Scarlett Johansson has praised her long-standing professional and personal rapport with Sam Rockwell, saying their friendship and mutual admiration have helped them develop great chemistry across three films, including their upcoming animated feature Ray Gunn. Speaking to People magazine at the London Film Festival premiere of Ray Gunn on October 10, Johansson discussed her experience working with Rockwell, with whom she previously shared the screen in Iron Man 2 and Jojo Rabbit. The upcoming film marks their third collaboration, with both actors lending their voices to the Netflix animated project.
“Oh, I love Sam. I mean, he’s one of my favourite actors, period,” Johansson said on the red carpet, adding, “And so when I get to work with him, it brings me a lot of happiness because I just get to work opposite somebody that I humongously admire, and I’ve known him for a long time, and I feel like he could do anything.”
Johansson also explained why their working relationship translates into strong onscreen chemistry. “I think we have great chemistry because we’re friends, and you both admire one another. So it’s a pleasure,” she said, adding, “We’ve been all over, like, decades, have done all different kinds of stuff together. So I love that camaraderie.”
Directed by Brad Bird, known for The Incredibles, Ray Gunn is set in an alternative reality styled after the 1930s. Rockwell voices Raymond Gunn, a private investigator drawn into a case involving aliens, murder and a multimedia star named Venus Nova, voiced by Johansson. The film also features the voices of Tom Waits, Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Rodriguez, Alan Tudyk and Patton Oswalt, among others.
Johansson discussed the challenges of voice acting, explaining that performers have to convey emotion and character without the physical expressions and movements that accompany live-action performances. “You don’t have, obviously, the rest of your physical body,” she said, as cited by People magazine. She added that working together in the recording process can bring an additional dimension to their performances. “When we were together and working through stuff, I think you get something out of the performance that you don’t necessarily get when either one of us is just laying down the vocal without the other person there because you get the chemistry and it’s messy and stuff like that,” she said.
Johansson also highlighted Bird’s approach to animation, noting that the filmmaker embraces the imperfections that can make a performance feel authentic. “And I think for Brad, it’s fun,” she continued, adding, “It’s a fun challenge because he’s animating something that’s messy a little bit. It’s not perfect, and he loves that.”
Both actors are also part of other high-profile films scheduled for release this autumn. Johansson stars alongside Miles Teller and Adam Driver in Paper Tiger, which is set to release in theatres on November 13. Rockwell, meanwhile, reunites with writer-director Martin McDonagh for Wild Horse Nine, scheduled to release on November 6.
What stands out in Johansson’s remarks is how rare her kind of creative partnership has become in an industry that often treats collaboration as transactional. She and Rockwell have built something over nearly two decades that neither fame nor shifting career priorities have managed to erode. Whether that ease will translate into the kind of animated chemistry audiences remember from their live-action work remains to be seen, since voice performances rely on an entirely different set of instincts. Ray Gunn arrives in select theatres on December 4 and on Netflix on December 18, giving viewers a chance to judge for themselves whether friendship really does sound different on screen.
