Donald Glover says he and Maya Erskine 'became like a married couple' filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith

For Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, life imitated art while they were making Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

The duo star as the titular spies in Prime Video's reimagining of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's 2005 movie of the same name, and Glover reveals that they actually began acting like real-life spouses on set.

"She gets really mad at me because I tell her how funny she is — she's an incredible actress, but she's so naturally funny," Glover tells EW. "I think she hates the fact that I just think she's really funny. Her timing is really good, and we have good chemistry, and I just like being around her. We made each other laugh a lot and I just love seeing her, I love hearing her takes, I love talking about what she's going to have for lunch. We became like a married couple on set where it was like we knew what we were going to argue about, we knew what we were going to crack up about."

Co-created by Glover and Francesca Sloane (Atlanta, Fargo), this version of Mr. & Mrs. Smith is completely different from the movie that centered on a married couple realizing they’re both spies working for rival agencies who have been hired to kill each other. In this TV series, two lonely strangers sign up for a mysterious spy agency, unaware their new identities are a package deal as a married couple. As they complete high-risk missions together, their arranged marriage slowly becomes something more real. But can they ever really trust each other if their entire relationship is built on lies?

Erskine laughs about how her real-life dynamic with Glover began to mirror their onscreen relationship throughout filming. "When we started off, we were really getting to know each other, but we were in every scene together all day, every day, and so it felt like we were living the same situation in the sense of two strangers coming together and having to build a partnership," she tells EW. "Much like the characters in the show, we were having to depend on each other right away in all of these scenes. And it felt like we got to build that trust and friendship really fast. I felt so lucky that I had him as my acting partner and friend."

Both actors can't stop gushing over how grateful they are to have gotten so close during filming, since that helped them bring John and Jane's story to life in a deeper way — which was extremely important since this series is much more focused on their relationship than viewers may expect. "What people will be surprised about is that this show is really about marriage — it's an analogy for a relationship and what it takes to make that relationship, a real partnership, work," Erskine says.

"I wanted it to be a real relationship and just be awkward, 'this is my forced partner,' and then slowly you start to care for people," Glover adds. "Every episode is supposed to be a pivotal point in a relationship, whether it's the meet cute or the first time you sleep over or moving in together. I've never done anything that's as character-driven. We're seeing both characters grow."

But don't worry — it wouldn't be Mr. & Mrs. Smith without everything that makes a good spy story. "This show is sort of you get your cake and you get to eat it too, because you get the explosions, you get the chases, you have the fight scenes and the sex, but you also get to see the nuances of a relationship," Erskine says. "You get to see the fart jokes and what it's like to live with somebody and be annoyed by their mouth noises all of a sudden after being together for six months. This is someone you've never met before, and you're going to have to perform high-risk missions every week with someone you just met. It's forced intimacy very fast."

Glover has always been a huge fan of the spy genre, ever since he was a kid watching Get Smart on Nick at Nite. But while he wanted to subvert what he began to view as a "very predictable genre," he couldn't stay away from emulating one of his favorite films in the show. "One of my favorite spy movies of all time is the first Mission: Impossible," he says. "What I love about it is not a lot of gunplay, it's all talking and intrigue and trust. I actually stole some of the shots from that first one in the episode I directed — that was a big influence. I really hope people enjoy the intrigue as much as I enjoyed the Mission: Impossible intrigue, because it should just be fun. It's not a typical kind of setup, but people hopefully find it relatable." 

All eight episodes of Mr. & Mrs. Smith debut Feb. 2 on Prime Video.

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