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Justine Lupe Loves The ‘gray Areas’ Of The Loser Siblings’ ‘weird Kind Of Dynamic’ On ‘nobody Wants This’
Willa couldn’t have scripted a better past two years for Justine Lupe if she tried. After wrapping the fourth and final season of “Succession,” on which she played everyone’s favorite aspiring playwright and one-time potential first lady Willa Ferreyra, the actress moved right into another hit show, “Nobody Wants This,” which she filmed while pregnant with her first child.
“It’s been awesome,” Lupe tells Gold Derby. “There was a, some heartbreak with leaving ‘Succession,’ just because while you’re in it, that it’s one of the best things that you’ll ever do because there’s just so few things that are ever that good. And saying goodbye to all my friends was pretty tough because you become close over six years of shooting together. But to have it followed up with another phenomenal, fun, interesting group of people with great writing that was totally different than what I’d done before and maybe gave me a little bit more responsibility, as an actress, it’s just been such a gift. And on top of that, to be pregnant while going through the whole process was also just awesome, so I feel very, very, very grateful for the last two years.”
The Netflix series, which was renewed for a second season two weeks after its Sept. 26 premiere, follows the romance between Noah (Adam Brody), an unorthodox rabbi, and Joanne (Kristen Bell), an agnostic podcaster. Creator Erin Foster based it on her own life as she converted to Judaism before marrying her husband Simon Tikhman. Lupe plays Morgan, Joanne’s sister and podcast co-host who is loosely based on Foster’s sister, Sara Foster, with whom Foster hosts a podcast, “The World’s First Podcast.” “Morgan isn’t an exact approximation of Sara, and Sara would say that she has nothing to do with [Morgan],” Lupe says. “But I was inspired by Sara and had a lot of fun, just kind of, like, picking up on her mannerisms and the way she dressed and the way she carried herself and having fun with like, ‘Ok, well, what is all this like? What leads to create this kind of a person?'”
Morgan is the black sheep — or the loser sibling as fellow self-professed loser sibling Sasha (Timothy Simons), Noah’s brother, calls her. At first blush, Morgan does come across just as the typical free-spirited, slightly irresponsible, and unfiltered younger sibling. She thinks Noah and Joanne’s relationship is ridiculous and won’t last because Joanne is a messy dater and none of Joanne’s relationships have lasted. But her blunt remarks belie a deeper sadness: Morgan knows this could last and doesn’t want things to change.
SEE Netflix renews ‘Nobody Wants This’ for Season 2 with new showrunners
“I definitely know the feeling of being in this like kind of codependent relationship with another woman, where you’re deeply enmeshed with another woman. You’re sleeping in the same beds as each other and you’re dating each other without any physical intimacy. And so I know what it’s like to be left behind because someone has to start the next chapter of their life with someone else,” Lupe says. “And there is like something like heartbreaking about that. I remember reading ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and feeling that between Helena and Hermia, like that kind of just devastation that comes with like one of you falling in love. I feel like [with] Morgan, it’s not necessarily this super cerebral heavy thing, but it’s like a chaotic response to the pain that she’s feeling and that’s kind of like that. She’s just all action and all talk and all responsiveness and all reactivity. I don’t think it’s deep-seated in some wish that her sister doesn’t find love or some ill intent. I think it’s just like a kind of like an immature way of handling some deep heartbreak and she’s never dealt with that before.”
Morgan bristles at Sasha dubbing them the loser siblings, but Lupe believes it’s less about Morgan not thinking she’s the loser sibling and more about her being viewed as the incompetent one. In the pilot, a Spotify executive calls Joanne about their potential podcast acquisition and asks if Morgan needs to be there or does she not matter. “Hi, I matter,” Morgan says. Later, when Joanne is on a weekend getaway/work trip at a Jewish camp with Noah, Morgan tries to prove her bona fides at a solo dinner with Spotify reps.
“I think she has a long history of being seen as maybe the dumber one or is the one who’s not as capable or who’s not heading the front. And she would like more responsibility and for people to have more faith in her skill and her smarts,” Lupe says. “But I also think she has a real confidence, like the whole thing about ‘we’re the mean girls, we’re gonna come in, they can’t screw with you.’ She kind of is untouchable in a certain way. That comes with kind of being this untethered, unfiltered person who has a lot of awareness of what people think of her but also just doesn’t have the capacity to negotiate with that.”
Lupe sees that kind of confidence in her previous TV character too. “I think Willa has a similar thing. She’s existing in this shark pool with all these kind of biting, vicious humans and she’s kind of moves through it a little bit unscathed because she just doesn’t care. And there’s something really fun about playing the person who’s just like, ‘OK, whatever, like you can try.’ I think Morgan’s got more chaos to her than Willa, but she’s definitely got the same untouchable element to her that I find really fun to play because that’s just not who I am as a person.”
“Nobody Wants This” is not a “will they, won’t they?” with Noah and Joanne, but Morgan and Sasha have become the “will they, won’t they?” of the show. The loser siblings grow closer as the season progresses, becoming secret texting buddies, and have the kind of compelling but confusing chemistry that rides the line between romance and friendship. It’s complicated by the fact that Sasha is married with a teen daughter, but that hasn’t stopped some fans from shipping them and making fancams. Lupe sees Morgan as “agent of chaos” but not a homewrecker and embraces the opaqueness of their “weird kind of dynamic.”
“I think the thing that Tim and I really tried to remind ourselves of and tap into was and talked about was just that this is something that happens in adult relationships — that you meet people that you find magnetic and that you find sparkly and that you want to play with. And it’s confusing,” she says. “The boundaries can be confusing. You know what the hard, set boundaries are, which is, I’m not gonna make a transgression, it’s not gonna be an adultery type of situation. But then there are all the gray areas of like, is it OK to like speak this way to someone? Is it OK to like take a sip of someone’s drink? Is it OK to text? When you’re young, it’s kind of cut and dry and you’re not in these established lives. But when you’re making these relationships as adults with other people that you find magnetic, you have to navigate what that energy is. So we kind of just tried to have fun with that.”
Lupe is tight-lipped about Season 2 but is excited about some of the “fun” storylines on deck. And this time, she won’t be pregnant and have to hide her bump as she did in Season 1 with a big assist from costume designer Negar Ali-Kline, who brought her in every week for a fitting. “That I know for sure. I can very publicly say I will not be pregnant next season. There will be tight clothing. There will be a whole different thing,” she says. “I had a blast being a pregnant lady, doing my thing. I loved it. I’m really grateful for that experience and I’m also excited to not do it pregnant.”
