Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway play husband and wife in the new coming-of-age drama Armageddon Time, while in real life the two share a special bond.

In this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, the pair recall first meeting while making the 2019 film Serenity.

Says Hathaway, “I think the bond became stronger and more personal after that because I spent time with Jeremy’s character on Serenity. It was so lovely when we had the personal moments on that film.”

The Oscar winner, 39, describes how their “lives kind of opened up in a similar way at a similar time in that we both became parents at roughly the same time.”

“From my perspective,” she says, “this gorgeous friendship has taken root.”

Hathaway is mom to two sons with husband Adam Shulman, while Strong, 43, and wife Emma Wall have three daughters.

“My second daughter learned how to walk in the house we were sharing,” Strong says of a vacation home his and Hathaway’s families recently shared with friends.

Their second film together, Armageddon Time, sees them playing a middle-class Jewish couple raising two boys in writer-director James Gray’s semi-autobiographical story about his youth in Queens.

“We didn’t talk very much when we were making this,” admits the Succession Emmy winner. “We did when we needed to. I think there’s a tacit trust that I know that I feel toward Annie and I think we both felt with each other. We have a shorthand with each other.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Hathaway: “I think that because we were friends, we both felt a real ease for forgetting each other. It’s like, you can take me for granted, you don’t have to worry about me. So it’s that great feeling that you have when you’re with a scene partner and you just step off a really high cliff together at the same time. Our friendship let us do that in a way that felt really organic.”

Armageddon Time is in theaters Friday.