Adam Brody Says Leighton Meester “Deserved A Little More” From His Proposal

If you’ve already breezed through Nobody Wants This Season 3 (and spoilers ahead if you haven’t!), you know that Noah goes to great lengths to plan a beautiful proposal to Joanne. While the day has a few hiccups, he pops the question wearing a bloody mary-soaked suit, and she answers it in her airplane sweats. The moment itself is delightfully personal, adorned with her favorite flowers, wine, and a Taylor Swift song. Oh, to be known!

But Adam Brody (who plays Noah, the aptly nicknamed hot rabbi) took a less elaborate route when he proposed to his real-life wife, Leighton Meester.

The topic of engagement stories came up during the Nobody Wants This cast’s Oct. 26 appearance on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard. When it was Brody’s turn to share, he said he’d “spare the details,” but assured his friends, “It was not as romantic as it should have been.”

Brody did give himself some credit for being swift to the marriage question. “The only thing romantic about it was the speed — meaning like, I proposed pretty quickly into our relationship,” he said. “We got married fast.”

Still, he seems to regret not planning something bigger than his so-called “pedestrian” proposal. “You’re gonna tell that story the rest of your life, you know? So my advice is, do it — not even just for the moment, but for the story you’re gonna tell forever,” he said.

His on-screen brother Timothy Simons said he loved Brody’s “pragmatic” nature, suggesting his simpler proposal was an extension of that.

“There’s that and yet, and yet... I do kick myself a little,” Brody said. “She deserved a little more.”

Proposal aside, there’s no arguing with the couple’s track record. Josh Schwartz — who helmed their respective teen dramas, Gossip Girl and The O.C. — first introduced the actors, and they eventually worked together on the 2011 film The Oranges before starting a relationship a year later, Brody shared on Anna Faris’ Unqualified podcast.

They got married in 2014 — not that you’d have seen the wedding pictures. As Meester previously told Bustle of their nuptials, “On sets and in life, I’ve been able to wear a fancy dress and hit a mark and say lines, and I didn’t want it to feel like that. I wanted it to feel intimate and private.” Today, Brody and Meester share two children.