Who's heartthrob is Adam Brody anyway? Gen X, millennials fight to claim him as their own after binging 'Nobody Wants This'

The sway that Adam Brody holds over generations of TV watchers cannot be underestimated.

Audiences first got a taste of his awkward but endearing appeal as Dave Rygalski in Season 3 of Gilmore Girls. With the debut of The O.C. in 2003, fans were locked in on Brody’s quick wit and charm as Seth Cohen, a comic book-reading, Death Cab for Cutie-listening teen from Newport Beach, Calif. As Cohen, Brody is cute and self-deprecating. He has “geeky” interests that make him not like other guys — and unlike his brooding bad boy counterpart, Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie), he’s upbeat, approachable and often optimistic. He’s a nice guy who actually finishes first.

Now, the 44-year-old actor is capturing hearts sooner than you can say “California” with his latest Netflix series. In Nobody Wants This, Brody plays Noah Roklov, a recently single rabbi in L.A. who falls for an agnostic sex podcaster played by fellow aughts darling, Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell. Their characters’s romance doesn’t exactly make sense to their friends and family, nor does it seem likely to succeed. They decide to give it a go anyway.

For some fans, Roklov is a grown-up version of Cohen — though Brody has politely refuted this. (“I don’t think Seth Cohen would have been a rabbi,” he told Yahoo Entertainment in a recent interview.) Still, Brody’s return to his roots as an unconventional heartthrob has viewers in a frenzy.

Nobody Wants This hit No. 2 on Netflix’s top 10 most popular TV shows globally, garnering more than 10.3 million views in the days following its Sept. 26 premiere. On social media, viewers — many of whom are longtime Brody fans — have shared their love for the romantic comedy and its leading man.

Among fans though, a debate, or generational war, has begun: Does Brody belong to Gen X-ers or millennials?

Four days after the show premiered, one fan wrote on X that both Brody and Dawson’s Creek alum Joshua Jackson (who is also having a moment thanks to ABC’s Doctor Odyssey) belong to Generation X. She argued that because Brody and Jackson, were born in 1979 and 1978, respectively, they fall into the Gen X demographic, which encompasses those born between 1965 and 1980.

Millennials disagree.

Some millennials argue that Brody belongs to their generation given that Seth Cohen was in high school at the same time many of them were also attending. (They grew up together, so to speak.) Fans of The O.C. believe Cohen was born in be 1988. But who’s to say Cohen or Brody’s birth years should factor into this so-called generational divide? Should we really be getting all that technical with it?

The millennial camp’s stance is also that Brody’s generational heartthrob status should be determined by the age of his core fan base, which has been millennials. There are statistics to back this up too. In May 2003, Variety reported that The O.C. was a “huge draw” among teenagers, particularly those between 12 and 17.

Beyond social media, news outlets are vouching for Brody and the rom-com series as being irrevocably millennial. Vogue asked if Brody was the “defining millennial crush,” while USA Today referred to the new show as one that warms the “cold hearts of millennials.”

The L.A. Times, A.V. Club and BuzzFeed have also acknowledged the series’s hold over nostalgic people in their late 20s to early 40s who grew up watching the very shows that made Brody and Bell famous, with phrases like “millennial magic” and “millennial heaven” being used to describe the Netflix hit. Brody even referred to him and Bell as a “generationally approved couple” for millennials in an interview with Newsweek.

Brody isn’t the only early aughts star enjoying a resurgence in both career and heartthrob status. In fact, he’s the latest in a series of actors experiencing a second coming. Jackson, who rose to fame as lovestruck jokester Pacey Witter on Dawson’s Creek, now stars on Doctor Odyssey, which premiered on ABC the same day as Nobody Wants This. Prior to his turn in the Ryan Murphy show, Jackson starred on Paramount+’s Fatal Attraction. Jackson and Brody are also joined by fellow teen heartthrob Josh Hartnett, who shined as an unassuming serial killer in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap and guest-starred on a Season 3 episode of FX’s The Bear.

So, which generation gets bragging rights over Brody? While a definitive answer has yet to be made, Netflix did caution audiences and their “millennial hearts” ahead of the show’s debut.

That’s gotta count for something, right?

This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.