Dar Salim (The Devil’s Double) and Academy Award-nominee Jake Gyllenhaal both have a significant amount of filmmaking experience, but Guy Ritchie made The Covenant with a rather unique process, a process that made a lasting impression on both actors. With the film due out in theaters on April 21st, the duo spoke with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff about their partnership on set and how that collaboration will influence their approach to their work on future sets.

The Covenant is set in Afghanistan in 2018 with Gyllenhaal playing US Army Sergeant John Kinley. His latest mission requires a new Afghan interpreter so he chooses Salim’s Ahmed to accompany them. Following an ambush by the Taliban, Ahmed puts his life on the line to help an injured Kinley make it through a harrowing trek to safety. In the end, Kinley does make it home, but Ahmed’s heroic actions force him to go into hiding. When Kinley finds out that Ahmed and his family weren’t given safe passage as promised, he returns to Afghanistan to find them and bring them to the US himself.
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During their interview, Gyllenhaal and Salim discussed their own collaboration while making this two-hander and also how Ritchie’s unique approach to the work both scared them and ultimately “awakened” new corners of their craft. You can hear about that and more in the video interview at the top of this article or read the full transcript below:

Image via MGM

PERRI NEMIROFF: I always love asking about the value of a good scene partner, which feels especially important here because it’s a two-hander and there are so many moments between the two of you where you say so much without a lot of dialogue. For each of you, can you tell me about a time when the other was just the scene partner you needed and helped you access something in your own character that you wouldn’t have been able to reach without him?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: Well, there’s a scene where I come back to find him and he doesn’t know I’m there, and one of the first lines I say to him is, “I love what you’ve done with your hair,” and I don’t think there’s anyone who I could have done that — not many people I could have done that with. It’s a very special quality of Dar’s, and he elicited that improv, so I thank you for that. You are a wonderful scene partner. [Laughs]

DAR SALIM: [Laughs] You’re welcome. You can use my bald head at any time. No, I could have done those scenes with anyone.

Image via MGM

I don’t believe that for a second! [Laughs]

SALIM: [Laughs] No, in all honesty, what can I tell you? He is one of our generation’s best actors.

GYLLENHAAL: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SALIM: He is. And in the hands of Guy Ritchie, it made it possible and easier for us to …

GYLLENHAAL: Thank god for Guy because we would have been at each other’s throats, basically.

SALIM: It would have been a comedy. Without Guy, it would have been a comedy. Not a funny comedy, but we would have made it funny.

I’ll watch you guys do a buddy comedy next. I think that’s a good idea.

GYLLENHAAL: Yeah, in Danish. I’m down.

Image via MGM

Bringing up Guy, I was listening to another interview you had done, Jake, where you talked about how he encouraged you guys not to focus on memorizing your lines, but rather to work things out on set on the day together. What would you say is a new tool in your acting toolkit, so to speak, that you know came from having that experience that you’re eager to apply on a future set even if it isn’t run that particular way?

GYLLENHAAL: It was about discovery in the morning. He would write the scenes in the morning, so based on what we had discovered throughout the process, it would then evolve and change, and then he would add things. One of the examples I can give you is, there was an improv that I said at one point, where I said — there were a lot of dogs barking at the end of a scene, and I said, “Oh, there are a lot of dogs around here,” and then he cut that scene together very quickly – he cuts very quickly – and he put together a rough assembly of that scene, and that ended the scene. And then he asked for that line because he remembered it and he wrote it in a scene much deeper into the movie, and it has real significance as a result.

So, he works like that. It is written and it is written by him, but it comes from discussions in the morning. If we have an idea, we bring it to him, he yays or nays it, and we move forward. So to me, it was about agility, the agility to be open to something that comes to you, use your imagination, and I guess it’s really about enjoying inspiration in a moment. And so if it comes in a scene now, oftentimes I’ll bring it up even if it’s a no to a filmmaker I’m working with. I think that part of me has been awakened by this process with Guy.

Image via MGM

SALIM: The first week was very scary for me because, you know, Guy Ritchie, Jake Gyllenhaal. You come very prepared as an actor. You want to show what you’ve got. And you just have to throw it all away, which is actually the case in all scenes that you work. You always have to throw everything away, your preparation, but in this case, it was literally everything, the lines, everything. And for me, it was scary working in a different language on a big set, but you have to remember that you’re in good hands, and don’t use any capacity to beat yourself up over why you didn’t do it like this or, ‘This line was wrong.’ It just reminded me of the beauty of the creative process, of just really trusting your abilities and trusting yourself, and being there and trusting your partner, and trusting that you’re working with a true leader [and] that he will make the symphony fit at the end.

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant hits theaters on April 21.