Here is a random but enjoyable list of on-screen couples whose chemistry alone was enough to set the screen on fire.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Andrew Scott in 'Fleabag,' Season 2
It may be one of the most captivating and intelligent relationships ever seen on the small screen. Fleabag is already impossible not to fall for, and then Andrew Scott arrives as the Hot Priest. Together, they lay the groundwork for a forbidden, unfulfilled romance, aside from a few kisses.
Their connection is not the kind of passion worn openly on the sleeve. It is about two people recognizing each other’s vulnerability and creating the sense that each has crossed the emotional border surrounding the other and reached the heart on the other side. It is no accident that Scott’s character is the only one who notices when Waller-Bridge breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the viewers and the camera. Nor is it an accident that she breaks the habit only after meeting him and moving into a new chapter.
Waller-Bridge and Scott already knew each other well before she wrote the role for him. One of the reasons she wanted him was his ability to be highly intellectual and deeply vulnerable at the same time — dangerous and tender in the same breath. Rehearsals were kept brief and minimal to preserve the electric charge between them, and the moment when the priest asks her, “Where did you just go?” was played by Scott with greater intensity than planned, creating the feeling that he could read the woman in front of him.
Their silences, it should be said, worked no less powerfully than their quick, witty dialogue. True, we did not get a happy ending. In fact, we got a heartbreaking one when the priest chose God over her — how convenient. But he certainly gave her a new Fleabag, and gave us a very good reason to sigh whenever we remember this fantastic pairing.
Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan in 'Masters of Sex'
Sex is built into this series and is always in the background, though more in the scientific sense than the passionate one. Still, Lizzy Caplan and Michael Sheen managed to charge their professional partnership with a constant current of underground sexual tension.
Sheen, who played William Masters, brought a quiet, British appeal. Caplan, who played Virginia Johnson and came from comedy, naturally stepped into the role of an assertive, daring woman willing to talk about things women were not expected to discuss in the 1950s — and even to conduct a secret affair, all in the name of science, of course.
The contrast between them fit a production that was looking for tension and friction. Sheen, by the way, pushed for Caplan to be cast, presumably because he knew who it would be easy for him to be drawn to on set. We will leave it there.
William and Virginia’s affair began under the cover of Masters’ scientific research, but gradually gained momentum until they had no choice but to admit they were in love and attracted to each other, even when they were not attached to a sensual pile of wires monitoring their pulse.
By the time that happened, they had already built the most challenging kind of love story: They had already had sex, so there was no thirst left to quench, yet the tension between them only grew stronger, as if they had never laid a finger on each other. Respect.
Phoebe Dynevor and Regé-Jean Page in 'Bridgerton'
Here is a casting choice that makes clear that behind-the-scenes chemistry is often carefully planned, not just a matter of luck. “Bridgerton” was designed from the start to rest on a romantic relationship strong enough to carry an entire season. Shonda Rhimes took on the impressive challenge of bringing Jane Austen together with “Fifty Shades” and created a British aristocracy unafraid to discard its corset for a little skin-to-skin contact.
From their first joint audition, Dynevor and Page had a sense of friction — not yet the kind that produces orgasms, but more like sparring, a duel. That suited exactly the path laid out for them by Rhimes, the super-producer and chief romantic. The two also kept some distance behind the scenes so as not to damage the narrative of a couple pretending to be together, and generally avoided creating intimacy once the cameras stopped rolling.
The result was excellent and set a high bar for the following seasons, one that some would say has never been matched, no matter which member of the Bridgerton clan entered society and curtsied before the queen.
Their connection was so hot and intense that Page could not bear the thought of another season and left at the end of the first. Kidding. He simply went off to make movies, leaving Daphne and the frustrated “Bridgerton” writers behind to invent excuses for why she showed up everywhere without him. Still, we will remember him fondly for the gift of desire he gave us in that debut season.
Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac in 'Scenes From a Marriage'
Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac were excited when Hagai Levi, creator of “In Treatment,” asked them to play the couple in the television adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s canonical “Scenes From a Marriage.” Isaac was the one who asked for Chastain to be his on-screen partner. They had been close friends since their Juilliard days and had already played a couple in “A Most Violent Year.”
What they did not anticipate was that the new project would nearly destroy the close friendship they had nurtured for decades.
Their real-life bond may have been what created their perfect on-screen chemistry in the first place. It did not hurt that they share a similar kind of beauty — bourgeois, white and restrained — and seem to operate on the same wavelength. But when they had to play a long-married couple going through estrangement, divorce and even physical violence, they felt the script seeping into their real relationship off-set. They found themselves in the absurd position of identifying too strongly with their characters.
Viewers benefited from the natural ease and intimacy between Chastain and Isaac, but their friendship, they later said, was never quite the same. They knew how to make each other laugh without words, but apparently also how to hurt each other, and they wore down their almost telepathic communication in service of the couple’s dynamic.
When the final cut was called, Isaac and Chastain took a break from one another to lick their wounds. Only months later did they reconnect. This is our moment to apologize to them and promise we will think about what we did.
Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger in '10 Things I Hate About You'
It is no accident that this film launched the careers of its two leads, Julia Stiles and the late Heath Ledger. Stiles was only 17 when she played Kat, the smart outsider who does not easily fall at the feet of the school’s resident wild boy. Ledger played Patrick, the cocky Australian paid by Kat’s sister’s suitor to get her out of the way, only to fall for her by accident — in other words, in the most beautiful way possible.
