Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway acknowledge how daunting it was to play versions of James Gray’s working-class Jewish father and mother for the filmmaker’s memory piece about his childhood in Queens, “Armageddon Time.” They wanted to absorb real-life details, but they also took to heart Gray’s belief that they should prioritize soulfulness over impersonation. Says Strong, who plays exacting plumber dad Irving Graff, “One of the first things he said to us both was, ‘Whatever you do, don’t nail it. I’m not interested in you nailing it.’”

Anne Hathaway in a flowery dress poses for a portrait with her arms around Jeremy Strong.

Hathaway, who plays Irving’s wife Esther, a PTA mom concentrated on her sons’ prospects in life, says Gray’s direction recalled the lessons she was trained in as an actor. “It’s the idea that acting is a conversation, that in real life, people don’t plant their feet and orate. That was what James wanted from us.”

Gray’s supportive direction aside, it still had to have been nerve-racking to bring his parents to life.

Hathaway: I’m playing a nervous character. That helps. I had to find my way through it. It took a couple of weeks. I had to stop and catch my breath a couple times. It was an ongoing negotiation between myself, the experience, expectation, all those things.

Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong on Their 'Gorgeous Friendship'

Strong: I feel terror when I start something. [Irving] was written as “a Jewish Stanley Kowalski with a PhD.” I don’t know how to rearrange myself into that. I had no map other than the text. You depend on some things to click. And once they do, you … I was going to say you seize hold of them, but really, they seize hold of you. Shakespeare writes in “Hamlet,” “For use can almost change the stamp of nature.” So all the work you do, through use, through habit, very practical things, can change the stamp of your nature. Then you can walk on set and just be present.

Hathaway: Something I always tell myself is whenever I’m feeling nervous on set is, this is going to happen, however you feel about it, so you might as well enjoy it. And if enjoyment is not available, just surrender to the reality that it’s happening. That way you’re really listening to the voice of your character. And when I start spontaneously having instincts, as my character, I’m like, “OK, we’re cooking.”

Irving and Esther seem as if they’re in short stories of their own. What are Irving’s and Esther’s individual narratives as you saw them?

Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong and James Gray on new movie Armageddon Time

Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong on Their 'Gorgeous Friendship'

Strong: I read an interview with James where he talked about his father, how he would get off the subway and walk around the neighborhood, because he didn’t want to come home. It’s like something out of an Irwin Shaw story. You see someone baffled in their life, feeling the straitjacket of circumstances. Home is not nourishing.

Hathaway: As I understand it, Esther Graff had a choice. She could have a life that went as far as the end of the block, and walk in the most beautiful shoes that never pinched. Or she could risk going beyond the block with a pebble in a shoe that would never come out of the hole in the bottom of it.