. The few other characters we meet can't be too absurd. We have to stay grounded, stay tethered. And that's the goal — if we were to strip some things away, would we be able to hold tinier emotional moments and small behaviors as subtler jokes.' Watch our complete video interview with Tina Fey. In the Netflix series, Hudson stars as Isla Gordon, a fictionalized version of L.A. Lakers owner Jeanie Buss. "Jeanie's approach, which was actually kind of surprising to all of us, was, 'Go, have fun, enjoy it, I'm hands-off.' She just was all trust. It was a great lesson," says Hudson. "When you give trust, we all want to honor what it is that she gifted us, which was this awesome place to tell amazing stories in so many different ways about family, about women, about high stakes sports. That allowed me to be able to create Isla and not do Jeanie. It isn't a biopic. It really allowed it to take on a life of its own, which gives us freedom in comedy to separate it from the insanely high stakes world that Jeanie lives in." Read our complete interview with Kate Hudson. The Emmy-winning star of Justified and The Americans spoke to Gold Derby about her star turn on Prime Video's The Sticky, a dark comedy about an unlikely, bumbling trio who team up to pull off a maple syrup heist. "I love acting no matter how you throw it at me," she says. "But it was an honor to lead the tone of a show, meaning not the tone of the story, but the tone of the atmosphere of the group that, everybody's kind to each other and supportive." Martindale has long been called a "character actor," but that label has no meaning for her. "Acting is character acting. You think Meryl Streep's not a character actress? She's a character actress." Watch our complete interview with Margo Martindale. The veteran sitcom star plays hospital administrator Joyce on the NBC/Peacock mockumentary comedy series. 'In my mind, she became an administrator because she got tired of being told how to practice medicine,' McLendon-Covey says of the backstory she created for her character. But now, instead of battling with insurance companies over patient care, all she does now is 'beg for money all day. ... It's the delicious line I get to walk.' Watch our complete interview with Wendi McLendon-Covey. Rauch plays Judge Abby Stone on NBC's reboot also starring John Larroquette. The first scenes during the pilot, which were shot shortly after they met in person for the first time, had a real "electricity in the air," she says. And she's been picking up nuggets of wisdom ever since — down to the way Larroquette fills in the space between when the punchline lands and the audience stops laughing. "It's otherworldly," she says. "It's sort of like riding a wave and coming to the end of it. I love it so much, getting to watch him do it. … I'm constantly just taking notes from everyone." Watch our complete interview with Melissa Rauch. Rothwell created the series, in which she plays broke, single, plus-size JFK Airport worker Mel, who is deciding she wants more out of life after nearly choking to death remains a tough pill to swallow. "That show is the most vulnerable thing I've ever put in the world, and it remains the thing that I'm the most proud of," she tells us. "And it is definitely the product of 20 years of therapy, being able to say a lot of those things out loud. That scene in particular. … I went to school for theater. It's like, let's just treat the third act like a one act play. Let's just be in it. Let's just hear this conversation. Let's see these two people talk and say the things that have gone unsaid their entire lives, and that requires room to breathe." Watch our complete interview with Natasha Rothwell. The Emmy nominee talked to Gold Derby about playing supervising nurse Alex in the NBC/Peacock comedy series, a mom with two children at home who struggles with setting work-life boundaries. 'It can be lonely to be the straight man in a comedy like this because you're not the one who gets the big moments or the big jokes or the big set pieces,' the actress says. But the role does have its unique attributes, too. 'I really feel a kinship with the audience and I really feel like the responsibility and the honor of being their touchstone. … The joy of Alex for me is that she's really aware of how all of this is coming off and she's really aware of the fact that she's being observed at all times.' Watch our complete interview with Allison Tolman. Best of GoldDerby Adam Brody, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and the best of our Emmy Comedy Actor interviews 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') Sam Rockwell on Frank's 'White Lotus' backstory, Woody Harrelson's influence, and going all in on 'this arc of Buddhist to Bad Lieutenant' Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Nobody Wants This' Creator Erin Foster Set Out to Make Her Own ‘Fleabag' — Her ‘Really Sweet' Rom-Com Took Her by Surprise
