Those that love reading about "modern love" every week better get ready to love watching it every week. Amazon's new Modern Love trailer brings the famous New York Times column to life with help from Anne Hathaway, Tina Fey, and Dev Patel. And it's covering romance in all its forms, from couples therapy to sex injuries and everything in between.
Modern Love, which starts streaming October 18, will feature eight real love stories that originally appeared in the iconic column, which is now also a podcast. For example, Hathaway will star as a woman who has bipolar disorder in a story based on the 2008 Modern Love piece “Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am" by Manic: A Memoir author Terri Cheney. In the trailer, she's asked if she wants to get breakfast. "I just met you," she says in exasperation. Perhaps, the beginning of beautiful relationship that's more than a friendship.
Fey and Mad Men's John Slattery are clearly beyond the friends stage in their episode, which is written by Catastrophe's Sharon Horgan. In the trailer, the couple is asked by their therapist, "Do you make time for one another? Do you have date nights?" To which, Fey remarks, "This."
Modern Love looks at romance in many forms. Sometimes, it's messy, like the pair, played by Sofia Boutella and John Gallagher, that end up in an ambulance with a sex injury that isn't a "weird one," don't worry. Or heartbreaking, like Cristin Milioti's character who realizes she can't have a baby with a man she doesn't love. Made worse by the fact that she is pregnant.
While others, like Patel, seem to be working so hard to save a love that maybe they should let go. But, still, "this is love at its absolute best," Hathaway says in voice-over. "Beautiful, sometimes."
And when it isn't, it's hard to imagine how it could get any better. And this show wants to look at that exhilarating and sometimes painful search for love that affects us all. "Surely, there is someone out there who will take me for who I am?" Hathaway says in the trailer. "The good, the bad, the full story of love."
Modern Love is looking for the truth, and the truth is, Hathaway didn't know about the New York Times column when she signed on for the show. At the Television Critics Association panel back in July, Hathaway told the crowd that she was "unfamiliar" with the recurring column, per Entertainment Weekly. But, this whole experience had humbled her.
“It wrecked me for a month afterwards," she said of playing someone with bipolar disorder. "[But being able to walk away from it] expanded my compassion so much for people who have no choice in this matter.”
Hathaway, who is pregnant with baby No. 2, also told the TCA audience that she thinks viewers will also be changed by Modern Love. “I think if we’re honest with ourselves,” Hathaway said, “we all have to learn that we are worth loving." Not only is that a great teaser for Modern Love, but advice to live by.
