How Amazon Picked Which ‘Modern Love’ Essays to Translate to the Screen

Amazon’s Modern Love is a cynic’s nightmare. Obscenely earnest, sweetly vulnerable, and unabashed in its optimism, the star-studded anthology series is out to prove there’s a whole lot of love in the world.

Each episode of Modern Love is a dramatization of one of the hundreds of essays that The New York Times editor Daniel Jones has selected for the popular column of the same name. “What makes a good column is a combination of vulnerability and intelligence. And those are kind of at odds in a way because when someone is really vulnerable it seems like they’re out of control and they’re not smart in a way,” Jones said to Decider following Modern Love‘s panel at Summer TCA. “But being able to go through something that makes you vulnerable and come to an understanding and some sort of wisdom, that’s the tightrope you need to walk to do that kind of writing well.”

As the mastermind behind the column’s appeal, Jones was brought on as a consultant for Amazon’s adaptation of the column. He explained that he didn’t see much difference between an essay that worked well on the page and one that was perfect for adaptation, noting that’s how Modern Love‘s producers approached their decisions. “They’re looking for stories that have real vulnerability, but it’s done in a smart way. It’s not simplified and it’s not exploited,” Jones said.

Shepherding Modern Love‘s translation to the screen is showrunner John Carney. Jones praised Carney and said the Once and Sing Street director was “not afraid of being earnest.”

Cristin Milioti stars in the first episode of Modern Love, “When the Doorman is Your Main Man,” as a young woman who finds more solace in a friendship with her doorman than with her potential suitors. Milioti ironically starred in the Broadway adaptation of Carney’s Once, and she agreed with Jones’s take on why Carney was perfect for Modern Love.

“I think what I love about John [Carney] is that he’s really comfortable in the uncomfortable, and I think that’s where the best stories come from,” Milioti told Decider. “He wants to delve deep. He wants to be like, ‘Yeah, let’s get into the stuff that’s grey. Let’s get into the nuance. Let’s not just package it.'”

“I love the phone conversations I have with [Carney] when he talks about how he thinks about this on a deeper level and how a show like this can have a positive impact on a world that just feels meaner by the day,” Jones said. “How returning to this kind of basic human one-on-one relationship, the dignity of that, is a positive force in the world today.”

Actor Gary Carr plays a handsome man who falls in a flirtation with Anne Hathaway’s character in the third episode of Modern Love, “Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am.” Carr admitted to being a huge fan of Hathaway’s going back to The Princess Diaries — “I wasn’t going to say it,” he joked. But he was also hyped to work on a project that amplified that spirit of “love.”

“I feel like there is a lot of love in the world. I see it everywhere, all the time. It’s just not reported all the time,” Carr said.

“Anything that makes people open their heart and feel less alone, or like makes them want to reach out and have a connection to someone regardless of outcome is incredible,” Milioti said.

Jones teased that there have already been conversations about which essays have the potential to work for a Season Two, but right now he’s more focused on managing the massive inbox of submissions he gets for the column. And yes, he’s worried that Modern Love might cause a tsunami of submissions if it becomes ultra-successful.

“My main concern is volume, an increase in volume that’s unmanageable,” Jones said. “There’s always something about the column that people think, ‘I could do that,’ when in fact it’s really hard to do.”

Even if Jones is concerned that there might be too many submissions for Modern Love, Carr sees the silver lining in Jones’s problem. “That’s good,” Carr said. “That goes to show that the amount of essays he receives, that’s a great example on its own of how much love there is in the world.”

Modern Love premieres on Prime Video on Friday, October 18.

Where to stream Modern Love