Welcome to It's a Hit! In this series, IndieWire speaks to creators and showrunners behind a few of our favorite television programs about the moment they realized their show was breaking big. Erin Foster is pretty organized. She'd have to be, thanks to a packed schedule that includes many personal obligations (wife, mother, sister, friend) alongside a stuffed professional calendar (which includes her hit Netflix series 'Nobody Wants This,' which she created, plus podcasting, running clothing company Favorite Daughter alongside sister Sara Foster, and much more). More from IndieWire Everything to Remember from 'Squid Game' Season 1 and 2 'Matlock' Production Designer Adam Rowe on How Two Canceled Shows Gave the CBS Hit Its Scale So when we got on Zoom a few weeks ago to talk about the smash first season of 'Nobody Wants This' in the context of the current Emmy season, Foster was thrilled to hear that there was an agenda in place, mostly hinging on chatting through a favorite IndieWire question: 'When did you know this show was a hit?' Still, all that organization and planning soon went out the window, because in addition to being organized and busy, Foster is — much like her alter-ego on the show, Kristen Bell's Joanne — disarmingly honest. ''I don't know' is the not-fun answer,' Foster said with a laugh. 'I definitely didn't know when I first watched it in editing. When I was in the editing process, I was by no means like, 'Wow, get ready, everyone. I have a hit on my hands!' At all. I remember very clearly thinking, 'It's sweet, it's really sweet. I don't think that my friends will make fun of me. But I think they're going to be like, 'It's nice.'' I didn't know if the message I was trying to get across was going to come through.' But while most people would argue that Foster did get her message across — more on that message, and the very personal experiences that inspired it, below — the creator and Season 1 co-showrunner (she shared duties with Craig DiGregorio) was initially concerned that the general genre packaging around the series was different than she was expecting. 'It's sweet and it's soft,' she said. 'I set out to make 'Fleabag' and I ended up making a sweet rom-com. I was like, 'OK, it's not the edgy thing that I thought I was making, but it's actually really sweet.' Then it turned out that was its superpower.' But while the show, which follows Adam Brody and Bell as a seemingly mismatched but extremely appealing new couple, was a hit out of the gate — with strong critical reviews and big-time viewing metrics that pushed it to the top of the streamer's top 10 in its first week — it took Foster a little longer to realize what she had made. I told her that I realized it was breaking through by way of my own metric: my mother had watched it, twice in its entirety, before I had enough time to burn through its first 10 episodes. 'For me, it happened one little step at a time. It was inch by inch,' she said. 'It's different for me than it is for you, with your mom saying that to you, because I had lots of friends' moms saying that to me, too, but it's my show, so they're always going to say that to me. They're going to say, 'I loved your show. I watched it in one night!' It's very hard to gauge outside perception when you're at the center of it.' When Foster saw other celebrities — crucially, other celebrities that she does not personally know — saying in interviews or sharing online that it was their favorite show of the summer, that struck her too. 'That's weird to me,' she said with a laugh. 'I know who you are. You don't know who I am!' While it's relatively easy to measure success by way of stuff like total hours streamed or how quickly it was renewed for a second season (just two weeks after the first season was released, not too shabby), Foster's rom-com also succeeded in other arenas. Like, oh, reminding people just how much they love Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, and giving so-called elder millennials a potent dose of teen nostalgia packaged in something brand new. 'I can't let you call us 'elder millennials,' it's so mean! It is so mean,' Foster said when asked about tapping straight into her own generation with her inspired casting. 'I know that's what we're called. Not to brag, but I had breakfast with Adam when we were offering him the role, and I was sitting across from him and I'm like, 'Damn, this could really work. He is so cute, why don't people know about this?'' That doesn't mean that casting Brody as kind and sexy rabbi Noah and Bell as his more outspoken lady love Joanne was a slam-dunk from the start. 'I was a little bit nervous about this millennial [nostalgia] thing, this 'The O.C.' meets 'Veronica Mars' [casting], because I didn't want the show to be cheesy. I wanted the show to be really well-received and not cutesy. I didn't want it to feel soapy,' Foster said. 'I was a little bit nervous about that, and hesitant about it, but luckily I have people around me who are smarter than me that were like, 'Millennials are going to eat this up and this is great.' Once I got over my fear, I just leaned into it. And when I watched him on camera with Kristen, their chemistry is psychotic. I got lucky, because you can't plan that.' While much has been made of Joanne and Noah's first kiss, for Foster, that 'psychotic' chemistry and obvious romance are on offer almost immediately. When did she know she had really made the right casting choices? 'It's the walk to the car in the pilot [episode],' Foster said. 