'Acting while pregnant was a really healing experience'

Justine Lupe, star of the hit Netflix culture-clash romcom 'Nobody Wants This', talks to Katie Rosseinsky about her character's new trajectory for season two, starting over in her thirties, and filming while she was expecting her first child

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Watching Netflix’s 2024 smash hit Nobody Wants This, it’s pretty hard not to fall for Justine Lupe. Yes, ostensibly the effervescent romcom is all about the love story between agnostic podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell) and progressive rabbi Noah (Adam Brody). But it’s Joanne’s acerbic younger sister Morgan, played by Lupe, who gets all the best lines (and the best outfits).

If things ever threaten to tiptoe into schmaltzy territory, Lupe is there to shatter it with her deadpan delivery and a weapons-grade eye-roll. “As someone who also does not have much of a filter as a person in the world, I feel Morgan,” the actor laughs. “It’s really fun playing someone who’s a bit unbridled.” She’s speaking over Zoom just after the show’s Los Angeles press conference, sleekly dressed in a brown blazer with impressively voluminous sleeves, and a sheet of blonde hair tucked behind her shoulders (until it breaks free when she becomes animated, punctuating her sentences with gestures).

The series, now in its second season, isn’t just a great showcase for her comic timing; it’s also her biggest part to date. Before it, you probably recognised the 36-year-old for scene-stealing supporting roles in the likes of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, Mr Mercedes and Succession. In the latter, she played Willa, the escort turned playwright turned aspiring First Lady who eventually agrees to marry Alan Ruck’s Connor, the eldest Roy sibling and family black sheep (accepting his proposal with the immortal line: “Fuck it. Come on, how bad can it be?”). She was only ever meant to appear in three episodes, but impressed showrunner Jesse Armstrong so much that she ended up sticking around for all four seasons of the Emmy-winning drama.

The first round of