The ‘Asteroid City’ star tells PEOPLE about sharing “these big profound moments” with her husband of almost three years
Scarlett Johansson was overjoyed to walk the Cannes Film Festival’s red carpet alongside husband Colin Jost.
“Oh, it’s so fun,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively when asked what bringing Jost to the Cannes premiere of her new film Asteroid City meant to her.
“It’s awesome. I mean, personally, it’s always fun when you’re not just explaining it to them over the phone, but you’re living your life together, these big profound moments.”
The Oscar-nominated actress, 38, was all smiles on the carpet of the French film festival in May with Jost, 40, cozying up to his wife of almost three years.
“There’s a familial feeling with the whole cast,” Johansson tells PEOPLE of Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City. “So everybody’s spouses are all friends with each other. It’s really great. It’s just a very singular experience.”
Her costar Jason Schwartzman agrees. “Just as a weird side,” he reveals to PEOPLE, “when the lights came on [after the Cannes screening], the first person I saw was her husband.”
“Why?” asks Johansson with a laugh.
“I looked back and he gave me this [look], and I’ll never forget it,” Schwartzman says. “So I feel like I connected with him first, he was the first person I saw — like a baby being born.”
The Black Widow actress and Saturday Night Live star were married in an intimate ceremony in October 2020. The pair became engaged in May 2019 after two years of dating, and welcomed a son, Cosmo, in 2021.
Johansson opened up to Gwyneth Paltrow on the Goop podcast in April about how her relationship with Jost has changed her life. “I didn’t know what I wanted or needed from somebody else,” she said. “I never realized, ‘Oh, it’s really important for me, I need to be with a compassionate person. That’s a fundamental characteristic that has to be there.’
“And I think that understanding what those fundamental things are that you need in a partner is a must, I think — for longevity, anyway,” she said.
The Cannes premiere of Asteroid City last month marked only the second time Johansson appeared at the historic festival; she first attended in 2005 when she starred in Woody Allen’s Match Point.
Set in a fictional desert town, Asteroid City follows “a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention (organized to bring together students and parents from across the country for fellowship and scholarly competition)” that is soon “disrupted by world-changing events” — presumably events of the extraterrestrial variety.
Like many of writer-director Anderson’s films, it features an all-star ensemble. Joining regular cast members Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, Jeffrey Wright, Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston, Willem Dafoe and Adrien Brody are Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Hong Chau, Maya Hawke and more.
In the film, Johansson plays a fictional screen starlet of the 1950s named Midge Campbell. “I was curious: Who is this person? How did she get here, to be so successful at that time?,” Johansson told Variety earlier this month of puzzling out her character. “I like the sort of constraints of Wes’ precision. I think in some ways, it’s more liberating.”
