Plus, get a first look at the cast and episode details.
Check out his insights, along with episode loglines and first-look photos, below.
Zoe Chao & Gbenga Akinnagbe:A woman with delayed sleep phase syndrome meets the love of her life.
Gbenga Akinnagbe and Zoë Chao on ‘Modern Love’.Christopher Saunders/Amazon Studios
The catch is: He’s awake while the sun is shining and she is not.
But do they remember that night the same way?
She turns to social media quizzes for answers.
Zane Pais, Marquis Rodriguez, and James Scully on ‘Modern Love’.Christopher Saunders/Amazon Studios
And then a worldwide pandemic shuts down all of Ireland.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you select which columns to go off this time?
JOHN CARNEY:It’s so different doing a second season.
Lulu Wilson and Grace Edwards on ‘Modern Love’.Christopher Saunders/Amazon Studios
Because you have so much more information going into it.
Then you’re getting so much feedback so quickly once the show comes out.
What can we listen to?
Dominique Fishback and Isaac Powell on ‘Modern Love’.Christopher Saunders/Amazon Studios
What kind of love stories didn’t we include?
Can we make the show a little bit less about the city of New York?
Could it be a show that actually could be filmed anywhere?
Garrett Hedlund and Anna Paquin on ‘Modern Love’.Christopher Saunders/Amazon Studios
This is a show that that’s not a fait accompli.
Nobody ever sat down and designed the show from scratch.
The column is based on real people.
Lucy Boynton and Kit Harington on ‘Modern Love’.David Cleary/Amazon Studios
And we then are adapting those real stories to the screen.
So it’s a really collaborative process.
And that connection dramatically changes the construct and the idea behind this show.
Minnie Driver on ‘Modern Love’.David Cleary/Amazon Studios
You have another all-star cast.
Do you write with the actors in mind, or do they get attached after?
No, because it’s too disappointing then when they turn you down.
Tobias Menzies and Sophie Okonedo on ‘Modern Love’.David Cleary/Amazon Studios
It always feels like you’re getting second best if you don’t get that dream person.
Obviously you have voices in your head of how people should sound.
You hear actors or intonations that you recognize from other shows or movies.
But it would be a mistake to imagine it too much, and so I leave it very open.
How did you repeat the magic of season 1 and end up with another stellar lineup here?
It’s funny, we didn’t get many rejections.
We got most of the first people that we asked, which was great.
But the show is building up an idea of what it could be.
It’s almost like making a short film in a way.
That’s probably appealing to actors.
The column has such a sort of good reputation, and people really love the column.
So that always helps as well, but season 1 did very well.
Were there any actors who got away this time?
A few people, but we’ll get them the next time.
It’s not like, “No I’m not doing this show.”
It’s like, “This one just didn’t thing sing out to me.
Will you hey keep me in mind for something else?”
It’s the right person for the right job.
Andrew Rannells is also directing this season, from an episode based on an essay he wrote.
Can you tell us a bit more about how you arrived at that and bringing Andrew in to oversee?
We learned that he wanted to direct.
He’d spent so much time on film sets all his life.
Let the column be the memoir, but let the show be something different from that.
Let’s almost forget the author.
And that’s the way of actually doing them justice, weirdly.
Because if it’s too much about them, it loses its general appeal.
The director has to ultimately own it.
Now you must direct it like somebody has given you a really interesting job."
One of your story lines specifically engages with the pandemic.
When and why did you decide you wanted to include that?
Was there any debate about it?
There was a tiny love story that included COVID.
I just loved the picture with it.
It was one line.
Everybody’s going home but nobody knows how long they’ll be home for.
Then the lockdown happens, and they don’t get to meet each other again.
That set my mind ablaze with ideas.
I went ahead and developed this story based on that one line.
Do you have a favorite episode this season?
I do, but I’ll avoid that question right now.
I think the TV show maintains that, and we develop that even further.
you could have good news without it being saccharine.
There’s been a lot of harmony in the world, and we tend to forget that.
It seems indulgent sometimes to say, “Can I just have some good news?”
But then sometimes you’re super-saturated with the bad, and need to remind yourself of humanity.
And of connectivity and of real people in real situations and not on screens, but actually together.
I hope that the show goes a tiny way to replicating that.
