VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Arsema Thomas & Darrel Britt-Gibson Reveal The Secret Of Their On-Screen Chemistry In ‘She Taught Love’

Actress Arsema Thomas and actor-writer Darrell Britt-Gibson discussed the message behind their new film, She Taught Love, in their new uInterview.

She Taught Love is a romance that follows Frank Cooper (Britt-Gibson), a distracted actor whose life is turned upside down by Mali Waters (Thomas), a woman who knows she will soon die and is learning to live in the moment. Britt-Gibson wrote the screenplay.

In a movie with many painful emotional themes, Thomas revealed her acting method when preparing for the role. “I think there’s something really unique about playing someone who knows exactly when, or thinks they know exactly when, they’re going to die, and that affects all of the ways that you could possibly live every chunk of 24 hours,” she said.

“I have had experience caring for my father who had a terminal illness, and I watched my mother care for him, and that kind of, from an intellectual standpoint, helped me create a structure for probably the emotional math,” she added. 

Britt-Gibson weighed in, “For me, it was – I’ve been with the film for seven years now, and I met Arsema probably a year ago, [but] I was always writing it for her, I just didn’t know.”

He clarified, “She embodies [Mali] in such a way that it’s hard to like, you know, there’s like the pre-meeting Arsema and the post-meeting Arsema, it’s kind of hard to remember what it was like before meeting her and having her be here because I just think she’s so dynamic. I’m so blessed that she was made.”

When asked how the two actors channeled the painful emotional chemistry on screen, Thomas reflected, “I feel like the moment that we just started to spend time with each other, we recognized that we have similar temperaments.”

She explained, “We’re both very passionate people and driven by, like, impulse and wanting this extreme level of justice, and I think the moment that you realize you have very similar pillars, while the overall structure might be different, we have the same foundation.”

Thomas added, “I mean, maybe not the same because we’re unique individuals, but we just hope and want the same thing for the world, and I think that creates a level of trust that allows for everything that happened throughout the course of the film to be something that was organic. I don’t think there was ever a moment where we felt like we were trying to fake or perform the deep level of care that we actually have for each other.”

She Taught Love is available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.