Delia Ephron on How Grief, Cancer and Late in Life Love Inspired Her Real-Life Broadway Rom-Traum ‘Left on Tenth’

Delia Ephron invented a term — discardia — for indulging without guilt at New York City’s too-many tempting eateries.

“It’s a game you play with yourself. You can buy anything you want to eat, but then you have to throw it away halfway through,” she says over a cappuccino and a slice of almond cake at a Greenwich Village hotel. “And that’s how I have managed the bakeries.”

Ephron, the 80-year-old author and co-writer of “You’ve Got Mail,” adores the Big Apple, where she was born and spent most of her adult life. It’s also a place on which she and her late sister Nora Ephron — the Oscar-nominated “When Harry Met Sally” scribe who died of cancer in 2012 — have indelibly left their mark through those timeless ’80s and ’90s romantic comedies.

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“What I love about the city is that you leave your house and everything’s just there — every kind of food, every kind of person …”

Naturally, it’s the setting of her new play “Left on Tenth,” which opened on Broadway this fall. Adapted from her 2022 memoir about several late-in-life, axis-tilting events, the story begins as Delia (portrayed by Julianna Margulies) writes a New York Times op-ed about her frustration with Verizon after losing her husband of more than three decades, Jerry, to cancer. She receives a flood of responses from readers who commiserate over trying to disconnect a late loved one’s phone line. One such reply is from a widowed Bay Area psychologist named Peter (Peter Gallagher), who notes in his charming email that Nora had set them up decades earlier when they were college students, though Delia doesn’t remember him. Yet — much like the plot of “You’ve Got Mail” — they chat online and fall in love.

“It was as unexpected as anything. I was frightened to get involved again because losing someone was terrible,” she says. “But if you never do that, you’re giving up joy.”

A few months into their relationship, Ephron was diagnosed with cancer. Given that “Left on Tenth” depicts that terrifying ordeal, she doesn’t consider the play a romantic comedy.

“Our actors call it a rom-traum,” Ephron says. “That’s good. But I call it a romance. Romantic comedies stop when people fall in love — that’s the end of the movie. But that’s not real life.”

Ephron’s leukemia treatment may not be the stuff of Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks meet-cutes, but “Left on Tenth” isn’t all somber. It’s as hilarious as it is harrowing. “You’re laughing half the time,” she says. “I like everything to be a lot of fun.”

“Left on Tenth” is Ephron’s Broadway debut as a playwright. But it’s not her first time in theater. She and her sister wrote the 2008 Off Broadway hit “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” starring Rosie O’Donnell, Tyne Daly and Natasha Lyonne as women who swap stories about relationships and wardrobes.

“Nora and I loved that book, and we knew it could be an evening in the theater,” Ephron remembers. “Then it took us 14 years. I look at that and think, ‘Boy, that was a journey through love.’”

Though “Left on Tenth” was quicker to adapt, Ephron was neurotic about reworking the show. “There’s a long rehearsal period. Every night, you think ‘That doesn’t work’ or ‘Let’s make that work better.’ Then at 8 in the morning, you’re fixing the script,” she says. “I was nervous. Who wouldn’t it be?” 

Bringing “Left on Tenth” from page to stage also meant casting two canines to play her beloved Havanese pups, Honey (portrayed by Nessa Rose) and Charlie (Charlie).

“Everyone goes wild for those dogs. They are the cutest things ever,” says Ephron. Honey was recast after the original hire, a Havanese named Dulcé, experienced a bout of stage fright. “Dulcé had been rescued out of a puppy mill. Everyone was in love with her, but she was frightened. [Nessa Rose] is from ‘Wicked,” and she’s quite fabulous and could do anything in front of a million people. But it was not Dulcé’s destiny.”

She’s no stranger to happily ever after, but Ephron feels her eldest sister — she has two younger siblings, Amy and Hallie — innately knew how to capture Hollywood’s version of love. “Nora understood that rom-coms should be smart. ‘When Harry Met Sally’ is smart. So are ‘You’ve Got Mail’ and ‘Sleepless in Seattle.’ That’s why they hold up to the extent that they do.”

Thirty years ago, in an effort to be nearer to Hollywood, Ephron lived in Los Angeles with Jerry for more than a decade. “Then the Northridge earthquake happened. We were sitting up at 3 in the morning, and I said, ‘If I die, I want to die in New York,’” she recalls, half a slice of almond cake sitting on her plate as she finishes her coffee. “We were back in four months.”