HBO became the gold standard in premium cable by creating serialized TV series that could rival Hollywood blockbusters in scope and budget, adding to the medium’s prestige and ultimately helping to usher in a much-touted “Golden Age” of television.
If there’s been any one secret to the network’s success, it’s recruiting topnotch talent both behind and in front of the camera, assembling some of the most memorable ensemble casts of all-time, from The Sopranos and Larry Sanders Show to Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley.
Predictably, many of the actors who work and appear on-screen together season after season have forged off-screen friendships that outlasted their series, warming the hearts of hopeful fans everywhere.
However, unfortunately, talented people don’t always get along, so HBO’s series have seen their fair share of rivalries between cast members throughout the years, with some ending in reconciliation and some destroying friendships that existed before the on-screen partnership.
For this list, we’re looking at the friends and enemies whose tumultuous and/or affectionate relationships played out just behind the scenes of some of HBO’s most beloved series.
Be warned, however, you might never be able to look at their on-screen counterparts the same way again. Also, there may be some spoilers.
With that said, here are the 9 HBO Stars Who Are Best Friends (And 6 Who Are Frenemies).
Frenemies: Jerome Flynn and Lena Headey
If you’ve ever wondered why Tyrion’s tyrannical sister and roguish ex-bodyguard from Game of Thrones have never shared a scene, it turns out there’s a very juicy reason behind it.
Lena Headey, who plays Cersei Lannister, and Jerome Flynn, who plays Bronn, used to date for an unknown period of time beginning in 2002, though their relationship status was null-to-uncertain the very next year.
Today, the two can’t stand to be in the same room together, according to one crew member who said, “they appeared to have patched things up for a while, but now the word is they should be kept apart at all costs.”
This tense arrangement necessitated the addition of a rather awkward scene to the season 7 finale, in which Flynn’s character Bronn departs with Podrick for a drink while most of the series’ major players, Cersei among them, convened for a political summit.
Best Friends: Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon
Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon appear to be almost as close in real life as are their characters from the HBO mystery series Big Little Lies, thanks in large part to the efforts of Witherspoon herself, who became a Kidman devotee after seeing Dead Calm.
Presenting her costar with an award at last year’s Emmys, the actress recounted how she used her sway as an executive producer to work with Kidman and share her makeup trailer, where she could ask her as many questions as she wanted to each day onset.
The speech beautifully summed up the friendship that fans have also seen playing out on the stars’ Instagram feeds, with Witherspoon calling Kidman “one of my favorite people” and marveling at how she could “melt away” when playing her on-screen counterpart.
Best Friends: Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner
The sibling rivalry that’s long existed between Arya and Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones appears to have no bearing on the relationship between the actresses who play them.
Fans and entertainment blogs alike have long gushed over the close friendship formed between Maisie Williams (Arya) and Sophie Turner (Sansa) even from the show’s early days.
They frequently post pictures of themselves to Twitter and Instagram dressing up for various occasions, going out to bars, and just generally messing around with each other the way close friends do. They’ve also appeared on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke online series and coined their own celebrity couple name – Mophie.
If anyone still doubted the sincerity of their friendship, further proof came this January when Turner followed her engagement to pop singer Joe Jonas by asking fellow Stark sister Williams to be her bridesmaid.
Frenemies: Larry David and Richard Lewis
The friendship between David and fellow comedian/Curb collaborator Richard Lewis began as a bitter rivalry, long before they appeared on the small screen together.
At 12-years-old, David and Lewis met at a summer camp in upstate New York where they immediately disliked each other and engaged in at least one fistfight.
They met again as comics in their 20s and had to retrace their history to know where they’d met before. Though another fistfight almost ensued, the pair instead sparked a stand-up bromance that’s spanned decades at this point, as is often evident in their scenes together on Curb.
Lewis amusingly recalls once trying to get David to come to therapy with him, but “He ran out once when I took him. Ran out. In group therapy. We caught him in a phone booth on First Ave.”
Best Friends: Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey
Both Texas natives and ubiquitous modern icons of the silver-screen, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey were friends long before they starred in the highly-acclaimed first season of HBO’s True Detective.
