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Tag: Modern Love

  • ‘Modern Love’ a nice opportunity for actors to do really good acting: Tobias Menzies

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: British star Tobias Menzies believes that the short form anthology format of Amazon series “Modern Love” gives actors an opportunity to deliver nuanced performances.

    Menzies stars in “Modern Love” after a two season stint in “The Crown” in which he delivered a critically-lauded performance as Prince Philip, the late UK royal and husband of UK monarch Queen Elizabeth.

    The 47-year-old actor is also popular for playing Jonathan “Black Jack” Randall in “Outlander”, while in HBO’s “Game of Thrones”, he appeared as Edmure Tully.

    In the second season of “Modern Love”, Menzies stars opposite actor Sophie Okonedo in the eighth episode, titled “A Second Embrace, with Hearts and Eyes Open”.

    “I really liked the format because it’s unusual in that it’s short, half-hour and they’re vignettes. So you just get a burst of atmosphere, almost. The stories are not that long. I also think it’s a really nice opportunity for good actors to do really good acting.”

    “I saw some performances in (the first season) which I just really enjoyed. The atmosphere is a really nice, relaxed, collaborative experience. So, I suppose the mixture of those things are just slightly different than a lot of other stuff out there,” Menzies said in a roundtable interview with global journalists, including PTI.

    “A Second Embrace, with Hearts and Eyes Open” features Menzies as Van, who casually rekindles his relationship with his ex-wife Elizabeth (Okonedo).

    But their complicated life gets a messy further when one of them is diagnosed with an illness.

    At the core of the episode’s story is the theme of second chances and healing, something that Menzies believes is definitely possible in real life.

    “I think second chances are definitely possible. That’s why I think it’s quite a romantic episode actually. The idea of second chances, of being able to go back and maybe heal something, maybe the mistakes you’ve made, it’s hard not to be moved by that idea because I’m sure everyone has stuff in their lives that you probably regret.”

    “I guess that’s what the episode is digging into, that kind of area. I certainly hope I’ll get some second chances,” he said.

    The actor said his attempt with every character is to make it relatable for the viewers and therefore he sometimes draws from his own experiences as a human being.

    “I work in a way to make it as real as possible. Sometimes, you draw from your own experiences of those kinds of events in your own life. They don’t have to be actual, the same thing – but everything is in that same area.”

    “This episode is around relationships that have fallen apart, but you still have feelings for that person. Are there opportunities to rebuild things? It’s hard not to look back at certain relationships and wonder if there was still life in them,” Menzies added.

    The actor believes that vulnerability and tenderness have the power to bring two individuals closer to each other, and this is what the episode tries to show to the viewers.

    “I’m definitely not a superhuman. One of the ways that you get to know someone and you get close to someone is through seeing their vulnerabilities and them trusting you and showing you that. In a way, that’s probably one of the fundamental things about how to get closer and love someone.”

    “Hopefully the vulnerability and tenderness that’s in the episode, that felt like a really necessary ingredient to tell that story – obviously because of what his character goes through, but you get a sense that he has had to go through a journey in order for her to meet a slightly different person than she remembered in a way. Part of that journey is him becoming a little more porous and a little more,” he added.

    Menzies said that in a world so miserably impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, John Carney-created “Modern Love” comes across as an uplifting show.

    “I think we’re all in need of a bit of encouragement, aren’t we? For so many reasons, the last year-and-a-half has been difficult. The show that John (Carney) makes is a celebration of different relationships in all the different shapes, but generally looking at it from an angle of love and hopefulness. I hope our episode is a nice contribution to that,” he said.

    “Modern Love” season two also features Kit Harington, Minnie Driver, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Lucy Boynton, Tom Burke, Zoe Chao, Grace Edwards, Dominique Fishback, Garrett Hedlund, Zane Pais, Anna Paquin, Isaac Powell, Marquis Rodriguez, and Lulu Wilson.

    The show currently streams on Amazon Prime Video.

  • Kit Harington gives insight into his life as new father

    By ANI

    WASHINGTON: Actor Kit Harington recently gave a rare insight into his life as a new father, sharing what has surprised him the most about parenthood.

    In February, this year, Kit welcomed his first child, a son with his wife Rose Leslie, who also starred with him in the popular HBO series ‘Game of Thrones.’

    According to People magazine, he recently appeared on The Tonight Show and spoke about how he is embracing his “new fatherhood” with his 6-month-old child.