'That scene was always really, really, really important to me, and it never changed from my original writing of it. Well, the 'Fiddler on the Roof' joke was not mine, that was added later. Originally that line was, 'Say something rabbinical,' and he says, 'Never pay retail.' We changed it to, 'There's a fiddler on the roof,' because it really made us laugh. That scene, I really felt it. I just felt like this is exactly how I wanted the show to feel.' In the first episode, written by Foster and directed by Greg Mottola, brassy podcaster Joanne meets the more strait-laced and steady Noah at a pal's dinner party. That he's a rabbi is one of many things that surprises her, along with his easy charm and clear interest in getting to know her better. When Noah walks Joanne to her car at the end of the evening, their banter is thrilling, but so is the sense that Noah gets her. Even if that means fudging on what he's actually doing. 'I tried to come up with creative ways to get him to be sexy and romantic that's not cookie-cutter,' she said. 'It was like, he's being chivalrous and walking her to her car, but she's like, 'Don't walk me to my car,' and he's like, 'No, my car is right where your car is.' He has a plan, like, I know a girl like this isn't going to want me to walk her to her car, so I have to tell her that I'm walking both of us to our cars. Then, when we get there, I'm going to be like, 'Oh no, I got a space up front.' I didn't have to draw attention to it.' Small moments like that stand out throughout the series, which is based on Foster's own romance with her husband, Simon Tikhman. While Tikhman is not a rabbi (he's in the music business), he is Jewish, and Foster converted to the religion before they married in 2019. For many characters in the series, the pair's mismatched faith is one of the biggest obstacles for their relationship (a rabbi and an agnostic podcaster?!), but Foster's own experiences inspired plenty of other elements of the show, even if not everything is directly pulled from her life. 'Whatever's the best story is what goes on screen. It's not like it has to be true to life by any means,' Foster said. 'My husband's not a rabbi, so there's many things that I have to embellish and change. But I would say that my philosophies are in the show, my philosophies on love, my philosophies on relationships.' She's not just saying that. For Foster, 'Nobody Wants This' is funny, sexy, and romantic, but it's also based on some very personal and quite hard-won life lessons. 'My husband really represents, for me, this idea of a kind of man that I didn't know existed,' she said. 'It doesn't mean that he's perfect Prince Charming or anything like that, it just means that, as modern women, we have been made to believe — because it's true a lot — that you have two options. You have a spicy, sensual, exciting, exhilarating love with a toxic person, or you have a consistent, boring, regular safe option with a nice person. I was really scared of how to make that choice. I was probably going to go with the toxic person, as most women do, because rom-coms typically show us getting the toxic person to choose you and not be toxic anymore. In my experience, you can't get the toxic person to stop being toxic.' When Foster met Tikhman — just like when Joanne meets Noah — it forever altered her perception of what a relationship could be. And she wanted to see that on the screen. 'My relationship with my husband opened my eyes to this third option, which was emotionally healthy, confident, strong, honest, truthful, funny, romantic, but not a pushover,' Foster said. 'I knew how much it blew my mind. I'm like other women, I have a strong personality, but I want an equal partner, someone I can't walk all over, but someone who lets me be myself. I was really excited to show a love story with that kind of guy, because I want every woman to end up in the same kind of marriage I ended up in, which is healthy and fun.' When translating that to the show, Foster didn't get precious about making tweaks and changes to true stories, all the better to serve Joanne and Noah's story. Consider the genesis of the sixth episode in the first season, titled 'The Ick,' in which Joanne feels turned off by Noah trying to impress her family. 'I got the ick with my husband early on because I just got spooked. I got spooked that he was being really nice, and he was trying really hard with my friends and family, and he really wanted this to work out. Those are really nice things,' she said. 'Somehow, it scared me. I had gotten the ick a million times in my life, 'Oh, he's got salad dressing on his mouth, I can't marry him.' The littlest thing can turn you off from someone because they falter in some way. But I never had a guy on the other end of it stop me and be like, 'Don't do that. What are you doing right now? That is stupid. I'm not going to feel embarrassed because I want your parents to like me. You should feel embarrassed.' He really just called me out on it. That was obviously very attractive to me.' The 'ick' that Joanne feels in that moment might be silly or stupid, but it's also deeply human and enormously relatable. That makes it both funny and worth sharing, the kind of entertainment that sticks with you, because it's pulled from the truth. 'I fell madly in love with my husband, and then this really dumb thing made me think that I actually never wanted to be with him again because I wasn't mature enough in that moment to see past the way he said 'Prego' or whatever,' Foster said. 