Adam Brody Recalls the Funny Moment He Knew Nobody Wants This Was a Hit (Exclusive)

There was a very specific moment when the success of Nobody Wants This hit for Adam Brody.

The actor, who plays beloved “hot rabbi” Noah in the series alongside Kristen Bell, tells PEOPLE at the Oct. 16 premiere of season 2 in Los Angeles about the moment he “knew” the series — which debuted last year and returned Oct. 23 — had swept the globe.

“I was in Scotland. My wife was working,” he recalls, referring to Leighton Meester, who makes a cameo in season 2. “[It was] pretty quickly after the show came out, it’s like a month after, and we were walking by and some high school field hockey girls were like, ‘We love the show. You’re from the show. We love the show.'”

“And then we went to a pub and sat down, and some 70-something Scottish guys in the pub were like, ‘Love the show,'” Brody, 45, says. “And I was like, this is crossing generations.”

He’s hesitant to pick a “favorite fan reaction,” but the response in Scotland, he says, was “how I knew, like, ‘Oh, wow, this is connecting with a wide swath of people.'”

Last year, he told PEOPLE he was pleasantly surprised at how well the show took off. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and it doesn’t happen often, whoever you are,” The O.C. alum said. “So it’s very gratifying and exciting.”

As for how he was adjusting to the “hot rabbi” lust, he said last November, “I mean, the short answer is good.”

“But I’m truly not called it all that much to my face. That’s mostly happening elsewhere online, so it’s like it’s happening to another person. But I’m not mad at it.”

Meester, who Brody married in 2014, said she thought the hype the show was getting — and particularly the kiss between Bell, 45, and Brody that went viral — was “great.”

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“It’s okay, I like it,” she told Access Hollywood last year. “How do I feel about the kiss? I think it’s great.”

In that same interview, Brody, who shares two kids with Meester, made sure to give his wife credit. “She taught me,” he said of his romantic chops. “I mean, you know, she gets the good stuff. That’s not even like the A-material.”

Nobody Wants This season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.