They had previously appeared together in comedies such as EDtv in 1999 and Surfer, Dude in 2008, so naturally their longstanding friendship shone through in the interviews they did in a collaborative press tour for the series, when they would often shift to casual conversation with each other, and in the public reunions they’ve enjoyed at awards shows, or even on SNL’s Weekend Update.
According to Harrelson and McConaughey in those same interviews, however, both said that their easy rapport made it a little more difficult to “not be on the same wavelength” as the mismatched detective duo Martin Hart and Rust Cohle.
Best Friends: Evan Rachel Wood and Jimmi Simpson
Jimmi Simpson and Evan Rachel Wood play pivotal roles as William and Dolores in one of HBO’s latest high-concept hit, Westworld, which focuses on a futuristic theme park approximating the Old West with sentient automatons.
The actors, who have shared intimate scenes in the show, are good friends in real life and often take to Twitter onset and off to delight fans with their latest antics and joint outings.
One of their favorite past-times on Twitter appears to be paying tribute to various other movies and TV series that they both enjoy. In some cases, they have engaged in lip-syncing quotes from I Love You, Man,Kindergarten Cop. At Another point, they partook in a comedy routine between Ricky Gervais or Stephen Merchant.
Frenemies: Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker
Following the finale of Sex and the City in 2004, it leaked out that behind the scenes co-stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall weren’t always so friendly, with a major point of contention being payment.
Salary negotiations helped to delay production on a Sex and the City movie, and at that year’s Emmys, Cattrall conspicuously sat apart from the series’ other stars.
When the movie was released in 2008, Cattrall related how she tried to negotiate a pay raise for herself once Parker became an executive producer early in the show’s run.
Despite tabloid reports of further standoffs on the Sex and the City 2 set, both actresses downplayed their differences in interviews until 2017, when Catrall was blamed for the cancellation of plans for Sex and the City 3.
She responded in an interview with Piers Morgan saying that she wishes that other people, specifically Parker, had been nicer: “I don’t know what her issue is, I never have.”
When Parker reached out to send condolences for the death of Cattrall’s brother, she responded in part, “You are not my family. You are not my friend.”
Best Friends: Kit Harington and Rose Leslie
Any Game of Thrones shippers mourning the tragic end to the on-screen relationship between Jon Snow and Ygritte the wildling warrior can take comfort knowing the romance between the actors Kit Harington and Rose Leslie is still alive and well.
Harington recalled falling in love with Leslie while shooting their scenes for season 2 together in Iceland under the northern lights, saying that those weeks were his favorite working on the series.
“If you’re already attracted to someone, and then they play your love interest in the show, it becomes very easy to fall in love," he said.
They split briefly thereafter but then reunited to confirm the rumors swirling around about their involvement in April 2016. In September 2017, they were engaged and announced the impending union with a classified advert in the LondonTimes.
Best Friends: Isaac H. Wright and Dean-Charles Chapman
The new Raven and the short-lived young king of Westeros are practically best friends in real life, if their Twitter and Instagram feeds are to be believed.
Despite being cast in feuding families and sharing approximately zero minutes of screen time together, the young actors who play Bran Stark and Tommen Baratheon (or Lannister) have become close friends through their respective work on Game of Thrones.
Also, for anyone worried, their bromance didn’t cease with the death of Dean-Charles Chapman’s character Tommen in the season six finale.
In fact, Isaac H. Wright posted a pic of himself with Chapman about a month after the episode aired calling him a “beautiful man.” Chapman responded in kind, saying Wright was the “brother I never had.”
Before then, the pair also posted pictures of themselves hanging out offset with Nell Tiger Free, who played Tommen’s sister Myrcella, going camping, riding on an NYC subway, and preparing to scarf down an excess of KFC.
Frenemies: David Cross and Bob Odenkirk
Before collaborating on the influential sketch series Mr. Show with Bob and David, David Cross and Bob Odenkirk were both heavily involved in LA’s alt-comedy scene, but didn’t hit it off right away despite their mutual friends.
Odenkirk accepts much of the blame, saying that he bashed one of Cross’ sketches and then rejected his offer to play basketball when Janeane Garofalo invited him to Odenkirk’s house.
“I really did give David s**t on a number of occasions,” he says. “And I really tortured him a little bit. I didn’t dislike him, I just didn’t know him!”
