For Academy Award-winning actress Jessica Chastain, “living the experiences” of her on-screen roles is just part of the territory.

“It feels like it happened to me because I feel like I’ve lived it,” she told Vanity Fair, explaining that her “job [is] to be an open human being and to be vulnerable and to be honest.”

In the HBO miniseries Scenes from a Marriage, working alongside longtime friend and co-star Oscar Isaac made the experience of embodying a deteriorating marriage even more emotional and “very tough,” Chastain said.

“And I love Oscar, but the reality is, our friendship has never quite been the same,” she revealed to the outlet though laughter. “We’re going to be okay, but after that, I was like, I need a little bit of a breather.”

The five episode miniseries followed Chastain’s Mira and Isaac’s Jonathan in a modern, American adaptation of the 1973 Swedish TV miniseries of the same name. The two play a married couple whose relationship is falling apart.

“There was so much I love you, I hate you in that series,” Chastain continued.

According to People, Chastain and Isaac trained at Juilliard together and have been friends for over twenty years. The two also starred alongside each other as husband and wife in the 2014 crime thriller A Most Violent Year. This familiarity allowed them to bring authenticity to their on-screen relationship, even when having to film uncomfortable intimate scenes.

Nonetheless, Chastain assured Vanity Fair that “there’s so much joy” in her work.

“There’s a lot of catharsis,” she said. “I feel like I have the best job in the world because I get to have these experiences. They’re so out of this world and feel like they’re mine.”

However, she noted that these intense experiences differ drastically from her real life, which she described as much calmer.

“I don’t have to have these tortured things in my life. I play them and I experience them, and then I come home and I live quietly and peacefully.”

Scenes from a Marriage is available to stream on Max.