In the 2013 Modern Love essay “Rallying to Keep the Game Alive,” Ann Leary’s marriage to her husband, the actor Denis Leary, was on the rocks. They felt like competitors instead of partners, and couples counseling didn’t seem to be helping.
Headed for divorce, they suddenly found a path forward together, and Ms. Leary learned two lessons in love along the way. 1) Deciding to get divorced can be the key to staying married. 2) How you play tennis with each other matters. A lot.
I recently caught up with four writers whose essays inspired episodes in the new “Modern Love” television series on Amazon Prime Video.
Below is my conversation with Ms. Leary, whose episode stars Tina Fey and John Slattery. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You can also read my interviews with the writers Terri Cheney (“Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am”), Deborah Copaken (“When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist”) and Julie Margaret Hogben (“When the Doorman Is Your Main Man”).
Daniel Jones: Your essay was about a rough patch in your marriage. Why did you decide to write about that?
Ann Leary: People don’t often write about marriages that almost don’t work out. And in our case, no one, not even our kids, knew what was going on with us. We’d covered it up so well that our kids were astonished to hear that we ever had a hard part in our marriage. They were like, “Wait, what?”
Really?
They had no idea. They were in middle school, high school, absorbed in their own thing. And we weren’t screaming and hurting each other — it was more like a cold war. But I was very aware it was a crisis.
We walked out of this therapist’s office declaring our marriage over, and everything felt very slowed down, but at the same time kind of crystallized in a way that makes you remember specific details, like the boots I was wearing and how hard it was to walk. How I needed to hold on to Denis after we left.
Saying the marriage was over felt so dangerous and scary to us. It was something we’d been thinking about for so long, but once we said it, the whole world didn’t vaporize or blow up.
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Right. You just went to get food.
We were like, “Oh, now I’m hungry, let’s go get something to eat.” And the intensity of it just kind of went away. I even tried to keep it going by telling Denis it was all his fault, but he’d surrendered. He was like, “Sorry.” And he meant it. He said, “I am sorry, but I can’t do anything about that now.”
And I said, “Oh my God, I am too. You’re right.” And we ended up going to a movie. At the movies we often end up kind of entwined because Denis has really long legs, and we did that night.
What did you see?
“No Country for Old Men.”
That’s a brutal movie.
It was, but we loved it so much. Denis has helped me appreciate camera work in movies, which wasn’t something I was normally aware of — I’m more into story. So as we were watching, I was appreciating that aspect of it, as I knew he was, and suddenly I thought, “Who else would I want to watch this movie with?” I felt this other thing of value that I hadn’t felt for a while. We both felt it.
Aw, that’s nice.
I’m going to get all emotional now.
You know, that sense of relief you describe is surprising but it’s also not. It’s like deciding to get divorced is what keeps you from getting divorced.
Exactly.
You bring up “The March of the Penguins” in your essay, which turns into a brilliant little scene in the TV episode. Where did that come from?
That’s another thing Denis and I had in common, that was our favorite movie. We love nature movies, and we cried and cried when we saw that.
The episode’s writer and director Sharon Horgan turns it into such a marvelous scene.
When the essay was published I got a lot of emails. I had a website so strangers could email me. And so many people wrote, “I think I’m in a penguin marriage.”
Really? It became a thing?
Yeah. They really related to it. So many people wrote to say, “We’re trying to hold it together for the kids.”
Do you and Denis still play tennis together? Does he still play “Denis Tennis”?
We still play. I started playing in a league, a women’s doubles league. Denis plays more with a pro and likes to get more of a workout, but he’s still really resistant to the rules. My kids will crack up, especially our son, Jack, who plays tennis really well, much better than us. But it’s always been a joke like that — Denis will still change the rules in the middle of the game.
Even when he’s playing a traditional game of tennis?
Well, like he says it’s not fair because he’s not very good at serving. But him not being good at serving doesn’t mean it’s not fair. If you’re bad at serving, you have to become better at serving!
But no, we play but not as doubles partners. I think that’s common with couples. Because if I’m partnered with my brother-in-law and he makes a mistake, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, don’t worry.” But if I’m with Denis and he misses a shot, I’m like, “What the hell?”
We did reach a point where we started playing a lot of tennis one-on-one, and our marriage was improving, and I was aware of how much we were really pleased when the other did well.
Right — you were playing to extend the game, to keep playing.
And there was something about therapy that wasn’t in the column but should have been, which was that we kept thinking it was obvious what a disaster our marriage was, and our marriage counselor didn’t think so. He thought we actually had an O.K. marriage. He pointed out that we would say things negative about each other, but if he said anything even slightly negative about either of us, we would jump to the other’s defense.
Really?
Yeah, for example, I’d say something and the shrink would say, “So you have an inclination to be a little negative.” And Denis would jump in and say, “Negative? No she’s not. I would never describe her as negative.” And the same thing happened with me when the shrink was talking about him.
So the shrink was like, “What’s going on? This doesn’t usually happen. People don’t usually defend one another.” And I was like, “No, everyone does that.” And he said, “They do not, actually.”
They probably use the therapist to attack one another.
It was funny. We’d say, “How dare you say that about him!” or “How dare you say that about her!” We didn’t realize we were doing it until he pointed it out.
I think of celebrities like Denis as having to be so protective of their private lives. Did that become an issue? I mean, if you’re writing novels it’s one thing, but if you’re writing an essay about your marriage ——
That wasn’t an issue. I had to run it by him. And if he had said, “I don’t want that,” I don’t think I would have published it. He was like, “It’s O.K. I think it’s good.”
And then we had to tell his mom. She grew up in Ireland. She’s very Catholic. And there’s just not much divorce in his family. So I think we were more mostly worried about her and what she would think. But she was like, “Oh, O.K. Yeah, that’s good.” No one cared!
Ann Leary is the author of three novels and a memoir. Her 2013 novel, “The Good House,” is being made into a feature film.
Daniel Jones is the editor of Modern Love.
Modern Love can be reached at modernlove@nytimes.com.
Want more Modern Love? Read past Modern Love columns and Tiny Love Stories; listen to the Modern Love Podcast on iTunes, Spotify or Google Play Music; learn more about the Modern Love TV show on Amazon Prime Video; check out the updated anthology “Modern Love: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption”; follow Modern Love on Facebook.
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