'That's a made-up thing, but the idea of that is true. It's not that I'm proud of being that way, but that's the human experience. I was fucked up and I had bad habits, and I was lucky enough to find someone that my brand of crazy worked for.' As Foster prepares for the series' second season to hit the streamer in October — a season she already promised IndieWire won't hold back on all the stuff its audience already loves, including both romance and comedy, naturally — she's intent on keeping up that kind of honesty, even when it can be a little tough. 'I'm not all the way there, but I'm pretty comfortable exposing my flaws, and when you personalize something, it helps people connect,' Foster said. 'I am willing to do that, because it also makes me feel seen.' The first season of 'Nobody Wants This' is streaming on Netflix. Best of IndieWire 2023 Emmy Predictions: Who Will Win at the Primetime Emmy Awards? 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Nobody Wants This' Season 2 Netflix Premiere Date Revealed, Creator Promises ‘Romantic and Funny' Outing
Netflix know that a lot of somebodies want this. The second season of 'Nobody Wants This' will premiere October 23. The show first dropped on the streamer last September to sparkling reviews, with IndieWire's Proma Khosla praising the chemistry between leads Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. The show, created by Erin Foster, finds Joanne (Bell, also an executive producer) and Noah (Brody) in a would-be conventional love story complicated by Noah's position as a rabbi. Popular podcaster Joanne isn't just not Jewish, she's also unreligious generally — as is her entire non-traditional family. As Noah and Joanne attempt to acclimate to each other's worlds, and Joanne explores converting, things get complicated — to put it lightly. More from IndieWire The Cast and Crew of 'St. Denis Medical' Found Joy and Warmth in the Show's Hospital Setting 'The Gilded Age' Season 3 Trailer: A New Generation Rises as Carrie Coon Tries to Secure Her Status in High Society 'Nobody Wants This' was renewed back in October, but the drop date was not revealed until the June 1 Netflix FYSEE L.A. Emmy event at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles. The evening featured a screening of the pilot followed by a live taping of Foster's 'The World's First Podcast' with Foster, Bell, Brody and fellow cast members Justine Lupe, Timothy Simons, and Jackie Tohn. Stephanie Faracy, Michael Hitchcock, Tovah Feldshuh, Paul Ben-Victor, Emily Arlook, Sherry Cola, and Shiloh Berman will also return for the next batch of episodes, and guests stars will include Miles Fowler, Alex Karpovsky, Arian Moayed, and Bell's 'Gossip Girl' co-star Leighton Meester. Foster based the series on her own life. The actress, writer and podcaster converted to Judaism after falling in love with her Jewish now-husband, Simon Tikhman. Last year, Foster discussed her experience with IndieWire. 'There were about 23 people [in my conversion class] and only three were converting for marriage, which tells you there was 20 very interesting stories going on in that room!' she said. 'And I thought it was just interesting. I hadn't ever seen anybody explore that area, and I thought it'd be cool.' Last month, Foster told IndieWire that Season 2 of 'Nobody Wants This' would be 'romantic and funny.' 'I'm not in the business of depriving people of what they want on a show like this, and making some like, artistic choice to rob you of what you want to see. I really tried to stay on point with Season 1, [it] was all these firsts, first kiss, first date, and this is going to be the next four to six months of the relationship what that looks like,' she said. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Nobody Wants This' Creator Erin Foster Set Out to Make Her Own ‘Fleabag' — Her ‘Really Sweet' Rom-Com Took Her by Surprise
Welcome to It's a Hit! In this series, IndieWire speaks to creators and showrunners behind a few of our favorite television programs about the moment they realized their show was breaking big. Erin Foster is pretty organized. She'd have to be, thanks to a packed schedule that includes many personal obligations (wife, mother, sister, friend) alongside a stuffed professional calendar (which includes her hit Netflix series 'Nobody Wants This,' which she created, plus podcasting, running clothing company Favorite Daughter alongside sister Sara Foster, and much more). More from IndieWire Everything to Remember from 'Squid Game' Season 1 and 2 'Matlock' Production Designer Adam Rowe on How Two Canceled Shows Gave the CBS Hit Its Scale So when we got on Zoom a few weeks ago to talk about the smash first season of 'Nobody Wants This' in the context of the current Emmy season, Foster was thrilled to hear that there was an agenda in place, mostly hinging on chatting through a favorite IndieWire question: 'When did you know this show was a hit?' Still, all that organization and planning soon went out the window, because in addition to being organized and busy, Foster is — much like her alter-ego on the show, Kristen Bell's Joanne — disarmingly honest. ''I don't know' is the not-fun answer,' Foster said with a laugh. 