While real-life couple Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander costar in the upcoming Korean drama Hope, they didn’t actually film their scenes together.
“It’s great, we’re big fans of director Na [Hong-jin]. He’s directing this movie, Hope,” Fassbender, 47, said on the Thursday, March 6, broadcast of the Today show. “It was actually Alicia, who reached out to him and then he approached us to be in the movie. We are in the scene together, but we were never on set together.”
He further joked, “It’s a stipulation that we insist on: ‘We can’t be on the same set together.’ Trying to keep our marriage intact.”
Fassbender and Vikander, 36, met on the set of 2016’s The Light Between Oceans and eloped one year later. While Hope will be their second professional collaboration, there is a logistical reason why the actors didn’t run into one another on set.
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“It was down to scheduling ‘cause I was shooting Black Bag and The Agency, so I had to go out earlier,” Fassbender explained on Thursday. “I shot my stuff with a stand-in for her and she did the same for me.”
Fassbender and Vikander have only offered small glimpses into their relationship over the years.
“I feel I’m more happy and content than I’ve ever been,” Vikander previously told Vogue in 2018. “The happy-and-content thing, that’s talking about my private life.”
At the time, the Swedish actress called The Light Between Oceans a “great experience” in part due to Fassbender’s contributions.
“I think he’s one of the absolute best actors I’ve worked with,” Vikander told the outlet. “Of course, he’d done more films than me, but immediately when we started to work together, he was so open to wanting me to chip in new ideas and thoughts. He would be like, ‘I’m stuck, what should I do?’ and I would say, ‘You’re asking me?’ That was such a sweet thing.”
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She added, “Life is about a lot more than work, but if it’s also your biggest passion, of course it’s something you enjoy talking about.”
Fassbender and Vikander also share two children. Vikander gave birth to baby No. 2 shortly before she and Fassbender went to shoot Hope.
“When I met you in Korea, you had literally just had your second baby, and the stuff we had to do in the film was so physical,” costar Taylor Russell told Vikander in a July 2024 interview for Elle. “I just thought, this is somebody who is clearly so in tune with her body, who knows how to take care of herself and has stamina. I was so impressed by how you showed up after doing something so intense.”
