Meet The Woman Behind Joanne’s Glow in ‘Nobody Wants This’ Season 3

Beauty

María Alejandra García explains how she uses a feather-light touch to chart Kristen Bell’s character’s evolution—plus, the story behind the show's Finding Ferdinand lipstick line.

Behind Joanne’s enviable, just-stepped-out-into-the-Los-Angeles-sun glow on “Nobody Wants This” is makeup artist María Alejandra García, who has worked with Kristen Bell for more than two decades. For García, creating Joanne’s look is about understanding not just the actress’s features, but the woman she’s playing. This season, she leaned further into luminous skin to reflect Joanne’s newfound ease in her relationship with hot rabbi Noah (Adam Brody).

As García puts it, the goal is for Joanne to look “effortless,” rather than as though she’s spent hours in the makeup chair. “I just want the viewer to be like, she looks cute, but that she is cute because there’s not too much going on,” she says. Achieving that level of nonchalance, however, takes a carefully considered hand. García gave Bell individual lashes, brushed her brows with gel, layered blush with bronzer exactly where the sun would hit, and used concealer that matched her natural undertones. “She has pretty much a full makeup,” García explains. “But the thing is, you have to know how to blend, you have to know how to work with the light. That way it translates that she is definitely glowing. It's a natural look, but enhanced.”

Kristen Bell in "Nobody Wants This" season three.
Netflix

placeholder — Kristen Bell in "Nobody Wants This" season three.
Netflix

That balance shifts when Joanne heads to her conversion classes, where her makeup becomes slightly more polished, with a darker eye, fuller lashes, and a little more color. “She's showing up with a bit more of a statement look,” García says. To give Joanne that alert, class-ready appearance, she added more definition around the eyes with black eyeliner and slightly fuller lashes. There was also more color in the overall look, giving her face a little extra presence.

To make Bell look younger in the flashback episode, which sees Joanne revisiting an earlier version of herself, before she met Noah, García pulled from her own archive. “I actually used the same makeup I used in the first season—the same brands, the same techniques,” García says. She returned to reference images to remind herself of the choices she had made then. “It’s funny because I’ve known Kristen for 20-something years, and so I also went back to ‘Veronica Mars’ because I knew what I used on her then,” she says.

She also printed reference images from the period and shared them with the production team, using Bell’s earlier look as a visual north star for the episode. “It was a completely different way of approaching makeup back then. “There was less contouring and bronzers and I didn't use any glowing at all. it was way more matte.” She also intentionally gave Bell thinner brows, reflecting the beauty trends of the ’00s.

María Alejandra García in the Finding Ferdinand x 'Nobody Wants This' Campaign

Finding Ferdinand

María Alejandra García in the Finding Ferdinand x 'Nobody Wants This' Campaign

Finding Ferdinand

It’s safe to say García knows Bell’s face well. Over more than two decades of collaboration, she has developed an instinctive understanding of the actress’s bone structure and how to enhance it for different roles. But their relationship goes beyond familiarity with Bell’s features. “It's a lot about trusting and a lot about energy,” García says. Sometimes, she adds, they work in silence. “I don't have to talk to Kristen when I touch her face.”

García’s work on “Nobody Wants This” has also inspired a lip balm line that takes her expertise beyond the screen. In partnership with Finding Ferdinand, she has created two shades that began as a color-mixing experiment at her makeup station. “It's very fulfilling for me that this is something that started on set,” she says. “We started thinking about this in season one, and it’s finally out now.”

García says it all started when she began combining products—including two of Finding Ferdinand’s existing lip balms—to achieve specific looks on Bell in the first season. When the brand’s co-founders, Nhu Le and My Le, learned how much García enjoyed mixing their products to create new shades, they reached out, and the collaboration was born.

There are two shades: Shiksa, a pink, and Sister, a deeper burgundy. The names nod to the show’s themes, as well as the fact that, like “Nobody Wants This,” Finding Ferdinand is the brainchild of two sisters. The lip balms combine García’s professional understanding of color with the versatility of an everyday product, designed to work across different skin tones and to be worn as a subtle tint or built up for more intensity.

It’s an apt extension of the philosophy behind Joanne’s makeup. Whether García is creating a convincing no-makeup look, giving her a little more polish, or revisiting an aesthetic from a decade ago, the goal goes beyond making Bell look beautiful. It’s about making the makeup feel as though it belongs to the person wearing it.