‘Moden Love’ creators Dan Jones and John Carney: Anne Hathaway’s episode helped an enormous amount of people – Times of India
Stick around to find out the real ending of the Kit Harrington episode, the effect Anne Hathaway had on viewers and all that we can expect from Season 3. We also asked the creators of the show about the possibility of Kshama Bindu’s sologamy story making it to an episode, and here’s what they had to say…
Modern Love, explores love, loss, longing and everything in between… Daniel, you have been the editor of the column Modern Love, for two decades now, tell us, where do you think love goes when it is lost?
Dan Jones: What I have learnt from the columns, in terms of people’s bravery or lack of it, is how people can rebound from lost love and find hope in themselves to love again. Whether that lost love is from someone dying or divorced or separated by distance, it’s always remarkable to me how people get back into the game, knowing the pain they are exposing themselves to again. Depending on who you are, sometimes lost love is never found or recycled again, but for people who are brave and actually living a life, it is found again in someone else.
How would you say love has evolved over the years and in the way it is portrayed onscreen.
Dan: I’m more interested in how love has changed in the pandemic. We are still so close to this pandemic that it is hard to step back and see, but in retrospect, thinking about the pandemic in phases, in the beginning, we didn’t know what it was going to mean and how long it was going to last and how devastating it was going it be. People were in casual relationships and had to go into quarantine, but didn’t want to go in by themselves. What a moment that was! The stories that came in from people scathing along in their romantic lives and found themselves forced to go in with someone. What depth that came from that!
It is the changes like that, that have happened over the past couple of decades, where what happens around the world affects how serious we are in our romantic lives. I think the pandemic for many long-term relationships, has been a pressure cooker and broken up a lot of relationships, but for people who have been able to find love, it has brought them together and made their relationships stronger.
You have some great actors, Anne Hathaway, Dev Patel, Kit Harrington, and Tina Faye who were the easiest to get on board and how did you decide which one to pick for a certain story?
John Carney: When I am writing a story, I don’t like to keep an actor in mind because so often you’ll be disappointed. I go into the casting quite open with 5-10 names. In the Anne Hathaway case, we had been writing to each other back and forth and the Lexi story was the perfect story. I was able to tell her, ‘We are making this show with half-hour episodes, would you read this?’ Right from the beginning, it was always her, there was no one else who could play that role in my mind.
This is such a great show because you can call people and say it is a half-hour commitment, you get to play this character, who is falling in love or dealing with grief. Would you want to do this for 5-6 days? It is an easy and nice thing for an actor to agree as the commitment is short. We haven’t been refused or turned down by many people and we got the ones we had aimed for.
My favourite episode is the one with Kit Harrington, 30 mins of that was not enough… will you consider making that a movie? I’m sure many wanted to know what happened in that story and its cliffhanger ending
John: I did not do that out of being a smart a** filmmaker. The only reason that is an open ending is purely because of the piece it was based on. It was a tiny love story, just a couple of sentences long. That to me was a very delicious pretext for an episode, but I didn’t want to bolt on a happy ending. A lot of people found that episode frustrating to not be able to know if they make it together. I think it was the right thing to do for the show because we can’t contradict the message of the column and show. We decided as a team, ‘let’s not mess with that too much’, otherwise it is like Hollywood.
Dan: My take on that ending was that they did find each other because that was the beginning of a long lockdown and I don’t think it was that long of a street. Kit’s character was camped out.
Have you watched Modern Love: Mumbai? What did you think of it and how is love portrayed differently in different parts of the world?
Dan: I have seen the Mumbai version. What makes me optimistic about the show in Mumbai and other countries, is that the filmmakers pick these universal situations. If you live in Brooklyn, your husband can leave you, even if you live in Mumbai, your husband can leave you and you will have to find another way to get to work and you’ll have to find the other cultural differences in how you tell that story. But that story, that heartbreak, that sort of feminist empowerment way of finding your way back was one of my favourite moments of the Mumbai series. How Rani gets across the bridge at the end and she is not going to follow the rules and not going to be told no, I thought that was brilliant. Same with food being an actor of love between a parent and child and if that child is going to marry someone from another cast, how food is going to become a power struggle. That’s maybe heightened in India, but those kinds of moments and opportunities that the filmmakers seized on, just made me happy about how we are all just people, living in different places, with the same kind of struggles.
At a time when the internet is flooded with erotica, how do you think love stories still find a place in hearts and minds of viewers? Do you think ‘Modern Love’ will eventually explore that darker side of love or would you like it to send a message of hope?
John: When we were making the show, we decided to take on this valiant effort to make a show that will be useful to people. It wasn’t just to entertain you or keep you watching. It was about the idea that when I am going through extreme situations in life, certain pieces of art or culture really speak to me and help me even more than an individual might. I grew up in Ireland and the TV wasn’t about entertainment as much as it was about service. It is, unfortunately, getting eroded because of a few people. The American equivalent of this ‘public service’ is Sessmy street. We are currently losing sight of this because of all the streamers, and content and we don’t really know what to watch. I think it will be kind of cool to make a show where you say, ‘if you have lost someone, watch season 3, episode 8 of Modern Love’ because they are based on true stories. There can be shows that are useful to people at different stages of their lives. Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing to be a part of? I believe we can make content useful, not just entertaining.
Dan: This is storytelling as a teacher, and that is the oldest form there is. The Anne Hathaway episode helped an enormous amount of people. I can’t tell you how much social media I followed that said ‘this episode changed my life’. Another said, ‘this episode made me realise something in a friend that helped me change my life’. So that’s our mission accomplished.
Are you currently working on Season 3? When can we expect it?
John: You are going to have to wait. We are waiting to see what Amazon is doing, but we will figure it out. There is a limitless cache of essays that Dan has worked on. I don’t think it has to be like a plot-based thriller that has to go each year. We can come back in a couple of years and make a season in a different country. We don’t have a plan at the moment, but we are very invested in the show.
John, you mentioned season 3, do you have some rom-com actors in mind who you would like to cast?
John: Yeah! But we are not going to tell you, because if we do, then we’ll give them the upper hand.
In the news these days, you hear of people marrying their pets, and robots, in India a girl Kshama Bindu married herself, do you think these stories will ever find a place in Modern Love, or do you think that is more of a plot for Black Mirror?
John: We could do a series where it is Modern Love/Black Mirror where it is like the more experimental side of love. How technology affects love. It will certainly be interesting to watch. It’s funny because I am just about to make a movie that is about a relationship online and it has a will they, won’t they feel to it. But I am on the fence with this one, I’m not too sure if you can have a deep relationship with the screen. I dated Lauren Bacall for a long time, but I don’t think she knew anything about it. I think people are going to get tired of this ‘wonderful technology and that you can’t have this ‘global reach’ that we’re having these relationships and friendships and zoom calls. But quite frankly, I’d marry myself. I see the appeal in that.
Dan: One of my founding philosophies of Modern love was that it had to be about two people. The idea of a pet, robot or even yourself, the complexity comes from someone who is in a position to not give you what you want or give you what you want. There has to be some kind of negotiation and equal opposing force. We’ve had plenty of people submitting stories of their love for a book, movie, city, or robot, but it has to be an equal and opposing force to produce conflict and drama.
A message for fans watching in India and around the world?
John: All you need is love.
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