hen Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac were cast as the lead roles in Hagai Levi’s updated take on Ingmar Bergman’s lauded Scenes From A Marriage, the two friends knew that they were about to go on a remarkably intense journey.

The pair, who have known each other since they were drama students 20 years ago at Julliard in New York, had previously worked together on 2014 thriller A Most Violent Year and have had a long friendship throughout the years.

In their newest project together, Chastain and Isaac play Mira and Jonathan respectively, a couple whose marriage is crumbling apart at the seams. Mira is a confident, ambitious tech executive left unfulfilled by her marriage while Jonathan is a cerebral and accommodating philosophy professor desperate to keep their relationship intact. The series ebbs and flows through brutal arguments and loving exchanges between the two. Both actors deliver powerhouse performances with phenomenal chemistry.

“We’re close friends and that was important for many reasons and a big one being that we have a shorthand together,” says Isaac. “We’re efficient. We know each other so well so there wasn’t any energy spent on trying to create intimacy or to answer questions like, ‘oh, I’m not really sure how she is thinking or feeling about this? Am I making her uncomfortable? Have I said too much? Does she want to talk about this?

“We already knew each other so well so there was no energy spent on any of that – it was all spent on who are these people and what do they mean to each other? And knowing each other so well was incredibly helpful.”

Chastain admits that it was “really interesting” to explore Mira’s character, who is deep in a marital depression, with Isaac. The level of comfort the two actors had with each other gave them the freedom to go further with their performances even though the subject matter was intense.

“It was a raw shoot for both of us and thank goodness our friendship is good and we kept talking as our families have vacationed together and spent a lot of time together,” says Chastain. “But while we were shooting it, at the very beginning, I looked right at him and said, ‘are we going to be friends after this?’ because it felt way too upsetting and too intense. But I’m happy to say that we are still very good friends.”

Chastain admits the work also felt very exposing at times and playing the role of Mira was hard for her to compartmentalize. “It was hard to go home and leave it at work – part of myself was in it.”

Isaac also admits the series offered up some rare challenges, being one of the most exhausting and emotionally charged roles he has taken.

“But there were also moments of incredible beauty and sychronicity between all of us, which was great,” he says. “It felt like playing with amazing musicians for like a five hour gig, where you pour it all out on the stage and you have incredible moments when you are flying so high because you are just in this amazing zone and moments where you are so tired you don’t feel like you can go on and you feed off the energy of the other person and what is going on. That’s how it felt for me. It was very special.”

Chastain and Isaac’s relationship is not the only personal one that was brought into Scenes Of A Marriage. Bergman’s original version of this series largely drew on the Swedish director’s own marital experience. Having already been divorced several times when he shot the program, many experiences his characters portrayed were modelled on things that had actually happened to him. For instance, when the husband Johan leaves his wife to move to Paris with his lover, that was something that Bergman did himself to one of his ex-wives.

While there is merit to the notion that the best art is often rooted in truth, Levi also carried some of his own trauma into his modern version of Scenes From A Marriage. Twice divorced himself, Levi admits that he drew partly on personal experience.

“My ex-wives are very strong, independent and sometimes even tough women,” recalls Levi. “I, myself, was never this alpha male with chauvinistic ideas of how to treat people. So, on that level alone, the story became much closer to my life than the original drama. Of course, I went a little bit further and made Jonathan an ex-Orthodox Jew, which is totally myself.

“While Bergman, almost 50 years ago, wanted to make a statement about the price of marriage, I felt it was time to speak about the price of divorce. Still, this is a love story.”

Chastain adds, “It’s complicated but I definitely see it as a love story, although to me it’s a love story where the characters keep getting in their own way.”

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