'I definitely didn't know when I first watched it in editing. When I was in the editing process, I was by no means like, 'Wow, get ready, everyone. I have a hit on my hands!' At all. I remember very clearly thinking, 'It's sweet, it's really sweet. I don't think that my friends will make fun of me. But I think they're going to be like, 'It's nice.'' I didn't know if the message I was trying to get across was going to come through.' But while most people would argue that Foster did get her message across — more on that message, and the very personal experiences that inspired it, below — the creator and Season 1 co-showrunner (she shared duties with Craig DiGregorio) was initially concerned that the general genre packaging around the series was different than she was expecting. 'It's sweet and it's soft,' she said. 'I set out to make 'Fleabag' and I ended up making a sweet rom-com. I was like, 'OK, it's not the edgy thing that I thought I was making, but it's actually really sweet.' Then it turned out that was its superpower.' But while the show, which follows Adam Brody and Bell as a seemingly mismatched but extremely appealing new couple, was a hit out of the gate — with strong critical reviews and big-time viewing metrics that pushed it to the top of the streamer's top 10 in its first week — it took Foster a little longer to realize what she had made. I told her that I realized it was breaking through by way of my own metric: my mother had watched it, twice in its entirety, before I had enough time to burn through its first 10 episodes. 'For me, it happened one little step at a time. It was inch by inch,' she said. 'It's different for me than it is for you, with your mom saying that to you, because I had lots of friends' moms saying that to me, too, but it's my show, so they're always going to say that to me. They're going to say, 'I loved your show. I watched it in one night!' It's very hard to gauge outside perception when you're at the center of it.' When Foster saw other celebrities — crucially, other celebrities that she does not personally know — saying in interviews or sharing online that it was their favorite show of the summer, that struck her too. 'That's weird to me,' she said with a laugh. 'I know who you are. You don't know who I am!' While it's relatively easy to measure success by way of stuff like total hours streamed or how quickly it was renewed for a second season (just two weeks after the first season was released, not too shabby), Foster's rom-com also succeeded in other arenas. Like, oh, reminding people just how much they love Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, and giving so-called elder millennials a potent dose of teen nostalgia packaged in something brand new. 'I can't let you call us 'elder millennials,' it's so mean! It is so mean,' Foster said when asked about tapping straight into her own generation with her inspired casting. 'I know that's what we're called. Not to brag, but I had breakfast with Adam when we were offering him the role, and I was sitting across from him and I'm like, 'Damn, this could really work. He is so cute, why don't people know about this?'' That doesn't mean that casting Brody as kind and sexy rabbi Noah and Bell as his more outspoken lady love Joanne was a slam-dunk from the start. 'I was a little bit nervous about this millennial [nostalgia] thing, this 'The O.C.' meets 'Veronica Mars' [casting], because I didn't want the show to be cheesy. I wanted the show to be really well-received and not cutesy. I didn't want it to feel soapy,' Foster said. 'I was a little bit nervous about that, and hesitant about it, but luckily I have people around me who are smarter than me that were like, 'Millennials are going to eat this up and this is great.' Once I got over my fear, I just leaned into it. And when I watched him on camera with Kristen, their chemistry is psychotic. I got lucky, because you can't plan that.' While much has been made of Joanne and Noah's first kiss, for Foster, that 'psychotic' chemistry and obvious romance are on offer almost immediately. When did she know she had really made the right casting choices? 'It's the walk to the car in the pilot [episode],' Foster said. 'That scene was always really, really, really important to me, and it never changed from my original writing of it. Well, the 'Fiddler on the Roof' joke was not mine, that was added later. Originally that line was, 'Say something rabbinical,' and he says, 'Never pay retail.' We changed it to, 'There's a fiddler on the roof,' because it really made us laugh. That scene, I really felt it. I just felt like this is exactly how I wanted the show to feel.' In the first episode, written by Foster and directed by Greg Mottola, brassy podcaster Joanne meets the more strait-laced and steady Noah at a pal's dinner party. That he's a rabbi is one of many things that surprises her, along with his easy charm and clear interest in getting to know her better. When Noah walks Joanne to her car at the end of the evening, their banter is thrilling, but so is the sense that Noah gets her. Even if that means fudging on what he's actually doing. 'I tried to come up with creative ways to get him to be sexy and romantic that's not cookie-cutter,' she said. 