Jessica Chastain reveals ‘tough’ change in Oscar Isaac friendship

You may recall the bicep kiss heard round the world.

When Oscar Isaac, 44, planted his lips on the left arm of his “Scenes From a Marriage” co-star Jessica Chastain, 46, on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival in 2021, he appeared to have shed the baggage of their fictional broken marriage.

But in a new Vanity Fair profile, Chastain revealed filming the gut-wrenching HBO miniseries took a toll on her longtime friendship with Isaac.

“‘Scenes From a Marriage’ was very tough,” Chastain told the outlet in a story published Tuesday. “And I love Oscar, but the reality is, our friendship has never quite been the same.”

The Oscar winner‘s relationship with the other Oscar dates back to the turn of the century, when they were classmates at Juilliard. The pair have remained close and even played a married couple in “A Most Violent Year” (2014), after Chastain personally campaigned for Isaac to have the role.

When they reunited for “Scenes From a Marriage,” the stars’ closeness sparked electric on-screen chemistry — but portraying a couple going through a divorce brought up feelings that were difficult to leave behind when the cameras stopped rolling.

As Chastain said in the Vanity Fair interview, “We’re going to be OK, but after shooting the show], I was like, I need a little bit of a breather. There was so much I love you, I hate you in that series.”

“Scenes From a Marriage,” a gender-swapped remake of the 1973 Ingmar Bergman series of the same name, follows Chastain’s Mira as she divorces Isaac’s Jonathan amid uncertainty about parenthood, careers and fidelity.

The co-stars discussed the emotional experience of production when the series premiered in 2021, with Chastain telling the New York Times that she “cried every day for four months” during filming.

She even joked to the Hollywood Reporter that the raw material “ruined” her friendship with Isaac, though the two repeatedly cited their deep mutual trust as a pillar of the show’s success.

Something certainly clicked, as the miniseries got an Emmy nod for Isaac and Golden Globe nominations for both actors.