In a universe full of breakup stories, Modern Love is a world where people make it work.
The Amazon Prime original series, out today, follows a group of drastically different strangers living out their love stories and defying the traditional conventions of relationships. It’s a timely, refreshing exploration of love and all of its colors. It’s whimsical yet grounded in reality; ordinary but also extraordinary. Modern Love is an enticing eight-course meal of meet-cutes — but it doesn’t shy away from showing the ups and the downs of navigating intimacy.
“Two people coming together feels miraculous every time,” actress Zoë Chao says. “I think [my episode] does a good job sort of revealing the beauty of it but also the mess. There’s no one way to do a relationship.”
The second season of the anthology series, comprising eight half-hour vignettes, features a brand-new, star-studded cast — including Dominique Fishback, Kit Harington, Anna Paquin, and others — who tell stories of love and relationships in all their complexities, challenges, and beauty.
When asked about her favorite part about her character’s love story, screen legend Sophie Okonedo confesses, “The unexpectedness of it all. I felt that when I read the script, that just each bit was just an unexpected moment. And then I kept going, ‘Really? Oh, my goodness!’ as I was reading it.”
The show, and The New York Times column that inspired it, begs the question: What is “normal” in love?
In “The Night Girl Finds a Day Boy,” Chao’s character, also named Zoe, is a woman living with delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS), a disorder in which “a person’s sleep is delayed by two hours or more beyond what is considered an acceptable or conventional bedtime.” The story begins: “Once upon a time, there was a girl who was only awake at night,” a nod to the 1882 fairy tale that the title of the episode alludes to. She meets the love of her life, Jordan (Gbenga Akinnagbe), during a late-night trip to a local diner, but the catch is: He lives his life while the sun is shining, and Zoe, as Chao says, “exists at night.”
“That doesn’t mean her life is any more diminished; she’s different. And I do think that she has an empathy for the people who live life differently and are kind of marginalized,” says Chao.
Jordan and Zoe playfully joke that she can’t do “normal things” like brunch, but the episode also provides powerful yet nuanced commentary on conversations surrounding illness and mental health — especially how they can impact and function inside of a relationship.
“We all operate on different rhythms and have different experiences and quirks, and I think any time you try to merge or live your life with someone else, it is hard,” says Chao. “I hope the audience takes away a sense of feeling less alone. I mean, I think being human is hard no matter who you are. We all have trials and tribulations.”
The show epitomizes the fact that love comes in all forms, at all ages, and amid all types of life experiences. While some episodes illustrate a relationship coming together for the first time, others explore the mending, re-bridging, and possibility that takes place when a relationship ends.
Okonedo, who is a working mother, stars as Elizabeth in the very last episode of the season. In it, two parents, after being divorced for several years, reignite their old romance — until one of them receives a life-changing diagnosis.
“The last few years, I’ve had lots of very larger-than-life characters,” says Okonedo, who also plays a polished yet comically animated publicity boss in the Amazon Prime original series Flack. “And [Elizabeth is] a quite ordinary woman, and they’re quite an ordinary couple going through big events. They’re just genuinely nice, ordinary people. They’re not showstoppers, you know.”
Okonedo shared a special connection with her co-star, The Crown’s Tobias Menzies, who plays Elizabeth’s ex-husband Van in the episode. Although the love story is set in London, the episode was filmed in Dublin, and Okonedo and Menzies quarantined during lockdown in a “mostly empty hotel,” she recalls.
”We just had a lot of time to get to know each other, and then also work on the script and work on the backstory of our characters,” Okonedo explains. “By the time we came to the first day of filming, it felt like we were really well rehearsed. We’d kind of made this connection, and I think, also, we just got on really well. We’ve got quite the same approach to acting and the way we think about stuff. Luckily, John Carney, our director, is the same. [John] likes to keep things very fresh, and we’d change things on the day and move things around and do the scenes differently each time.”
As it turns out, the episode isn’t just a tearjerker for audiences; it was an emotional experience for Okonedo too.
“I was crying on the last day when we finished,” she admits. “Normally when my other jobs finish [I’m like], ‘All right, lovely to meet you all.’ But this one … I made a family, I called it, and this one I actually cried on the last day.”
The episode, aptly titled “Second Embrace, With Hearts and Eyes Open,” touches on the transformative nature of growth, and how an embrace can be more than just physical. It explores both bodily and emotional scars, the vulnerability involved in sharing them, and the radical honesty involved in healing.
“Even in this kind of ordinary life, these real, unexpected big shifts happen. And I find it really engaging and moving how they dealt with it,” Okonedo muses over Elizabeth and Van’s story.
Similar to Chao’s episode, Okonedo’s story also broaches the sentiment behind the classic vow “in sickness and in health” — but with an unanticipated approach: humor.
“You can find humor in the most unusual places,” Okonedo says of what her character’s relationship has taught her. “There’s always room for some laughter. Whatever you’re going through, there’s some room for it. I find [it] very touching that the human spirit always wants to try and find a way to smile and make things better.”
Here’s to loving — and healing — in all its forms.
Mia Brabham is a staff writer at Shondaland by day and a dreamer of all sorts by night. Her debut book, Note to Self, is a short collection of life lessons that is in the hands of readers all over the world.
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