Scenes from a Marriage (2021)
Trivia
Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain both graduated from the same Julliard class and have been friends for over 20 years.
Jessica Chastain said her one condition for going fully nude in the series was that Oscar Isaac had to strip totally naked too. Isaac agreed but didn't realize how much of his body the camera exposed until he saw the episode.
Michelle Williams was originally cast in the lead role opposite Oscar Isaac but dropped out. Isaac's good friend, Jessica Chastain replaced her. This is the second collaboration between them after playing a married couple in A Most Violent Year (2014). (Incidentally, the reverse situation happened on A Most Violent Year, where Chastain recommended Isaac to replace Javier Bardem, who was originally cast in the less of that film).
This five-episode miniseries is a remake of a six-episode miniseries. The second episode of the original is skipped, and the remaining five episodes are broadly preserved, with some changes.
During a October 2021 interview with Terry Gross on the NPR program "Fresh Air," Gross asked Oscar Isaac how he felt about having a very brief full-frontal nude scene in this miniseries. His joking response was, "I was surprised that Hagai [Levi] left that in there because it gives it away that I'm not...that I wasn't raised modern Orthodox [Jewish]." When Gross laughed and said that the shot was probably too quick for anyone to notice that Isaac is actually uncircumcised, he said, "I hope so, but some people [internet commenters] clearly caught on. So I was like... I don't know. I was--I wouldn't have done that [leave the shot in the final edit]. But, you know, all right. Maybe that was a little more.... A little more fourth-wall breaking, I guess, that's going on there."
The characters in this remake have similar names to their counterparts in the original Swedish version: Jonathan (from Johan), Mira (from Marianne), Ava (from Eva), Kate (from Katarina), Peter (also Peter in the original), and Poli (from Paula, originally a woman).
Oscar Issac's daughter is named Ava, which is also the name of the Android his character created his film Ex Machina.
In episode 1, Jonathan mentions Mira's college boyfriend was in a band called Saraband. Saraband (2003) is the name of the final film directed by Ingmar Bergman, who wrote and directed the original Scenes From a Marriage (1973), which this series is a remake of.
Jessica Chastain's role of Mira was originated as Marianne, played by Liv Ullmann in Scenes from a Marriage (1973). The two actresses actually worked together previously when Ullmann directed Chastain in Miss Julie (2014).
Oscar Isaac claimed that while he agreed to perform his nude scene naked on-set, he did not think his genitals would be visible on-camera, and he did not see them on the screen when he was shown a playback on the monitor.
Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac both appeared in the X-Men saga. Chastain in X-Men Dark Phoenix (2019) and Isaac in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), respectively.