    “So much advice. Anyone who’s a parent will know, you get so much advice leading up to it, and it’s all useless. It’s all useless. It’s stuff like, It’s gonna be great, you’re gonna love it, what a wonderful thing,” Kit told host Jimmy Fallon.

    “No one tells you that essentially, at first anyway, what it is you get a new roommate just dumped into your life who you’ve not interviewed, who doesn’t know any of your house rules, and then you fall in love with him so you can’t kick him out. That’s basically parenting, I think,” the 34-year-old actor added.

    The ‘Pompeii’ star told that the baby boy “respects” Leslie, meanwhile, he will do “anything” to make his son laugh, even performing “a silly dance for him while listening to The Beatles”, which Kit demonstrated.

    “In the future, I know he’s gonna mock me about it, and I’ll be like, ‘It’s your fault,’ ” the actor said in reference to his “dad dance.”

    People magazine reported that Kit also shared what has surprised him the most about fatherhood, in an earlier interview.

    “I think the thing that’s surprised me most is, you know, they tell you but they don’t; everyone goes, ‘Look, it’s big. What you’re about to go through is big.’ And you have no way of knowing that until it happens, then what surprises you is you go, ‘Oh, this goes on forever!’ You don’t get a break from it. You’re just like … every day I wake up and look after this little human and now we’re part of a unit together,” Kit said.

    “You are now a unit, the three of you, that’s a whole new dynamic you need to find, and pretty much find every day as he grows and changes, and how does that change you? It’s a beautiful thing, it really is,” added Kit in reference to his family.

  • Didn’t want ‘Modern Love’ to fit into any genre, says creator John Carney

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: “Modern Love” creator John Carney says he did not want the show to fit into a particular category because romantic-comedy as a genre has become “a bit boring” now.

    Carney is back with the second season of “Modern Love”, an adaptation of the New York Times column of the same name that featured everyday stories of love and romance.

    “I think that once anything becomes a genre, like romantic comedy or horror comedy, it becomes a bit boring. I never wanted to fit into any of those genres, but I do think that love and romance can be very funny.

    “I think falling down in love is funny and messing up is funny, and it’s not always just tragic. It sometimes has its own humour. So I’m very open to humour but I don’t try to be funny, that’s the big distinction,” the Irish filmmaker told PTI in an interview.

    Carney said in the 1930s and ’40s, there was an influx of “lighter romances” after a long history of very melodramatic romantic stories in Hollywood.

    “Hollywood, which included some very skilled writers, managed to sort of spread a little bit of comedy over that scenario with Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Carole Lombard movies.

    “At that time, there were great comedians working with a romantic sort of palette. That was a beautiful genre. In the 1960s and ’70s, various filmmakers kind of revisited that but I think it’s gotten a bit tired.”

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    The director said he is someone who believes that there are stories of other kinds of love that are equally worth telling on the screen and he wants his show to reflect that.

    “We’re very mindful to be a show about different types of things. And we really want to sort of expand that idea moving forward so that we can have episodes of brothers and sisters, parents and children, and even the love with your pets.”

    “Modern Love” is a unique kind of show as Carney believes the series has the power to change, instead of adhering to “a path and a formula like a sitcom or a thriller”.

    “We can now listen to our audience and respond and we can change things.

    It’s not because we are being nervous of our audience but since it originates with real people, it should listen to real people.

    “There isn’t a writers’ room of us making up stories. We have picked up eight out of 500 stories, and we are asking, ‘Let us know if there’s other things that you want that you think should be included from the column.’ It’s a more interactive show,” he added.

    “Modern Love” is about the modern world but there are moments in the show that are critical of people’s dependence on technology, a theme that Carney wanted to explore.

    According to the director, mobile screens and phones have taken “something magical out of romance”.

    “Intimacy is bizarrely falling lower than it ever has been.

    One of the many reasons is the fact that we’re remotely connecting with people and getting things that we need from so many different sources now.

    Romance and intimacy is necessarily not the number one priority for human beings, as much as it used to be.

    “I’m sure mobile devices, screens, connectivity, social media and dating apps are having some effect on things. I can’t imagine personally what it would be like to be dating now or trying to find romance now.”

    The process of falling in love was much simpler in earlier days, he added.

    “It was person meets person. Person flirts, person responds. There was something very natural. You go to the movies and share popcorn, or you go for a walk down the prom. Now that is all up.

    “I do sometimes look at younger people that I know from my family or extended family, and I see them baffled with just that.

