Nobody Wants This is a rom-com without a magical meet cute. It’s about what happens when two grown-ups meet and are challenged by each other and attracted to each other and know what they want. A lot of the genre is “built on the premise of a big misunderstanding and then you run that as long as you can get away with it,” says co-star Adam Brody. But in this show, out Sept. 26, “they know each other, they quickly fall into bed together, and then it’s more of the day-to-day and reality of the situation.”

Brody knows from rom-coms: The California-born actor perfected the archetype of the sweet, nerdy, teenage boyfriend in his early acting roles on Gilmore Girls and The O.C. In the subsequent decades, Brody’s résumé has been decidedly more eclectic — but his career choices have never been calculated. So while he followed up Seth Cohen with a devil-worshiping rock star in Jennifer’s Body or a sex toy CEO alongside Bell in House of Lies, it was never really a strategic decision.

“I’m just like, what’s either the most talented group of individuals I can work with next,” he says, “or what’s the smartest story I can be a part of telling next? And hopefully those two things are one and the same — and then I will take a cameo or be a psycho or be a romantic lead. It’s an afterthought what I’m actually playing.”

Nobody Wants This sees Brody recapture his crown as TV’s premier romantic lead playing Noah, a devout rabbi recently (like, very recently) out of a long-term relationship who meets outspoken sex and dating podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell) at a dinner party. Their chemistry instantly ignites. But Brody’s a very different kind of romantic lead this time around: “He’s an adult,” Brody says. “He’s a rabbi, so I have a whole profession and thousands of years of history to dig into (so I get to do my actorly research as well).”

There is an adult wisdom the characters share in their perspective on relationships. They know what they’re doing, and what they don’t want. That’s because, as co-star Jackie Tohn points out, Nobody Wants This is “of an age.”

“It’s not, like, two 21-year-olds,” she tells Tudum. “As much as that’s fun and exciting and we love to watch that, the stakes aren’t as high, right? If you’re 24 and it doesn’t work out, you’re like, ‘cool.’ If you’re in your mid-thirties, well, stakes are a little higher.”

What’s the smartest story I can be a part of telling next?
—Adam Brody

In real life, Brody has been married for a decade, and has his own adult perspective to bring to the material. “These characters that are at an earlier stage [in their relationship], they’re wise in their own ways,” he says. “But I think Kristen and I can also bring a lived experience to [them] and help inform the reality of coupledom a bit.”

Bell, who rose to fame as fast-talking teenage detective Veronica Mars around the same time as Brody’s own star was on the rise, has known him for 20 years. “He’s so engaging, but none of it seems planned,” she told Netflix of her friend turned co-star. “When you’re acting with Adam, you feel like you’re actually talking to a human being. It’s almost as if the lines weren’t scripted. He’s so natural.”

But just because there’s a camaraderie between the actors doesn’t mean that chemistry will always translate to screen. “Even though we’ve worked together before,” he says of Bell, “it was much more brief and it was never in characters that were quite this in sync or harmonious with each other. It was an open question, truly, to both of us how well it would work.”

Brody credits creator Erin Foster, who loosely based Joanne and Noah’s relationship on her own marriage, for that lived-in feeling. “Erin wrote some great banter,” he says. “She wrote these two characters. [Kristen and I] could have all the chemistry in the world, but if the characters are making very questionable actions or doing off-putting things, you’re still probably not going to want them to be together. So I think the tracks were laid very nicely for you to care about these characters and want them to be together.”

Kristen Bell as Joanne and Adam Brody as Noah in Nobody Wants This

Noah is a rabbi, but that doesn’t mean he’s straitlaced. He’s confident speaking to women — he knows his own appeal. He radiates charm. He’s up for an adventure, like a first date excursion to a sex shop. But he also panics when he meets Joanne’s family, anxiously fishing a sport coat from his trunk in order to make a good impression and inadvertently giving her “the ick.”

“As a guy, Adam is charming and he is good-looking,” says Timothy Simons, who plays Noah’s brother, Sasha. “But also in Adam’s life, he is kind of a nerd about stuff. He is a little bit of an overthinker. It’s funny that he can play into that, and if he needs to grab your face and kiss you on the street, it also works.”

About that kiss.

At one point in Nobody Wants This, Joanne describes a shared steamy moment as “the single greatest kiss of my entire existence.”

“It says that in the stage directions too,” Brody tells Tudum. So, how does one go about staging “the single greatest kiss” of someone’s life?

“We didn’t talk about it much,” says Brody. “The stage was set for something grand,” but when it came time to execute the daunting move, Brody knew what he had to do: “for me, what it mostly meant was just really take your time and luxuriate in it.”

Don’t worry — he does.

Teases Brody, “it’s a wonderful alchemy that came together really nicely.”

Nobody Wants This is out Sept. 26 on Netflix.