Neither Irving nor Esther see who their son Paul (Banks Repeta) is. They can only see the future they want for him, and it’s stressful.

Hathaway: I think every parent feels that way. And in our characters’ case, the future is not guaranteed.

Strong: This father wants his kids to survive in a dog-eat-dog world, and wants to toughen him up for that world. That is a form of love, but it’s also a form of violence.

Hathaway: And I think Esther wants her kids to get into the land of milk and honey, where they’re not required to have those skills.

How did you two get into married-couple shape with COVID restrictions curtailing rehearsal time?

Hathaway: We were making it up as we went. Jeremy and I took it upon ourselves to meet and hash it out. Just spend time and play.

Strong: This one was really challenging. It was like building an instrument [by yourself] that hasn’t existed before, learning how to play it well enough …

Hathaway: … and say to other people, “The way I play this is worth your time and money.”

Strong: There was a lot to be done before I was ready to walk around Central Park with Annie.

You walked together? In character?

Hathaway: I wanted to walk with Banks, so we could connect. He needed none of that. [Laughs] He was so locked in and assured. So Banks and I walked around, and we decided to surprise him by having Jeremy join us as Irving at the end. Then we went for a walk as a family.

The family meal scenes are great at establishing the dynamics. Are eating scenes tricky to pull off?

Strong: I’m bad at film continuity. Honestly. Taking small bites, the stuff you’re told. I feel it’s more important to allow a scene to unfold where a lightning strike might happen. James was like, “Cut, your mouth is full of chopped liver. I can’t hear the words.” The video I have of his father, at a brunch, he was talking with his mouth full the whole time. The eating scenes were messy, and that was what was so ecstatic about the making of them. They were just chaos.

Hathaway: Eating made me realize something about [Esther]. When [her] mother Mickey, played by the incomparable Tovah Feldshuh, was just laying in on me, I found myself taking very tiny bites very quickly. I was like, “God, I’m anxiety eating!” All of a sudden, a history of this maternal energy, which James had told me was not positive for my character, just opened up for me in a way. The criticism and guilt and food, it just happened, you know? I was discovering things about Esther up to the last minute.

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?

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.