Zendaya and Robert Pattinson on Marriage and Secrets

Modern Love

The New York Times

Storytelling, Nytimes, Nyt, Redemption, New York Times, Society & Culture, Loss, Essay, Love

4.3 • 9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2026

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In their buzzy new film, “The Drama,” Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play an engaged couple whose relationship is imploding. With their wedding just a week away, Emma (Zendaya) reveals a shocking secret about her past that sends her fiancé, Charlie (Pattinson), into a self-destructive spiral of doubt. The stakes are high for these fictional lovers, but the underlying relationship anxiety is relatable: What if you don’t know the person you love as well as you think you do? What if they surprise you, and that surprise is not good? In this episode, Anna Martin, the host of “Modern Love,” asks Pattinson and Zendaya what these questions mean to their characters, and in their own lives. You can watch a video version of this episode here: https://www.nytimes.com/column/modern-love-podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love now and...
0:03.2	Just tell I love.
0:04.7	Love was stronger than anything.
0:07.2	And I love you more than anything.
0:10.5	What is love?
0:11.2	Love.
0:11.8	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
0:17.1	This is Modern Love.
0:18.1	And today on the show, we have two guests, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.
0:23.8	The two of them star in a new movie called The Drama.
0:26.9	They play an engaged couple who's about to get married.
0:29.5	And when I watched this movie, I had two opposite reactions at once.
0:33.8	On the one hand, I was like, they are so romantic.
0:37.0	And on the other hand, I was like, I'm so stressed
0:39.9	out by this. I need to put my hands over my eyes if I'm going to continue to watch this film.
0:44.6	I think the reason the drama hit me in this way is because it plays with a very real anxiety,
0:50.9	this idea that we can know a partner so well, but we can never truly know everything
0:57.4	about them. There's always a chance they're going to reveal something that takes us by surprise,
1:02.1	maybe even something pretty shocking. I met up with Robert and Zendaya in L.A.
1:07.1	And we talked about how this question, if you can ever really know someone, shows up in their movie and in their real lives.
1:14.2	Stay with us.
1:35.3	Okay. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. Thanks for being here. Welcome to Modern Love.
	...

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