“Love is rooted in friendship”

The following contains spoilers for It Ends With Us, out in theaters August 9.

In 2016, writer Colleen Hooper published It ends with us, a romantic tale about breaking a cycle of abuse and rediscovering lost love. At the center of this tale are the heroine, florist Lily Bloom (Blake Lively), and her first love, ex-Marine turned chef Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar). Their unlikely friendship blossomed as teenagers, when a young Lily (Isabela Ferrer) provided food and kindness to Atlas (Alex Neustaedter), who had just become homeless. 30 years later, the two childhood friends drifted apart, only to reunite in Boston, with Lily finding herself in a tragic and abusive relationship with her new husband, Ryle.

In this exclusive interview with CBR, Blake Lively, Brandon Sklenar, Isabela Ferrer and Alex Neustaedter share their experiences of acting as a couple on screen, their ease of interaction, the ups and downs of playing a love story on film, and their relationships with both characters, past and present.

CBR: For Blake Lively and Brandon Sklenar: Your love story as Lily and Atlas is the emotional core of the story. You are two very natural characters who find themselves in this sterile world. How do you achieve this kind of natural behavior and romantic chemistry on screen?

Brandon Sklenar:
We were lucky, because we had good chemistry. I mean, we had never really met. We
Still
we've never met. I'm in character. [laughs] No, we just had great chemistry. I mean, honestly, we didn't talk about anything.
We showed up and did it, and it worked!
Which doesn't happen very often, and I'm very grateful for that. Yes, we didn't have any arguments.

Blake Lively:
Actually, our most romantic scene… I mean… we don't have any really romantic scenes!

Skeleton:
I don't even like to call it a love story.

Lively:
It's not! There's the residue of this deep love. And the love is rooted in the friendship with Lily and Atlas, which is, to me, even more romantic because they were best friends who fell in love. So, that romance is always there for that. But I guess if there's a romantic scene, the most romantic was [Brandon’s] day one. And it was like, diving right in, and it was so easy, so effortless. I don't even know if we had a conversation until after, between takes!
But Brandon is so present, so real, so authentic and natural that all I have to do is stand there, and I didn't feel like acting.
I felt like reacting. And you know, it's really nice when you have a scene partner who brings that authenticity to the role.

Skeleton:
I felt the same way. Yes, absolutely. You're just, you're just doing it. I don't know how to say it!

That friendship translates well on screen. That’s why I think it’s so appealing. And it’s actually the perfect tie-in from my question for Isabella and Alex. You’re the two kid versions of these two adult characters. You two are real crowd-pleasers! People love seeing your interactions on screen. So have you developed a rapport off screen, like your portrayals of star-crossed lovers? Have you emulated Brandon and Blake’s performances and your mannerisms?

Isabela Ferrer:
Yes. When we first met on set, the first scene we had to do together was the garden scene, which, again, is similar to [Blake and Brandon]diving right into the most intimate, heartbreaking, open, one of the most honest parts of our chapter in the whole movie. And thankfully, we got along so well that it felt super safe and easy to kind of be that vulnerable, that quickly. Aside from that, we got to see a couple of Brandon and Blake scenes beforehand.
But it was also really like we had our own autonomy with these characters.
And I felt like I had a really equal share of it, which was really special.

Alex Neustadter:
Yeah, we did some rehearsals beforehand, too. That helped a lot. And then, I think, the day before we started shooting, I had a little place upstate that I was staying at before, and, like, [Isabela] he wasn't doing anything. And we went on, like, a little mini road trip.
I showed her how to hitch a trailer, you know. Like, those are the things we really bonded over!

Ferrer:
I'm a city girl, so… [laughs]

New arrival:
So we met that way. And that was really helpful, yeah!

CBR: I mean, the garden scene was so cute. You all did a great job. And I can't wait for everyone to see you interact on screen.

Lively:
Thank you, Hannah Rose from a lily, from Lily Bloom! It's nice to have a flower companion.

It Ends With Us hits theaters on August 9.