What you need to know
Mark Ruffalo playing a father in a project is more of an experience than you might think.
In Hal & Harper, Ruffalo stars as the unnamed “dad” to Cooper Rife and Lili Reinhart, who play his eponymous children, and Reinhart said working with the Tusk star “was like having a dad around.”
“He’s a very bright, very spiritual person, and that’s what happens when you’re around him. He really has a very kind heart and is kind to everyone,” Ruff, who also wrote and directed the series, told PEOPLE in a joint interview with Reinhardt, 29.
Ruffalo is “very down-to-earth and very nice, so it’s very freeing to be around him,” says Ruff, 28. “He’s amazing.”
In the series, which premiered at Sundance in January and now airs weekly on MUBI, Ruffalo plays a complicated father grieving the death of his wife. The show explores how that grief affected children Hal and Harper through a dual timeline: when they were in elementary school and when they were adults.
“It’s one thing to perform with him and another thing to watch him on the monitor,” Ruff said of the 57-year-old Ruffalo. “And he’s very funny and very much a dad.”
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Reinhardt couldn’t agree more. “He’s our dad,” echoes the Riverdale star.
Reinhart said her relationship with Ruffalo was so familial that she was shocked when Poor Things, for which Ruffalo was nominated for his fourth Oscar, was released. “I was like, ‘Dad!'”
Hull & Harper began with the idea that Rife “had this idea of adults playing kids because kids are growing up too fast. And I realized I needed to explore adults and their present.”
“It’s about two emotionally stunted adults, and we look back at when they were stunted and when things started to change. And it all intertwined, and it ended up being a drama with two timelines, one[of the brothers]coming together and now trying to separate.”
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Reinhardt declared it “the best script[she]had ever read.” “I think I was very lucky to have this sent to me. I think it was just God’s timing or God or the universe putting it in my life.”
“I love the down-to-earth reality of Hal and Harper, and that’s what I love as an actor,” she says. “So to be able to do that so soon after seven years on the show…I feel incredibly lucky. I’m so proud of the show and so honored to be surrounded by the people I did the show with.”
The two definitely bonded for life after working on the show together, and despite having a similar experience on Riverdale, Reinhart knows it’s a “rare” relationship.
“I look forward to collaborating with Cooper on a variety of things for the rest of my life,” Reinhart said. “I don’t have any brothers in real life, but Cooper is like a spiritual brother to me and I would really love to work with him again professionally, but at the same time Cooper is not going anywhere in my life.”
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She added, “I feel like we have some kind of karmic brother-sister bond.”
Rife agrees, saying of her bond with her co-stars, “I think our souls have been dancing with each other for years.”
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New episodes of Hal and Harper drop on MUBI on Sunday.
