Filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor has had quite a journey. His recent outing, the Telugu adaptation of the web series Modern Love, saw him direct three shorts of the six-part anthology and serve as its showrunner, too. “Being a showrunner was an alien experience,” he says, and goes on to explain, “I was to direct only two shorts in the anthology and I had to take on another because I couldn’t find the right filmmaker. Being a showrunner, there’s separation anxiety, but letting it go is beautiful. You see some things you never saw... It’s a huge learning experience.”

Making Modern Love Hyderabad involved going through 200 stories from the NYTimes column after which the show is named, picking 25 from them and finalising six. “It was madness! Our job was to pick six stories that would appeal to the Telugu audience. I’ve rarely done something like this. I have never worried about the audiences whenever I have set out to make something. This was different.”

Food is known to be an integral dimension to Hyderabad, and Kukunoor was keen on bringing it out through a project. One of his segments in the show gave him that scope. “My idea was to make food appealing authentically, without employing stereotypes. I told my cinematographer Sangram Giri not to glamourize it,” he says.

On the whole, he calls making Modern Love Hyderabad a satisfying, joyous shoot. “I had to adapt material that’s not mine, build on it, give it to other directors, step back and act like a non-interfering dad. I worked in a Telugu environment that’s still new to me and I am reaching out to a new audience. My own stories gave me the chance to associate with A-list talent and portray three different relationships,” he wraps up.