How A ‘New York Times’ Column About Love Became One Of The Internet’s Favourite Things

Wanted: personal essays about love.

In 2004, The New York Times asked its readers to write from the heart for a new weekly column. The response was massive and Modern Love bloomed.

The Modern Love column developed a cult following due to its eclectic mix of tales about divorce, dying fish, online dating, self-love, working 9-to-5 at a florist, and the perils of hooking up with a best mate.

Modern Love found a way to take matters of the heart beyond meet-cutes and fairy-tale romance, and anyone could submit a story. Authors, students, actors, comedians, and marketing experts have all shared a Modern Love writing credit over the years, and it’s a major part of the feature’s appeal.

One hit podcast and a best-selling book later, Modern Love is an Amazon Prime Video series. Filmmaker John Carney (Once, Begin Again, Sing Street) takes the column from page to screen and each episode adapts a different essay with the help of an incredible cast: Anne Hathaway, Tina Fey, Olivia Cooke, Dev Patel, Catherine Keener, Andrew Scott (the hot priest from Fleabag), Andy Garcia, and John Slattery.

But how did Modern Love endure? We’re used to TV shows based on epic book series and the lives of celebrities, but it’s rare for a series to be inspired by a newspaper column.

The success of Modern Love is thanks to editor Daniel Jones.

Jones has been at the helm of the Modern Love column at the New York Times since day one. He’s the person who reads every submission and decides what gets published.

“We get some 8000 submissions a year, and the only way to find fresh material is to look at everything,” Jones told Behind the Byline.

“If I’ve slept well the night before, I can get through 150 in a day … it drains you emotionally, because these are often the most important stories in the writers’ lives. Even essays that don’t work can be about devastating experiences. But, as an editor, you have to fight the impulse to feel jaded or dismissive, because as soon as you give in to that, you’re done.”

Modern Love survived as a column because it evolved with the internet. What readers connected with in print were re-published online, going viral once social media became ubiquitous. Modern Love rolled with the times and became a podcast in 2016, attracting Greta Gerwig, Ann Dowd, Jake Gyllenhaal, Laura Dern, Constance Wu, and Issa Rae (and more) to read essays from the archive, as well as featuring interviews with the authors. The podcast raised the profile of the column and drove fans seeking more further into the archives.

Asking someone to name their favourite Modern Love entry is as difficult is picking a favourite album or film. If you’re a Modern Love newbie, the best place to start is ‘Just One Last Swirl Around The Bowl’ by Dan Barry, ‘Putting Love To The Stress Test’ by Jasmine Jaksic, and ‘No Labels, No Drama, Right?’ by Jordana Narin.

Jones has his own personal faves: “Ann Leary’s ‘Rallying to Keep the Game Alive’ … Burtman’s ‘My Body Doesn’t Belong to You’ …  Mandy Len Catron’s ‘To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This’ … and Gary Presley’s ‘Would My Heart Outrun Its Pursuer?’ opened my eyes to how some must overcome the bitterness of disability to allow love in.”

The best part about the Modern Love TV series is you can binge it even if you’ve never read the column – no homework is necessary.

Fans curious or nervous about how the column translates to screen need not worry. Jones and Carney chose which essays to adapt and it’s exciting to see what made the cut. If you’re a long-time reader you may want to go in cold, but if you want to know what’s planned, the first three episodes are: ‘When the Doorman is Your Main Man’, ‘When Cupid is a Prying Journalist’ and ‘Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am’. The latter features Hathaway as a lawyer with mental health issues looking for a partner. Hathaway has done a lot of rom-com movies but it’s her first pivot to TV in the streaming age.

“We know the ins and outs of romantic films so well. We’re almost ahead of them,” Hathaway told the Television Critics Association’s press tour.

“At the moment, as audience members, I’m not sure the three-act structure is as satisfying as it was 20 years ago. So, for me it was really exciting – this was a way to tell a genre of story that I love telling in a way that felt really fresh.”

 

The anthology format of Modern Love is perfect for TV and it’s refreshing to see a show centred on romance that’s not a sitcom (How I Met Your Mother) or a high-concept series (The Good Place). Carney gets the mix of warmth and heartache right, and each episode feels authentic and true to the essay it’s based on.

After eight episodes, you may be left yearning for more, but there’s a lot of Modern Love left to adapt, and the stories keep on coming, according to Jones.

“You’d think after 14 years at this, I would have seen every love story imaginable,” says Jones. “But then I pull up some strange tale full of surprising wisdom and am floored all over again.”

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Watch Modern Love now, exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.

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(Images courtesy of Amazon Prime Video)