What drew both actors to these misadventured piteous overthrows was their yearning to get back on the boards—where both got their start—after years of critical-darling movies and prestige dramas. They had also wanted to collaborate after meeting almost a decade ago through theater circles and “knocking around each other for ages,” as O’Connor puts it via phone from Dublin, where he’s shooting the refugee drama Provision with Black Panther’s Letitia Wright.
They found kindred spirits in one another—both were raised in artistic, pastoral families—and even once hatched a fanciful plan to live and work together with a like-minded group. “Sort of like collective-slash-cult,” O’Connor explains, before Buckley, also on the line, laughingly protests, “It wasn’t a cult, Josh, it was a commune!”
“Would have turned into a cult,” he mutters.
Their easy rapport translates into compelling chemistry onscreen. “Josh is one of my best friends, and I knew that I could fall off the cliff with it,” affirms Buckley, who called in from the English countryside, where she has been working on Alex Garland’s latest film. Love also played a role, as perhaps it must when it comes to one of the all-time great love stories. “Love in my own life had changed massively when this came my way,” Buckley says cryptically. “I just thought, I really want to figure out what love might be like in this play.”