Of course, Odenkirk and Cross soon discovered their overlapping comic sensibilities and have intermittently maintained their fruitful creative relationship ever since.
Best Friends: Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the entire cast of Veep
Equal parts vulgar and biting, HBO’s political satire Veep boasts one of the strongest supporting casts on television, comedic, or otherwise, and the actors’ on-screen timing matches the ease with which they conduct each other onset.
Interview panels are full of mercilessly witty barbs between cast members like Tony Hale, Gary Cole, Timothy Simons, Anna Chulmsky, and others.
Accordingly, when the series’ star Julia Louis-Dreyfus announced her diagnosis of breast cancer last September, there was an outpouring of support online from on-screen partners.
Partners like Simons and Hale lovingly described Veep’s onset environment and Dreyfus’s leading role in it to reporters at the SAG Awards, saying, “Whoever’s number one of the call sheet tends to set the tone and she has just set a tone for everybody. We’re all a part of a team. Nobody’s walking on eggshells. Everybody can throw in jokes.”
Best Friends: Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie
New Zealanders Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie managed to turn their self-deprecating folk-comedy act as Flight of the Conchords into a short-lived, yet much-loved, self-deprecating HBO series, also called Flight of the Conchords.
Their performances and effortlessly deadpan banter was borne of their real-life friendship. They met as flatmates at Victoria University of Wellington, where both majored in film and theatre, and performed in a five-man troupe that also included What We Do in the Shadows and Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi.
Today, Clement and McKenzie still tour the world together and seem to be forever locked in preliminary discussions of a Flight of the Conchords movie.
Frenemies: Thomas Middleditch and TJ Miller
The brash Erlich’s sudden departure from the hit HBO comedy Silicon Valley at the end of season five left many fans speculating what had gone wrong to make the actor who plays him, TJ Miller, leave the series.
He gave a whole host of contradictory reasons in a confusing interview with The Hollywood Reporter, including references to his contentious relationship with the show’s chief star, Thomas Middleditch.
Though the pair hosted a two-man improv show for nearly a decade before getting big, Miller made the barbed comment that Middleditch “always wanted to be the star of the show.”
He elaborated, “I’m not sitting here saying, ‘I need more lines. I’m not funny enough.’ I’m not Thomas Middleditch.” Yet in the same, whiplash-inducing interview, Miller also said they have a “big brother/little brother relationship” and called Middleditch “one of the funniest people of all.”
Best Friends: Larry David and Ted Danson
In Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David frequently runs afoul of high-profile Hollywood guest stars, but it’s usually safe to assume that David and the star in question are on amicable terms – otherwise they wouldn’t agree to come on, right?
One of David’s on-screen frenemies is Ted Danson, who’s set to play a prominent part as his romantic rival in the series’ upcoming ninth season.
Though they’re not quite enemies in real life, they have a long history of giving each other a hard time, even dating back to the days of Seinfeld.
David’s other sitcom counterpart George Costanza complained, “I can’t live knowing that Ted Danson makes that much more [money] than me.”
Danson later saw an early lackluster version of the Curb pilot and expressed something like condolences for David. Eventually, however, as Danson acknowledges, the show would soon play a large part in reviving his television career.
Frenemies: Kim Cattrall and Cynthia Nixon
Though Sarah Jessica Parker has been by far the most active in blaming Cattrall for the demise of Sex and the City 3, Cattrall has pointed to a larger “toxic” Mean Girls-esque culture of exclusion for which she became the target after pushing for a pay raise.
This is supported by onset anecdotes that the other three cast members wouldn’t even sit with Cattrall during mealtimes, which Nixon explained away in interviews, saying “It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, but the idea that we’re somehow adversarial is ludicrous.”
More recently, an ill-timed Instagram post alongside Sarah Jessica Parker sparked speculation that Nixon had taken sides in the ongoing feud between Parker and Cattrall.
Whatever tension existed between Cattrall and Nixon seems to have dissipated, however, as Cattrall responded to Nixon’s condolences on the loss of her brother far more favorably: “Cynthia, hearing your voice meant so much to me. Thank you for reaching out.”
Can you think of any other HBO stars who are best friends or enemies? Sound off in the comments!
