Despite being longtime friends, Jessica Chastain shared that her friendship with Oscar Isaac hasn’t been the same since the duo starred together in HBO’s limited series Scenes From a Marriage.
In an interview with Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast published Wednesday and conducted prior to the actors strike, Chastain reflected on how filming Scenes From a Marriage was “very tough” given it required such an emotional performance, as well as how her friendship with Isaac was impacted as a result.
“Scenes From a Marriage was very tough. And I love Oscar [Isaac], but the reality is, our friendship has never quite been the same. We’re going to be okay, but after that, I was like, I need a little bit of a breather,” Chastain told Vanity Fair.
She continued, “There was so much I love you, I hate you in that series. But there’s so much joy in what I get to do. There’s a lot of catharsis. I feel like I have the best job in the world because I get to have these experiences. They’re so out of this world and feel like they’re mine. But then I live a very quiet life. I don’t have to have these tortured things in my life. I play them and I experience them, and then I come home and I live quietly and peacefully.”
Amid the 2021 release of the series, Chastain and Isaac went viral on social media due to their chemistry on the Venice Film Festival red carpet. In a viral slow-motion video, Isaac can be seen looking at Chastain and kissing her inner arm.
Chastain addressed the video and her friendship with Isaac during an appearance on NBC’s Today show at the time. “We’re acting, but also Oscar and I have been friends — we went to college together — so we’ve been friends more than half of our lives, and we know so much about each other,” she said.
She also laughed off the chatter around the moment and noted that “everybody is super sexy in slow motion.” “I think it was really funny because when you look at it in regular speed, I’m looking straight ahead and he looks over at me. He just kind of goes to give me a peck on my elbow, and at the same time, I’m going to give him a hug. So all of a sudden, his face ends up in my armpit,” she said.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Chastain and Isaac spoke about how their longtime friendship and history helped with handling the raw material of the limited series together.
“As challenging as that was, being able to do it with Jessica, there was something that strangely felt effortless about it, probably the most effortless of anything I’ve ever done,” Isaac told THR.
Meanwhile Chastain said she” “really relied on the trust” that they had with one another. “I didn’t have to get to know this person. I had to re-get to know him because I had to switch things around in my brain to see him as Jonathan,” she said.
