Tovah Feldshuh is pushing back sharply against Nobody Wants This co-star Adam Brody’s description of the war in Gaza as a genocide, while making clear that their opposing views did not create political conflict on the set of the Netflix series.
Feldshuh, who plays Bina, the strong-willed Jewish mother of Brody’s rabbi Noah, responded after Brody addressed the war during an interview with GQ ahead of the show’s now-streaming third season.
“Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine,” Brody said. “It’s awful that it’s taken so much death and misery, but it does feel like it’s reaching a breaking point that it should have a while ago.”
Feldshuh rejects Brody’s characterization
Asked about those remarks, Feldshuh told The New York Post that she strongly objected to what she viewed as an accusation against Jewish people.
“To accuse the Jewish people of genocide is wild,” she said. “It’s right out of Hitler’s playbook. You take the victim and you make the victim the perpetrator.”
Feldshuh, a Jewish veteran of Broadway, television and film, also argued that such statements carry additional weight when they come from Jewish public figures with large platforms.
“[It] makes a difference to the [Jewish] community,” she said. “I believe that the perseverance of the existence of the state of Israel is crucial to the well-being of the democratic world and of the free world. Of course, Israel needs the United States, [but] the United States needs Israel, believe you me.”
Despite that forceful disagreement, Feldshuh said politics did not become a source of tension at work. She described her responsibility, both personally and through her role as Bina, as treating her colleagues with affection and kindness.
“My job, as Bina but also as Tovah, is to love the people on set at my place of work, to be kind,” Feldshuh said. “With the backdrop of global antisemitism. I am thrilled to be chosen to play a Jewish matriarch. Thrilled and proud, and that will never change.”
The debate arrives as Nobody Wants This continues the relationship story between Noah and Joanne, the non-Jewish character played by Kristen Bell. The couple navigates religious and other obstacles throughout the romantic comedy, with season three ending on a major development for their relationship.
Brody has portrayed other Jewish characters, including Seth Cohen in The O.C. and Seth Morris in Fleishman Is in Trouble. He has previously described his own religious education by saying he “barely got bar mitzvahed and retained nothing from it.”
Erin Foster and the show’s former adviser also respond
Series creator Erin Foster addressed Brody’s comments while promoting the third season, telling the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast that “it’s complicated.”
Foster compared the show’s workplace to dinner tables where people debate difficult subjects and do not always reach the same conclusion.
“While I love Adam, I also disagree with him, and that’s okay,” she said.
Foster also spoke directly to the show’s Jewish audience, saying she sees and understands their concerns. She described Nobody Wants This as a continuing “love letter to Judaism” and tied that purpose to her own experience of becoming Jewish.
“Sitting here right now at this time in the world where there is almost zero positive representation of Jewish people, I think it’s so important to have that,” Foster said. She added that others remain entitled to opinions different from hers, while emphasizing the intention behind the series.
Rabbi Steve Leder, the former senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, also condemned Brody’s remarks. Foster converted to Judaism at that synagogue, and Leder served as a technical adviser during the first season, consulting with the cast and crew on Jewish representation and Brody’s portrayal of a rabbi.
Addressing Brody directly, Leder cited the actor’s previous description of his Jewish knowledge and said, “If you know nothing about something, you should say nothing about it.”
Leder disputed Brody’s use of the term genocide and criticized the phrasing of his comment as flippant. “If you’re going to use a word like genocide, you better know what it means,” he said.
ShowBiz Take
The significance of this dispute reaches beyond a single exchange between co-stars. Feldshuh, Foster and Leder have each challenged Brody’s comments from different positions within the world of Nobody Wants This: as a cast member, the show’s creator and a former technical adviser responsible for helping shape its Jewish representation.
At the same time, both Feldshuh and Foster have separated personal disagreement from their working relationships with Brody. Their comments present a set where sharply different views can coexist, even as the people behind the series publicly debate language, identity and the responsibilities that come with a prominent platform.