    And I wonder what the quality of the stories in ‘Modern Love’ will be like moving forward into this increasingly more virtual age,” the director said.

    The second season of “Modern Love” features an ensemble cast of Kit Harington, Minnie Driver, Lucy Boynton, Tom Burke, Zoe Chao, Grace Edwards, Dominique Fishback, Kit Harington, Garrett Hedlund, Tobias Menzies, Sophie Okonedo, Zane Pais, Anna Paquin, Isaac Powell, Marquis Rodriguez, and Lulu Wilson.

    The new season will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Friday.

  • Don’t trust myself with social media, says Kit Harington

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: “Game of Thrones” star Kit Harington says he doesn’t loathe social media, he just doesn’t trust himself with it.

    The actor is not there on any social media platform, be it Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook despite his global popularity as Jon Snow, the brooding hero of the epic HBO fantasy drama series where he also met his wife, actor Rose Leslie.

    The 34-year-old London-born actor, who will next be seen in the second season of Amazon Prime Video’s anthology series “Modern Love”, said his avoidance of social media is to protect his “mental health”.

    “I don’t loathe social media, I just don’t entirely trust it. And with that I mean I don’t trust myself on it. I don’t think it’s going to be very good for my mental health. I just avoid it and I find an easier way of living my life. Plus, I think my wife would take the p*** out of me every day if I went on social media. So, I’m just not going to suffer that,” Harington told PTI in a group interview.

    This is not the first time that the actor has opened up about preserving his mental health.

    In 2019, Harington had revealed that he had to resort to therapy to deal with Jon Snow’s death in the show’s fifth season.

    He had said that it was the “darkest time” till the character was resurrected in the next season.

    Harington’s trust issues with social media is something that he shares with Michael, the character he plays in “Modern Love”.

    He features in “Strangers on a Train”, the third episode of the anthology show, opposite Lucy Boynton, the star of the 2018 biographical musical drama film “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

    The Ireland-set episode, which seems to have taken a leaf out of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy’s 1995 classic “Before Sunset”, presents the meet-cute story of two strangers Michael and Paula, who meet on a train from Galway to Dublin.

    The story sees their bond develop into something ‘meaningful’ during the journey, so much so that they decide to opt for the old school romance by not exchanging numbers or social media contacts and meet again in the traditional way.

    “What I liked about my episode was that these two people decided to not do the usual thing of swapping numbers even, or Instagram or Facebook or anything. They go in a way that is more romantic and without all of this kind of modern technology that sort of dominates our life. And of course, it backfires but there is a romance to that,” Harington said.

    The actor said Michael and Paula are “kind of antithesis” to the term ‘Modern Love’.

    “They’re like, ‘We don’t want to do modern love in a modern way. We want to do it the old way. And that’s why you have this motif of strangers on a train, and then on a platform with people coming through. It is this rejection of dating apps or text messaging. I think it creates for a really romantic story actually, once you take those things away,” Harington added.

    “Strangers on a Train” is set in March 2020, when Ireland, like many countries in the world, underwent lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic.

    The actor said the episode is a light-hearted take on the pandemic scenario and will provide much-needed relief to people’s heightened anxieties.

    “We live in a very complicated world for many reasons at the moment. And I think our music, our art, our drama reflects that. But there’s a need for relief from our anxiety. And I believe ‘Modern Love’ is a really intelligent way of giving people that relief. My episode deals with the pandemic directly but it does so in a way that you go, ‘oh, people can still fall in love. Human connection can still happen.There is hope.’ This was one of the reasons I did this piece,” Harington said.

    Another reason for accepting “Modern Love” came from a personal space, he added.

    “I wasn’t in a place where I wanted to do something particularly dark. I said yes just when my wife became pregnant and so I was feeling sort of very weirdly upbeat and at the same time terrified about the world. So this sort of felt like something I needed to do.”

    Kit and Leslie became parents to a baby boy in February.

    Since the pandemic struck, there have been many movies and shows that have incorporated COVID-19 and its aftermath into their plots, including Michael Bay-produced “Songbird” and the HBO Max movie “Locked Down”, starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

    Harington, however, believes that pandemic-set dramas will be a thing of the past once everything is back to normal.

    “I don’t think we’re going to live in a world now where we see people with masks on screen all the time. I think we’re going to move past it. We’ll move to a place that we were out before unless it’s directly dealing with what happened to us over these last two years.”

    As for “Game of Thrones”, there is a casual mention of the epic fantasy show in “Modern Love”.

