Your chemistry with Ellen Page is incredible. How did you work at that closeness?

"Normally we’re always competing for the same roles: Most mainstream films have one main female role, and you don’t normally get to act with your Ellen Pages and your Jennifer Lawrences and your Brie Larsons. It’s usually one or the other. It was just cool for us right away to be like, ‘Wow, I’ve admired you for so long, now I get to watch you work and we get to work together, and it’s like our powers combined are just going to be insane!’

"It was that immediate. And also we both were child actors and have had very similar experiences, so right away we were kind of connected on that level. We met at this point in our lives, we’re both on this precipice of change and growth. She was just about to give her big coming-out speech, and I was just about to get divorced. So we immediately latched onto each other through our journeys. I think going through those experiences together really bonded us almost immediately."

There's a push-and-pull to Nell and Eva's relationship that is just spot-on sister tension: that desire to be fused but also separate. Can you relate?

"Absolutely. Maybe I’m just going to project right now, but... What this film shows is, at the end of the day, you can't take things for granted and you shouldn’t hold back love because when everything is taken away, it’s the bonds you have with people, those relationships, that really get you through everything.

"I’m certainly guilty of withholding love to protect myself or to not overwhelm people, [or] because it makes you just really vulnerable. I think some people view [love] as letting that person have power over you, if they know how much you care about them. I thought that was a really interesting element to their journey in this movie. Also how their roles flip-flop: In the beginning, Eva kind of takes on the mother role. After she goes through all of her trauma, Ellen’s character really takes on the mama-bear role [laughs]. Then by the end, I feel like they’re both women and they’ve gone through this crazy metamorphosis and are just completely different people."

Can we talk about how the power outage is just a little too close for comfort in terms of worst case scenarios these days?

"It made me want to take survival courses and it honestly... When my son gets older, I [will tell him], ‘Alright, I want to go out in the woods and [learn] how to make a shelter and a fire and forage for food.’ Because you just never know nowadays — I feel like you kind of have to be prepared for everything. The world is nuts right now. We don’t have infinite resources and we are being a bit careless, so I think these are going to be skills that may come in handy at some point. If not for him, he can pass it on to his kids, or something."