As in “Bridgerton,” the producers were looking for verbal friction and tension rather than physical chemistry, but one led to the other. The sexual electricity between them became one of the elements that turned the movie into a high school cult classic, one that spoke to underdogs and paid tribute to Shakespeare by loosely adapting “The Taming of the Shrew.”
Forgive the party-pooping, but despite the romantic tension on screen, Stiles had a brief secret relationship with another cast member, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and later said she thought of him while filming some of the movie’s emotional moments.
Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer in 'Call Me by Your Name'
Although “Call Me by Your Name” is set in the 1980s, it contains none of the tragedy that so often surrounded gay stories from that period. There is no destructive homophobia attached to it, no trauma of the closet and no incurable autoimmune disease. Just two men, Elio and Oliver — one 24 and the other on the edge of being considered legally underage — falling in love without being punished for it. They talk, swim, get bored and have sex. A refreshing concept, indeed.
What helped make the film feel so naturally human was the successful connection between Chalamet and Hammer, which director Luca Guadagnino built delicately and slowly by having them live near each other in Italy for several weeks. Chalamet and Hammer spent time in the town of Crema, ate Italian food, rode Italian bicycles, watched movies and generally spoke mostly to each other because there were not many English speakers on set.
During filming, Guadagnino was careful not to turn the movie into gay porn, encouraging his two leads toward restrained desire rather than heavy petting by the river. As is well known, restrained desire is the most effective aphrodisiac humanity has managed to refine.
For the record, neither Chalamet nor Hammer is gay in real life, though Chalamet has said he does not like rigid labels and believes in emotional openness. We accept you, Chalamet, just as you are.
Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer in 'True Blood'
On the surface, it is a straightforward story about a telepathic waitress from a small Louisiana town who falls in love with the supernatural world, and a 183-year-old vampire who returns to town after many years and falls in love with her. Naturally, this leads to a stormy romance full of sex, blood, betrayal and conflicts between the human and vampire worlds. Who among us has not been there?
In reality, Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer — Sookie and Bill — took their roles very seriously and fell in love during the filming of the first season. That helped them greatly in the intimate scenes and may teach us all a thing or two about total commitment to acting.
It did not necessarily happen out of loyalty to the roles, but more because they were the only two actors on set who did not live in Los Angeles and had to stay in the same hotel during filming. They ended up sharing breakfasts and dinners.
Their first scene together, incidentally, was a fully nude sex scene, which can also teach us a thing or two about how to break the ice in Hollywood. Paquin and Moyer decided that what was good for a vampire series was also good for real life, with one small difference: Sookie and Bill’s toxic relationship turned into a happy commitment. Paquin and Moyer married and had three children.
That development greatly relieved creator and director Alan Ball, who said he noticed the first signs of desire between them while filming the second episode and feared it would end badly and ruin his show. For the production, it actually made things easier, because they were the only couple who did not need barriers during sex scenes. Their genuine intimacy created one of those rare situations in which viewers were watching a real relationship, not just a scripted one.
Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones in 'Normal People'
It is not unusual for auditions between two actors to send off sparks. That is what chemistry reads are for. But the casting team that watched Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones’ first audition found itself in a slightly different experience: Three or four people in the room, depending on whom you ask, were quietly weeping by the end of the scene. That made it clear to director Lenny Abrahamson that he had found his pair.
The casting came at the right time. Mescal had already done several chemistry reads with a number of actresses, and none had produced the desired effect. Two weeks of intensive rehearsals in Ireland and Italy, with both actors actively involved in the script, drew them even closer and helped breathe life into the bond between Connell, the popular working-class athlete, and Marianne, the isolated intellectual raised in an emotionally distant family.
Any other couple might have exhausted viewers with their thoughtful back-and-forth, but Mescal and Edgar-Jones let the physical and emotional magnets between them do the work. You always wanted to see them together again.
Naturally, the public longed to see that chemistry become a real relationship off-screen as well, but the two preferred to remain close friends and find other romantic partners. So be it. Both became sought-after actors and experienced what they called “strange fame,” or, in other words, fame during COVID, when the world was stuck in isolation and all the affection came to them online.
Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie in 'Heated Rivalry'
Last but not least are the two young, handsome ice hockey players, Shane and Ilya, whose on-screen exchanges still feel fresh and are continuing to set hearts racing among women and men around the world. The Russian and Canadian characters, who conduct a passionate decade-long affair, have become a collective obsession — and, thanks to HBO, an international one — while the actors who play them have gone from anonymity to worldwide fame.
Because a significant part of the series consists of photogenic sexual interactions, naturally in service of the story and not merely for the sake of sex itself, the attraction and tension between Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams played a major role in casting. Storrie was cast first as Ilya. Williams was the third actor to audition opposite him for Shane, and Storrie was the one who told writer-director Jacob Tierney that this was the guy he was willing to roll around with in the luxurious sheets of random hotel rooms.
Williams also auditioned opposite another actor and summed up the difference by saying the other actor was good, but with Connor, it felt as though he was about to undress him and sleep with him at any moment. Pardon his French.
There is no doubt that the chemistry between Williams and Storrie scorched the screen. You could feel the sex in their looks, to say nothing of the rest of their bodies. It was obvious even outside the sex scenes — on the hockey rink or when they sat next to each other at news conferences. Delayed gratification and secrecy have never been more arousing.
At the end of filming, Storrie and Williams went out to celebrate and came back with matching tattoos: “SEX SELLS.”