'It was like, he's being chivalrous and walking her to her car, but she's like, 'Don't walk me to my car,' and he's like, 'No, my car is right where your car is.' He has a plan, like, I know a girl like this isn't going to want me to walk her to her car, so I have to tell her that I'm walking both of us to our cars. Then, when we get there, I'm going to be like, 'Oh no, I got a space up front.' I didn't have to draw attention to it.' Small moments like that stand out throughout the series, which is based on Foster's own romance with her husband, Simon Tikhman. While Tikhman is not a rabbi (he's in the music business), he is Jewish, and Foster converted to the religion before they married in 2019. For many characters in the series, the pair's mismatched faith is one of the biggest obstacles for their relationship (a rabbi and an agnostic podcaster?!), but Foster's own experiences inspired plenty of other elements of the show, even if not everything is directly pulled from her life. 'Whatever's the best story is what goes on screen. It's not like it has to be true to life by any means,' Foster said. 'My husband's not a rabbi, so there's many things that I have to embellish and change. But I would say that my philosophies are in the show, my philosophies on love, my philosophies on relationships.' She's not just saying that. For Foster, 'Nobody Wants This' is funny, sexy, and romantic, but it's also based on some very personal and quite hard-won life lessons. 'My husband really represents, for me, this idea of a kind of man that I didn't know existed,' she said. 'It doesn't mean that he's perfect Prince Charming or anything like that, it just means that, as modern women, we have been made to believe — because it's true a lot — that you have two options. You have a spicy, sensual, exciting, exhilarating love with a toxic person, or you have a consistent, boring, regular safe option with a nice person. I was really scared of how to make that choice. I was probably going to go with the toxic person, as most women do, because rom-coms typically show us getting the toxic person to choose you and not be toxic anymore. In my experience, you can't get the toxic person to stop being toxic.' When Foster met Tikhman — just like when Joanne meets Noah — it forever altered her perception of what a relationship could be. And she wanted to see that on the screen. 'My relationship with my husband opened my eyes to this third option, which was emotionally healthy, confident, strong, honest, truthful, funny, romantic, but not a pushover,' Foster said. 'I knew how much it blew my mind. I'm like other women, I have a strong personality, but I want an equal partner, someone I can't walk all over, but someone who lets me be myself. I was really excited to show a love story with that kind of guy, because I want every woman to end up in the same kind of marriage I ended up in, which is healthy and fun.' When translating that to the show, Foster didn't get precious about making tweaks and changes to true stories, all the better to serve Joanne and Noah's story. Consider the genesis of the sixth episode in the first season, titled 'The Ick,' in which Joanne feels turned off by Noah trying to impress her family. 'I got the ick with my husband early on because I just got spooked. I got spooked that he was being really nice, and he was trying really hard with my friends and family, and he really wanted this to work out. Those are really nice things,' she said. 'Somehow, it scared me. I had gotten the ick a million times in my life, 'Oh, he's got salad dressing on his mouth, I can't marry him.' The littlest thing can turn you off from someone because they falter in some way. But I never had a guy on the other end of it stop me and be like, 'Don't do that. What are you doing right now? That is stupid. I'm not going to feel embarrassed because I want your parents to like me. You should feel embarrassed.' He really just called me out on it. That was obviously very attractive to me.' The 'ick' that Joanne feels in that moment might be silly or stupid, but it's also deeply human and enormously relatable. That makes it both funny and worth sharing, the kind of entertainment that sticks with you, because it's pulled from the truth. 'I fell madly in love with my husband, and then this really dumb thing made me think that I actually never wanted to be with him again because I wasn't mature enough in that moment to see past the way he said 'Prego' or whatever,' Foster said. 'That's a made-up thing, but the idea of that is true. It's not that I'm proud of being that way, but that's the human experience. I was fucked up and I had bad habits, and I was lucky enough to find someone that my brand of crazy worked for.' As Foster prepares for the series' second season to hit the streamer in October — a season she already promised IndieWire won't hold back on all the stuff its audience already loves, including both romance and comedy, naturally — she's intent on keeping up that kind of honesty, even when it can be a little tough. 'I'm not all the way there, but I'm pretty comfortable exposing my flaws, and when you personalize something, it helps people connect,' Foster said. 'I am willing to do that, because it also makes me feel seen.' The first season of 'Nobody Wants This' is streaming on Netflix. Best of IndieWire 2023 Emmy Predictions: Who Will Win at the Primetime Emmy Awards? 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series
