Everyone loves an on-set couple — and these duos are no exception! Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak, Hilarie Burton and Sophia Bush are just a few of the stars who went from costars to best friends in real life.
Michelle Williams and Busy Philipps, for instance, met while filming Dawson’s Creek. The Oscar nominee starred as Jen Lindley throughout the series’ run from 1998 to 2003, while the Cougar Town alum joined in season 5 as Audrey Liddell.
Philipps described their connection in Entertainment Weekly’s Dawson’s Creek reunion cover story in March 2018. “It was like, you know, how people say love at first sight? We had that thing,” she explained. “We had that friend connection. It was just an immediate: ‘Of course we’re drinking wine and smoking cigarettes and getting in bar fights.’ [Laughs] We just had an immediate love for each other that’s continued over the years.”
Williams, for her part, wanted to emulate her pal. “When I met her, she was the coolest girl I had ever seen,” she recalled. “She had a nose ring. She wore her hair in braids. She wore overalls. And she had this attitude like, ‘I know who I am and don’t cross my line.’ I just thought, ‘I want to be this person when I grow up.’ She was my first real friend I ever had.”
She added: “My memory of being with her then doesn’t have anything to do with the show or working, but it was on our time off. It was talking on the porch all night long and it was back when bread was still OK to eat [laughs]. It was copious amounts of bread. That’s what I remember: an endless conversation over multiple bread baskets.”
Burton, meanwhile, revealed in May 2020 that her friendship with Bush was not always easy. “I thought the story line between [One Tree Hill characters] Peyton and Brooke was the love story of the show. The love stories with all the boys, those were fun, those were important, but Sophia and I had to fight for our own friendship,” she said on the “Chicks in the Office” podcast. “A lot of people wanted to pit us against each other. You know, it’s like, ‘Oh, Hilarie won’t do this, but Sophia will,’ and ‘She’s the pretty one,’ and ‘She’s the this one.’ There’s so much comparison that, as a young person, it’s hard to navigate.”
Scroll down to explore lasting friendships among castmates.
From roommates to lifelong friends! Aniston and Cox met on the set of Friends and have remained close in the years since the show ended.
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Amell and Rickards played love interests on Arrow, but their relationship is purely platonic off screen. In fact, their friend group includes his wife, Cassandra Jean Amell.
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Burton and Bush’s onscreen friendship on One Tree Hill translated into real life.
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The Office costars dated during the show’s run but decided they were better off as friends. Kaling revealed in May 2019 that Novak has a special place in her and daughter Katherine’s lives. “B.J. is so much more like family now than a platonic friend,” she told GoodHousekeeping.com. “He’s the godfather to my daughter.”
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Williams and Philipps rarely interacted on Dawson’s Creek, but their bond lasted years beyond the show’s end. “I think the secret to longevity in friendships is putting in the time and the understanding and working through any issues that might arise,” the This Will Only Hurt a Little author — who is often the Emmy winner’s date to awards shows — told Us Weekly exclusively in June 2019.
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The Avengers stars have appeared in eight movies together, and their friendship shows no signs of slowing down. Of their chemistry, Johansson explained to Entertainment Weekly in March 2020, “It’s really a result of 10 years of knowing somebody and being able to have a kind of intimacy with them that I think you get from just spending a lot of time with somebody and knowing their soft underbelly.”
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The Scrubs costars loved their time on the show so much that they started a podcast called “Fake Doctors, Real Friends With Zach and Donald.”
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Winslet and DiCaprio became pals while filming Titanic, and she gushed in February 2016 that the actor is “my closest friend in the world.”
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The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants stars often reunite to support each other, in their personal lives and their career endeavors.
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The actresses played sisters on Game of Thrones and ended up with matching tattoos in real life. Williams was also Turner’s maid of honor when she married Joe Jonas in June 2019.
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The pair played loves interests in The Spectacular Now and adversaries in the Divergent franchise. Now, the pals often do couples’ activities with their significant others, including going on vacation together. “We just naturally became friends and he became my brother for life,” Woodley told Vanity Fair in 2013 of their first collaboration. “I want to do a movie a year with him.”
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Park and Austen oozed chemistry as star-crossed lovers on The Royals and kept fans just as entertained with their offscreen antics on social media. “She is my best mate, the funniest person I know and she is my absolute hero,” the actor gushed via Instagram in May 2021, to which she replied, “I love you babe.”
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