Chances are pretty high you’ve binged Erin Foster’s hit show Nobody Wants This—more than 10 million people did in just its first four days on Netflix—and are anxiously awaiting season two. But if you haven’t, here’s the gist of the series without spoilers: A chronically single LA-based podcaster named Joanne (played by millennial favorite Kristen Bell) falls for a charming and emotionally available “hot rabbi,” Noah (the impossibly charismatic Adam Brody). Chemistry ensues.
It’s fair to say the series, which is loosely based on Foster’s courtship with her now-husband, music executive Simon Tikhman, struck a chord with the masses. The hit show quickly rose to the #1 spot on Netflix’s coveted Top 10 list, where it stayed for two weeks. And since then, it’s been a full-on Nobody Wants This media frenzy, with lots of (well-deserved) think pieces about how Joanne and Noah’s partnership is the healthy relationship we needed to see on TV, and whether the show’s female Jewish characters were fairly portrayed, and why Kristen Bell and Adam Brody just may be the ultimate rom-com duo.
But one narrative has been missing from the conversation: The impact Erin Foster’s difficult fertility journey had on Nobody Wants This. The 42-year-old writer, who gave birth to her first daughter, Noa, in May, went through 20 rounds of IVF (20 egg retrievals and five embryo transfers) before she became pregnant…and around half of those rounds took place while she was working on the show. As someone who’s gone through seven rounds myself, with no clear end in sight, I was stunned when I read that she’d managed to create such a smart and relatable series against the incredibly challenging, all-consuming backdrop of IVF. Because make no mistake: IVF is all-consuming. Throughout the first half of this year, I interviewed 30 other women who’ve also struggled with long and winding fertility journeys, and the biggest takeaway message was that IVF treatments can take over your life. The appointments and injections and procedures are completely overwhelming, as are the emotions. The whole thing is soul-crushing. Relentless. And so I wondered: How did Erin do it?
The truth is, it wasn’t easy. I sat down with her on Zoom to chat about her journey, and the impact it had on her creative process—including the period when IVF left her too numb to write at all. Read on for Erin’s story, and her advice for others going through it, too.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Allure: A lot of people don’t understand that IVF doesn’t always work right away. That it can take years, as it did for you. Can you take me through your own long journey?
EF: It started when I went to have my eggs checked right after my 34th birthday. I was single for all of my adult life, and I just thought, ‘It’s weird that I’ve never had an accidental pregnancy.’ After I got checked, I found out I have a really low egg count [also known as a low ovarian reserve]. So I thought, ‘Well, I guess I should get ahead of this and freeze my eggs.’ But I only got three eggs after my retrieval. Then I did another round about a year later, and only got two eggs. I met my husband [music executive Simon Tikhman] after that, and was gearing up to do a third retrieval before my 36th birthday. He wasn’t ready to do a round with me [where we would freeze embryos] because we’d only been dating for four months, so I did a third round by myself. I got three eggs again, bringing my count to eight eggs total.