Real-life couple Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons have both made careers out of creating understated, internal characters who still manage to wear their hearts on their sleeves. That tradition continues in Jane Campion’s new Netflix movie The Power of the Dog, the first time the pair have appeared in a film together.

Dunst and Plemons met on the set of Fargo Season 2 in 2015 and quickly became friends. “I knew that she would be in my life for a long time,” Plemons told The New York Times in 2020. Less than two years later, the pair was engaged. By the time they were filming The Power of the Dog, Dunst was pregnant with their second child. All this, while practicing their lines late at night and bonding over their shared history as former child actors: “We laugh about the fact that we were two child actors, and we both made it out OK,” Dunst told the Times. 

While the Spider-Man and Breaking Bad stars have been together since 2016, they haven’t shared the screen since Season 2 of Fargo in 2015 (unless you include Dunst’s brief Black Mirror cameo). And the duo’s participation in The Power of the Dog almost didn’t happen; Paul Dano and Elisabeth Moss were initially set to play George and Rose. But when scheduling conflicts got in the way, Plemons and Dunst were cast instead. 

In The Power of the Dog, Dunst and Plemons’ real-life relationship lends the film’s love story an air of predestination; if these two crazy kids can’t make it, no one can. Still, the couple’s bond didn’t always make performing as an awkward newlywed couple easy. “I grabbed his arm in one scene and was told that was too familiar,” Dunst told Deadline. “I had to remind myself this is not my husband.” 

Rose Teaches George to Dance | The Power of the Dog