Scarlett Johansson on starring with Adam Driver in new movie after 7 years

Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver are sharing the screen again, and seven years on from Marriage Story, Johansson couldn’t be happier about it.

The pair, who played warring spouses in Noah Baumbach’s acclaimed 2019 divorce drama, have reunited for Paper Tiger, a crime thriller directed by James Gray that premieres at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, 16 May. 

This time around, the dynamic is rather different. 

Johansson, 41, plays Hester Pearl, wife to Irwin Pearl (Miles Teller), a seemingly happy family man in late-1980s New York whose world unravels when his brother Gary, played by Driver, 42, arrives and draws the family into danger with the Russian mafia.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Friday, Johansson made no secret of her enthusiasm for working with Driver again. 

“I would’ve loved to have had even more scenework with him, I love working with him,” she said. 

It’s a sentiment she has expressed before, last year she told PEOPLE: “I love Adam as a person and he is an absolutely extraordinary actor. If I could make every movie with Adam Driver, I would.”

The bond she formed with co-star Miles Teller, 39, also clearly left an impression. 

Johansson described him as “so unexpectedly tender,” recalling a moment that spoke to just how quickly the on-set chemistry developed. 

“I went away for a couple of weeks to do the press for Jurassic, I felt crazy to leave, but I had to go, and when I was gone, I’d get photographs of my makeup station from Miles and he’d be like, ‘Where’s Hester?'”

The reunion with Driver inevitably brings Marriage Story back into the conversation. 

The film, which saw the two actors portray a couple navigating a brutal divorce, picked up four wins at the Gotham Awards and remains one of both actors’ most celebrated works. 

Johansson previously recalled the shoot as physically and emotionally gruelling. 

“We spent two entire days screaming at each other, brutally screaming and fighting for two full days,” she told As If magazine at the time, adding that Driver’s strength as an actor was what made it possible to push so hard.

The film even had an unlikely afterlife. 

Last year, the US Department of Agriculture went viral after using audio from the Marriage Story argument scenes to scare off a pack of grey wolves that had been terrorising livestock on an Oregon farm.

Johansson’s response, when asked about it at the New York City premiere of her directorial debut Eleanor the Great, was perfectly measured: “I’m glad we could be useful!”

Paper Tiger arrives at Cannes with considerable anticipation behind it. For fans of the Johansson-Driver pairing, the wait has been worth it.