14 Onscreen Couples With the Most Addictive, Binge-Worthy Chemistry
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As someone who masochistically watched the 2011 movie adaptation of One Day every Valentine’s for years, I didn’t think the new Netflix limited series could hurt me. Sure, I thought, this might be a fun way to kill an hour or two on a Wednesday night after work. Fast-forward some six hours and 14 episodes later to find me silently heaving in my bedroom, desperately trying to conceal my agonized sobs from my sleeping roommate on the other side of the wall. (Yes, I woke up with puffy eyes.) Such is the price of watching something starring two actors whose chemistry could set off a nuclear reaction.
Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall are utterly electric as Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, characters from the David Nicholls novel previously portrayed by Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess (who, in their own right, had delicious onscreen synergy, too). The show follows Emma and Dexter’s winding “right-person-wrong-time” romance over the course of 20 years, with the two secretly pining for the other through changing jobs, different romantic partners, and devastating life events. It’s the kind of sweeping love story that could only be as successful as it ultimately was because of its lead stars’ bewitching ability to elicit a hysterical response from viewers (See: my puffy eyes). Romance isn’t dead, just ask the One Day casting director.
After I finished the show and subsequently processed the five stages of grief by watching One Day-themed TikTok edits, I noticed that what I was feeling was extremely similar to how I felt as a 16-year-old Tumblr user obsessively reblogging gifs from Gilmore Girls or My Best Friend’s Wedding. Only certain pieces of media can activate this recess of romantic hyper-fixation in my brain. What unites them all is the irresistible chemistry transmitted between two actors who, when placed together, helm that indefinable power to transform any TV show or movie into an instant classic.
If you’re looking for your fix, keep scrolling to see my ranking of the top 14 couples with the best, most unforgettable chemistry that has ever graced my screen.
14. Lana Condor and Noah Centineo in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
Every generation needs their quintessential high school romance flick, and thank God today’s kids have To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. Condor and Centineo play Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky, a quirky wallflower and football jock who fake-date each other until they both—to nobody’s surprise—catch very real feelings.
13. Kristen Bell and William Jackson Harper in The Good Place
These two embody the best of the “opposites-attract” trope. In this oddball Netflix comedy series, Bell plays Eleanor, an irresponsible delinquent who mistakenly gets sent to a utopian afterlife meant to reward morally upright humans. She is paired with her supposed soulmate, Harper’s Chidi, a moral philosophy professor who often freezes in the face of basic decision-making. They are two characters who shouldn’t make sense, but so naturally do because of Bell and Harper’s seamless onscreen relationship.
12. Gina Rodriguez and LaKeith Stanfield in Someone Great
Someone Great isn’t your typical rom-com, in that it opens with the main character’s split from her long-term partner. Despite going into it with the understanding that their relationship is already doomed, you really can’t help but feel compelled by Rodriguez’s interplay with Stanfield. The duo breezily move through depictions of different stages of a relationship, from the blissed honeymoon phase to the volatile build-up right before the breakup.
11. Julia Roberts and Dermot Mulroney in My Best Friend’s Wedding
It’s true that Julia Roberts could have chemistry with a brick, but this particular rom-com makes this list because it contains the type of staying power that few other rom-coms do. That’s thanks in large part to Mulroney holding his own opposite Roberts; where she pushes, he pulls, and where she schemes, he charms. I also appreciate that it subverts the typical happy ending we’re used to seeing from golden age rom-coms.
10. Anne Hathaway and Chris Pine in Princess Diaries 2
I blame a lot of my hopeless romantic tendencies on growing up with the Princess Diaries sequel, which stars Hathaway as Mia Thermopolis, princess of the fictional European country of Genovia, and Pine as Nicholas Devereux, a Genovian lord who has claims to her throne. I cannot emphasize this enough: the two are such a genuine delight to watch together, whether that entails them falling into a water fountain or slow dancing to Norah Jones’s “Love Me Tender.”
9. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo in Past Lives
Lee and Yoo are phenomenal in Celine Song’s directorial debut, which grapples with former childhood friends crossing paths years after one moved to a different continent. On screen together, the actors replicate that kind of melancholic yearning innate to those who have trouble reconciling their reality with all the alternative lives they have relinquished.
8. Issa Rae and Jay Ellis in Insecure
Insecure begins with the denouement of Issa (Rae) and Lawrence (Ellis). The flame that might’ve once fueled the couple clearly extinguished long ago, and it’ll take the next five seasons of the dramedy series for the two to find their way back to each other again. Along the way, they each end up committing acts that would probably be impossible to move on from for couples with lesser will, but Rae and Ellis’s gravitational pull to each other onscreen makes their ultimate reunion seem that much more natural and inevitable.
7. Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan in Outlander
A historical time-traveling show could easily veer into the cliche if it weren’t for the breathtaking attraction between Claire (Balfe), a World War II-era nurse who accidentally falls back in time to 18th-century Scotland, and Jamie (Heughan), a Highland soldier who later leads a rebellion. The costars’ intense dynamic was undeniable from the start, as evidenced by their resurfaced chemistry test.
6. Lauren Graham and Scott Paterson in Gilmore Girls
You’d need two actors with off-the-charts chemistry in order to sustain the life force of a slow burn romance over the course of seven long seasons—but that’s luckily just what Gilmore Girls had. By the time Lorelai (Graham) and Luke (Paterson) shared their first kiss in the season four finale, fans were already well-acquainted with the costars’ unrivaled ability to either banter over caffeine withdrawal symptoms or to cast a longing gaze at each other from across Stars Hollow’s town square.
5. Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall in One Day
It takes two very special kinds of actors to make the friends-to-lovers trope feel distinctly special rather than trite and overplayed. Mod and Woodall deliver on that tenfold, with the duo portraying Emma and Dexter’s decades-spanning love story with a perceptive ease that befits real-life longtime friends.
4. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal in Normal People
Similar to One Day, this Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s best-selling novel tracks the will-they-won’t-they relationship between former high school classmates Marianne and Connell, brilliantly played by Edgar-Jones and Mescal. To me, a telling indicator of great chemistry between two actors is whether or not they maintain a close bond long after a show has premiered and the press tour has closed—and Edgar-Jones and Mescal happen to pass that test with flying colors.
3. Simone Ashley and Jonathan Bailey in Bridgerton
The only thing better than a friends-to-lovers romance is an enemies-to-lovers romance. It’s hard to look away from Ashley and Bailey when they’re on screen together as Kate Sharma and Viscount Anthony Bridgerton; the duo are like dynamite, with sparks flying off the screen as their characters spar over Regency-era courtship politics or breathlessly grasp onto each other on the muddy grounds of the viscount’s estate.
2. Zooey Deschanel and Jake Johnson in New Girl
If there is a blueprint for a slow burn love story, it’s definitely being pulled from New Girl. Throughout this sitcom’s seven seasons, Deschanel and Johnson, who play Jess and Nick respectively, often bounce off of each other in a way that feels endearingly organic, responding to the other’s comedic timing with electrifying momentum. Their chemistry so frequently stole scenes that they were instructed to not work in the same shot together for season one, as Deschanel later revealed.
1. Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn in Scandal
In absolutely zero circumstances and in no uncertain terms do I condone cheating. Unless it’s between Olivia Pope and President Fitzgerald Grant. This lapse in moral judgment is totally owed to the magnetism brewing between Washington and Goldwyn, who, together, possess the kind of combustive lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry that all showrunners would give an arm and a leg for. Since the Shonda Rhimes political thriller first aired in 2012, Washington and Goldwyn have continued to capture the public’s fervid imagination—a fact they definitely know and still capitalize on.
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