Actors Jane Alexander and James Saito on the Joys of ‘Modern Love,’ Amazon’s New Romance Series

Little Vignettes

“There were a lot of very small, tiny scenes that Tom had put in,” says Jane, “and we actually went back to the drawing board several months later for a whole day or two of re-shoots because they wanted more of those tiny little life moments. Just little vignettes, sometimes just an image, which was really quite something. Maybe that’s just the way the modern world is these days.”

Considers James, “There were some scenes with a lot of dialogue, but I suppose by putting in all those little vignettes, you don’t have to say much, so in a short time you can really convey what the relationship is without a lot of words and through imagery.”

A New Opportunity

As to what drew them to the project, Jane notes it was the writing that attracted her. “I don’t know about James,” she offers, “because he plays a lot of wonderful and different kinds of characters, but I have to say, for most of the time at my age, I’m offered either somebody who’s very ill and on their last leg … or a judge. Or a grandmother who is just a wonderful life support. That’s all fine; it’s part of our lives. But the truth is, there’s a lore more going on with someone my age — people my age. A lot more that’s not being mined at all, and for that reason I thought this was incredible.

“In fact,” she adds, “I had broken my ankle a year before and gone to see my surgeon just three days prior to the offer for the film. He said, ‘You can do anything you want, Jane. You can skydive.’ Then I got the offer for Modern Love, playing a runner. I was, like, ‘Wow, you bet we’re gong to do this.’ On top of that, it’s a love story. I couldn’t be happier.”

Finding the Spark

James interjects, “For myself, it was just a wonderful offer of a part because, as Jane says, I’m moving in the same area where the roles I get are the supportive dad or the judge or the lawyer or whatever. To just be a guy who shows that, at this age, there’s still spark and life and love and romance and feelings, is wonderful. Parts like this don’t come along so often for me, so it’s delightful. As I said before, Tom Hall’s words are just so easy to say. Then, when I found out that Jane was involved, it was all set to go.”

Evolving Hollywood

It seems that with all of the changes that Hollywood is going through, and with various streaming services arriving on the scene, there’s not only a realization of the role that older actors can play, but a genuine need for programming that appeals to the older demographic. Consider that there have been several seasons of the Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin series Grace and Frankie, Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin in The Kominsky Method and it goes on from there. “I do think that’s part of it,” Jane concurs, “and I think it’s also part of the expansion of diversity, because we actually have more old people than anybody else these days. They’re the ones that are sitting in front of their screens most of the time, so I think it will just open up a little bit more.”

James notes, “In terms of what you’re saying, I think along with so much of what is going on, since there are so many outlets, so many new ways of putting product on, that they have to expand the stories into new areas to give more mature actors a wide ranger of experiences.”

‘Modern Love’ Is Unique

Both actors believe that, as a whole, Modern Love holds something special for the audience. Pointing out that she’s read the “Modern Love” column in the New York Times, Jane says, “Clearly what it’s expressing is what we’ve just been talking about: the diversity of love. It’s beautiful and it’s always different. Love stories are the same, yet they’re so different in their details and who isn’t attracted to that?”

Modern Love is available for streaming on Amazon now. But we’re not quite finished with Jane and James. Please continue scrolling down for more.

Tangent #1: ‘Testament’

It’s impossible to speak to Jane Alexander without bringing up the groundbreaking 1983 film Testament, which showcases the gradual disintegration of society in the aftermath of a nuclear strike. It’s a genuinely powerful and heartrending film that is a stark look at what would happen as our loved ones die around us as we struggle to survive.

“It’s very strange,” reflects Jane, who plays Wetherly matriarch Carol in the film, “because I had had a recurring nightmare for years. In it, my four boys and I had gone on a hike. When we came back, we couldn’t get back home on the highway, because it was covered with people leaving a nuclear accident in New York City. Then we stop and rest under a tree and three of the boys go and eat clams, and pamphlets are raining down from the sky saying, ‘Don’t eat shellfish; it’s radioactive.’ That was my nightmare and I would have it again and again. Then my son happened to read in this magazine a short story called ‘The Last Testament.’ He said, ‘Mom, this is like your nightmare.’ And then, within that week, Lynne Littman called me up and said, ‘I have a project I’m going to film …’ Can you believe it? It was the same thing when I was doing the movie, the feeling that this was my nightmare. So the movie always had an enormous effect on me, and I think Lynne made a beautiful, devastating movie. Just devastating.”

Tangent #2: ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’

Moving about as far away from a nuclear holocaust as you could get, there was 1990’s live action movie version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in which James played the mutants in a half-shell’s arch enemy, The Shredder (the character’s voice was dubbed in by someone else).

“When I first got the part,” James says, “I didn’t really know what to do with it. How do you go about playing a master ninja? But as I studied more about all the different martial arts and things like that, it was really kind of wonderful, because to me it was like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. It’s like the Joker and Batman — there are these two powers and one went light and one went dark. The Shredder went dark with power. So what I did was I would meditate — because I figured this guy has to be a master of all the martial arts — for, like, 45 minutes a day.”

“It’s kind of weird to do that for a film like that,” he adds, “but my process into that was to try and understand where the source of this man comes from. As an acting exercise, I found that kind of wonderful, because I went into a whole different area of life with the different Asian aspects of it in terms of the meditation and working it out.”