    In a scene, Harington’s Michael is seen discussing his love life with his brother Declan, played by a mustachioed Jack Reynor.

    During their conversation, Declan asks Michael about Paula and what she does.

    He replies that she is studying Medievalism to which Declan quips, “Like ‘Game of Thrones’?’, leaving his brother with a puzzled look on his face.

    In reality, Harington said he has come across people who believe that “Game of Thrones”, based on author George RR Martin’s book series, is actually history.

    “I’ve met people who have said to me, ‘You know, I don’t know much about that ‘Game of Thrones’ stuff. I’ve never been much of a history buff.’ And I was like, ‘Really? I’m not sure you have to be’,” the actor said.

    “Modern Love” season two, created by John Carney, will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on August 13.

  • ‘The Crown’ actor Tobias Menzies, Sophie Okonedo join ‘Modern Love’

    By Express News Service
    Tobias Menzies of The Crown fame and Ratched-fame Sophie Okonedo have joined the second season of the Amazon anthology series Modern Love, which is scheduled to premiere on August 13.  The announcement was made by the streaming platform.

    The duo is set to appear in an episode directed by John Carney, who also serves as showrunner and executive producer. The episode and series recently completed filming in Dublin, Ireland. The previously announced cast also includes Gbenga Akinnagbe, Dominique Fishback, Lucy Boynton, Tom Burke, Minnie Driver, Kit Harington, Anna Paquin, Aparna Nancherla, Isaac Powell, Marquis Rodriguez, Miranda Richardson, James Scully, Zuzanna Szadkowski, Lulu Wilson and Jeena Yi among others.

    ALSO READ | ‘Game of Thrones’ star Kit Harington, Anna Paquin to star in Amazon’s ‘Modern Love’ season two

    Modern Love is based on the New York Times column of the same name, which features stand-alone stories of everyday romance. The series consists of eight half-hour episodes, all which will be released together on the same day.

     Celine Held and Logan George will be co-directing one episode. Directors of the rest of the segments of the second season are John Crowley, Marta Cunningham, Jesse Peretz, and Andrew Rannells.The first season of Modern Love starred Anne Hathaway, Tina Fey, Dev Patel, John Slattery, Catherine Keener, Julia Garner, Andrew Scott, Sofia Boutella and Andy Garcia, among others.

  • ‘Game of Thrones’ star Kit Harington, Anna Paquin to star in Amazon’s ‘Modern Love’ season two

    By ANI
    WASHINGTON: Several celebrities, including ‘Game of Thrones’ fame star Kit Harington and ‘True Blood’ fame actor ‘Anna Paquin’, have joined the cast of the second season of Amazon’s anthology series ‘Modern Love’.

    As per Variety, the series is based on the New York Times column of the same name. The second season of ‘Modern Love’ will be filmed in New York City, Albany, Troy and Schenectady, and Dublin.

    The cast for the season also includes Dominique Fishback, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Susan Blackwell, Lucy Boynton, Tom Burke, Zoe Chao, Maria Dizzia, Minnie Driver, Grace Edwards, Kathryn Gallagher, Garrett Hedlund, Telci Huynh, Nikki M. James, Aparna Nancherla, Larry Owens, Zane Pais, Isaac Powell, Ben Rappaport, Milan Ray, Jack Reynor, Miranda Richardson, Marquis Rodriguez, James Scully, Zuzanna Szadkowski, Lulu Wilson, Don Wycherley, and Jeena Yi.

    The showrunner John Carney commented on the upcoming season and said, “We’re so excited to bring the second season of this series to life, and give an opportunity to really shine a light on what matters most.”

    Carney added, “With so much uncertainty in our current world, these stories bring truth and love to people everywhere, and I’m so appreciative to be a part of making that happen.”

    Directors for season two include Carney, John Crowley, Marta Cunningham, Jesse Peretz, the duo of Celine Held and Logan George, and Andrew Rannells, who is helming an episode based on a ‘Modern Love’ essay he wrote for the Times.

    Amazon Studios, Storied Media Group, Likely Story, and The New York Times produced ‘Modern Love’. Carney executive produces with Todd Hoffman, Trish Hofmann, Anthony Bregman, and the Times’ Caitlin Roper and Choire Sicha. Sean Fogel serves as producer, Daniel Jones, the editor of the ‘Modern Love’ column, is co-producer.

    The second season is set to air later this year on Amazon’s Prime Video.