Why Jessica Chastain needed a 'breather' from Oscar Isaac after 'Scenes From a Marriage'

Sometimes you need distance from family, even if you're not actually related.

That was the case for Jessica Chastain and longtime friend Oscar Isaac, who received Golden Globe Award nominations for portraying a couple whose marriage starts to fall apart in the 2021 HBO miniseries "Scenes From a Marriage."

"'Scenes From a Marriage' was very tough. And I love Oscar, but the reality is, our friendship has never quite been the same," the 46-year-old Oscar-winning actress told Vanity Fair in an interview published Tuesday. The interview was conducted before actors went on strike.

"We’re going to be okay, but after that, I was like, I need a little bit of a breather," she added. "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."

The duo, who both attended The Julliard School in the early 2000s and previously played a married couple on-screen in the 2014 crime drama "A Most Violent Year," has previously discussed the toll that portraying a feuding couple took on their real-life friendship.

"There's great love there. When you're doing something difficult to someone you love, it's hard," Chastain told USA TODAY in 2021. "I'm not going to lie. It did get to a place where I was like, 'I can't see your face right now.'"

Jessica Chastain worried: 'I don't think Oscar and I are going to be friends after this'

In another interview that year, Chastain and Isaac detailed the depth of their connection with each other.

"Oscar and I have great love for each other, and we can read each other's minds. We can make the other laugh if we want to, but we can also really, really hurt each other," Chastain told TheWrap in 2021. "It became difficult when the characters are hurting each other. I would come home from work and say to my husband, 'I don’t think Oscar and I are going to be friends after this.'"

Isaac said, "We know each other so well, we’re like family."

"Usually you have to really get to know the person that you’re working with, especially when it’s this intimate and intense," he told TheWrap. "But we didn’t have a lot of time, so it was fortunate that we didn’t have to get to know each other."

That viral moment:Jessica Chastain explains how Oscar Isaac's face ended up in her armpit

Jessica Chastain says it's her job 'to be an open human being'

In her Vanity Fair interview, Chastain revealed how much her on-screen roles impact her personally. She described how filming the 2022 Showtime miniseries "George & Tammy," which is based on the lives of country music stars Tammy Wynette and George Jones, became an emotional experience toward the end.

"Living the songs, this idea of living the experiences, it doesn’t feel like it happened to someone else. It feels like it happened to me because I feel like I’ve lived it," Chastain said.

"As an artist, too, you work so hard to not armor up; you want to be open. And so that means sometimes I do get affected because it’s my job to be an open human being and to be vulnerable and to be honest. So because I lived this very meaningful experience, sometimes when I talk about it, it’s like I go right back to what the experience was." 

She added, "I think that’s the beautiful thing about any kind of art form — that you really get to experience circumstances that are different than your own, but you walk away with a greater understanding of humanity because you’ve learned more about life."