Are Chris Pratt And Taylor Kitsch From The Terminal List Friends In Real Life?

It might sound simple enough to do, but two performers selling a friendship in front of cameras can be a difficult feat to pull off. It's why some onscreen duos remain so iconic, from Riggs and Murtaugh in "Lethal Weapon" to Jack and Reggie in "48 Hrs." These actors were able to sell a history and authentic back-and-forth pull that creates a spark for audiences. Those bonds can be even tougher to sell when you have two characters with a deep and unique history set far before whatever storyline is being told. 

Take Chris Pratt and Taylor Kitsch; two actors tasked with portraying Navy SEALs James Reece and Ben Edwards in Amazon Prime's "The Terminal List." In the revenge tale, Reece relies heavily on Edwards, a former member of his SEAL team who now enjoys sporting long hair and taking it easy on his boat. These two characters have years of history and time in the sandbox between them when they are first introduced to audiences. "The Terminal List" quickly became a streaming hit, so it's safe to say the actors' efforts worked for audiences, according to Variety. 

The actors inhabit these veteran brothers and their commitment to one another so well that it seems worth asking if the two thespians are buddies in real life. 

When Kitsch met with Pratt, director Antoine Fuqua, and writer David DiGilio on a Zoom call to discuss "The Terminal List," Fuqua immediately knew he was the man for the job thanks to his chemistry with Pratt. "We get off this Zoom and Antoine texted me right away and said, 'He's in. He's Ben and he's going to say yes.' I was like, 'Wow, Antoine, how do you know?' He was like, 'Because he and Chris genuinely love each other, you can see it, just from that meeting," DiGilio told Entertainment Weekly about the initial meeting. 

According to Pratt and Kitsch, the two developed a real friendship to go along with the bond their characters share. "At the beginning, obviously, we had just met, but now we've been through a lot together so we had to act less and less as the show went on, because we got to know each other better and better," Pratt explained to EW.

One difficulty was that the two were having a great time offscreen as production rolled along, just as their characters were going through more intense emotional twists. Towards the end of Season 1, the two had to fight off the laughter happening in between takes before their scenes. "It literally turned into a buddy comedy at that point," Kitsch told James Corden on The Late Late Show — with Pratt by his side, of course.