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Love, now and always.
Did you fall in love last night?
Just tell her I love her.
Love was stronger than anything you could feel again.
Feel the love.
Love.
And I love you more than anything.
(SINGING) What is love?
Here’s to love.
Love.
From “The New York Times,” I’m Anna Martin. This is “Modern Love.” Every week, we bring you stories about love, lust, loss — and all the messiness of human relationships. This week, I’m talking to actor Carrie Coon.
Carrie Coon has kind of been everywhere lately. She’s in the new season of “The White Lotus,” which I’m very excited about. She’s on “The Gilded Age.”
But I’ve been wanting to talk to her about a movie she’s in called “His Three Daughters.” It’s about three sisters who’ve all reunited to take care of their dad, who’s on his deathbed. And Carrie Coon’s character is really worth talking about. Her name is Katie, and she sees herself as kind of a martyr, taking care of everything and everyone. She talks in these fiery, frustrated monologues.
The trick is, I guess the thing I’m saying, is that I hope we can make this easy on him. Just not make a thing out of anything. If we disagree, we talk it out without getting heated, or yelling, or anything that’s going to upset him. We handle it like adults, like the age we are. I really don’t see what there is to disagree about anyway—
Katie is constantly on a tirade. On the phone, angrily trying to get a DNR signed by a doctor, every time a home hospice worker stops by, she’s grilling him on the plan. And she relentlessly criticizes her stepsister, played by Natasha Lyonne, who she thinks is selfish and immature.
Here’s the thing. I get it that you don’t want to go into his room. Sure, I was there till 4:00 AM, and Christina’s basically been in there since. The help would be appreciated.
But look, everyone deals with death their own way. I’m not going to tell you what to do. That’s between you and him, and however you think you should run your life.
Coon’s character has such a rigid idea of who her sister is, that she can’t be bothered to find out what she actually thinks or feels. And it’s driving a bigger and bigger wedge between them. This whole movie feels so true to real life sibling and family relationships. It explores the ways we regress around our families, and how our ideas about each other can limit our relationships.
So today, Carrie Coon joins me to talk about the stories families tell themselves, and how those stories can make it harder to get to know and love each other. She reads a Modern Love essay by a woman who had to escape her mother’s ideas of her in order to find herself.
I am so glad, too! Grandma D, I was going to say, I would love to put a name to this character that I now see as the wisest woman in the world — Grandma D. Grandma D.
Yeah, Darlene. She was a science teacher.
I do.
I absolutely do. I have it. It was so important to me. Nobody was speaking the truth to me. You don’t feel seen when people aren’t holding you accountable.
Yeah, leveling with you. Absolutely.
It’s like, oh, you don’t really care about the damage I’m doing running roughshod on the world, and nobody notices. You don’t feel your [INAUDIBLE].
I think about that. That was the phrase that stood out the most as fundamentally true about love. The pity is not the same as love is a really important lesson for young women, because our feelings of guilt are confusing. What we think of as guilt is not guilt. It’s often just you’ve gotten so habituated to metabolizing other people’s feelings.
And so it’s boundarylessness. You don’t have any boundaries. And what my grandmother was really getting at, I think, was boundaries, which I did not have.
And I want my daughter and my son to have very clear boundaries so that they’re able to say, those are your feelings, actually. Those aren’t my feelings. And I’m going to go ahead and give those feelings back to you so you can deal with them. Because I don’t want them to apologize for their needs. I want them to be able to articulate their needs and know that sometimes their needs are going to inconvenience other people, make people uncomfortable. And that you can do that respectfully, compassionately, and still return those feelings to people for them to deal with. That’s what I want them to be able to do.
You’re really taking us through the evolution from young Carrie to Carrie now, your understanding of what it means to love. It’s incredible to chart this territory with you. And looking back over this territory that we’ve traversed, I’m going to ask you a big question. I know you can handle it.
Is love something we know inherently, or is it something we learn along the way, or is it some combination of both? What do you think?
Oh, I think it’s a combination.
Only because so often we’re just so unknown to ourselves. And sometimes it takes a long time to dig through all those patterns of behavior and find the person who’s in there. And again, maybe there is no person in there. I’m willing to stay open to that possibility.
But maybe the thing we learn the most is how we really don’t have to take things personally. That everybody’s acting out of patterns of behavior, and you have to be big enough to give them the space and the grace to be on that journey. Just holding space for other people, which my husband did for me. He recognized that there was a lot of growing yet to do, but that he I was worth investing in.
Carrie Coon, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Thank you, Anna. I really appreciate it.
This episode of “Modern Love” was produced by Reva Goldberg, and Davis Lande. It was edited by Gianna Palmer and Jen Poyant. Production management by Kristina Josa. The “Modern Love” theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music in this episode by Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, Rowan Niemisto, and Dan Powell.
This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez. Studio support from Maddie Masiello and Nick Pittman. Special thanks to Robert Kessler, Mahima Chablani, Nell Gallogly, Jeffrey Miranda, and Paula Szuchman.
The “Modern Love” column is edited by Daniel Jones. Miya Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you want to submit an essay or a tiny love story to “The New York Times,” we’ve got the instructions in our show notes. I’m Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.
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