Michael Fassbender and Wife Alicia Vikander Share a Scene in Their New Movie but They Never Actually Filmed Together

Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander fell in love on a movie set and married in 2017; they share two children

Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander recently filmed a movie together — but they were not actually on set at the same time.

Fassbender, 47, said that scheduling issues prevented him and his wife Vikander, 36, from acting in their scenes together for their upcoming movie, Hope, during a recent Today show appearance to promote his new thriller, Black Bag.

“We’re big fans of Na Hong-jin, he’s directing this movie Hope. He did films like The Whaling, The Yellow Sea, The Chaser. We were big fans of his work,” Fassbender said.

“Alicia reached out to him. And he approached us to be in this movie. We are in the scene together, but we were never on set together,” Fassbender explained, before joking, “It’s a stipulation we insist on that we can’t be on the same set together. It keeps our marriage intact.”

“No, it was just down to scheduling because I was shooting Black Bag and then The Agency, so I had to go out earlier,” he added. “So I shot my stuff with a stand-in for her and then she did the same for me.”

Fassbender and Vikander, who fell in love on the set of their 2016 movie The Light Between Oceans and married in 2017, lead Hope alongside a cast that includes Squid Game star Hoyeon, Taylor Russell and Cameron Britton. According to IndieWire, the movie follows residents of a secluded harbor town as a “mysterious discovery is made.”

Fassbender’s comments on the movie come some eight months after Vikander noted she and her husband welcomed their second child together shortly before they filmed Hope in South Korea. The couple previously welcomed a son in 2021; they have not shared their children’s names publicly.

In the meantime, Fassbender has an upcoming thriller titled Black Bag, in which he costars with Cate Blanchett, Pierce Brosnan, Tom Burke, Regé-Jean Page and Marisa Abela. Black Bag opens in theaters March 14.

Vikander most recently appeared on the big screen in the 2024 movies Rumours and The Assessment.