Actor Minnie Driver says Amazon series ‘Modern Love’ gave her a chance to explore themes of love and grief without getting into an overly sentimental space.
Actor Minnie Driver, who will be soon seen in an episode in the second season of ‘Modern Love’ talks about how movies and TV shows get away from reality, especially when it comes to exploring themes of love and romance.
Actor Minnie Driver says Amazon series ‘Modern Love’ gave her a chance to explore themes of love and grief without getting into an overly sentimental space.
The actor, known for breakout role in 1995's ‘Circle of Friends and later for bagging an Oscar nomination for critically-acclaimed movie ‘Good Will Hunting’, believes that films and TV shows often lose the element of truth when exploring such themes.
"The themes of love and grief are difficult for humans to metabolise and they are certainly difficult to do together. Also, in film and television, they can often be incredibly sentimental and lose the element of truth. And what I loved about 'Modern Love' is that this was really real. It's difficult to love somebody, it's difficult to love at all. After somebody has died, you're shut down and sort of cocooned from the rest of the world. So the idea of being able to come back to life and how love does that for you was really interesting," Driver said.
In the first episode of the new season, titled ‘On a Serpentine Road, With the Top Down’, Driver plays a woman struggling with the decision to sell a car that is her only remaining connection to her late husband.
For her character, Stephanie Curran, the car is where she can still talk to her dead husband but at home, there is a pressure from her current husband to sell the vehicle due to its high maintenance costs.
The 51-year-old actor said the idea for her was to explore how a person can move forward in life, especially after the death of a loved one.
"If I let go of my grief and my pain over the people in my life who've died, does that mean I love them less? How do I do that? So, I think thematically, it's a really interesting journey. There is also a high degree of difficulty because I think you really can't get into some sort of sentimental s**t. That's not interesting as opposed to the veracity of what that emotion feels like," Driver said.
The actor said she could totally empathise and relate with her character, especially after she lost her mother earlier this year.
"My mum died this year and I have a lot of really beautiful memories that are objects of hers. I could never let them go,” she said.
"I struggled with the concept of this woman having to get rid of this car. I was angry with the husband for saying that she needed to get rid of it because they become the object of your love when the person that you love is gone," she added.
Off screen as well, making the episode was not a smooth ride for Driver as she had creative differences with series creator John Carney who had a "very different emotional calibration" for her character.
"I calibrated the performance very differently to the director. He had a very different emotional calibration of how he wanted to tell the story and we did not agree about it. However, I've always had a great reverence for the position of a director. It is a part of the exchange that when you enter into that relationship, like on a film set, they are your guide in a way and they are telling a story," she said.
Driver said she understood Carney's perspective towards the story and the character.
"I think not seeing eye to eye with somebody creatively is a good thing. It's how you create. The idea that we should all get along and see eye to eye with everybody, it's a fallacy or the idea of finding a middle ground or letting go of some of your own stuff to come and meet somebody creatively. As an artist, I think you should do that stuff. It's conversation creativity," she added.
Driver is no stranger to ‘Modern Love’ as she was already a fan of the New York Times column that served as the basis for the show before coming aboard the second season.
"I'd always read the column and then I recorded one of the stories for the podcast. So I already loved it and knew that it was great. And then I think it was interesting seeing the anthology show itself. I wish that they were longer. I mean, there were some I didn't mind that were a half hour, but there were ones that I really wanted to see more because I like close-ended stories," she added.
The second season will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on August 13.