In Reunited, Awards Insider hosts a conversation between two Emmy contenders who have collaborated on a previous project. Today, we speak with Riley Keough, who stars in Daisy Jones & the Six, and Juno Temple, who appears in Ted Lasso. They previously worked together on the 2012 indie horror film Jack & Diane.

“Do you remember the phone in the toilet and the rice, the whole thing?” Juno Temple asks Riley Keough with a smile moments after we sign on to a Zoom.

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“Oh, my God, didn’t we put it in quinoa?” Keough replies, with a laugh.

Drunkenly dropping your phone into a toilet at a bar and then hoping the grain gods can save it from an early death was just one of the many rites of passage the two actors shared when they lived together in New York when they were in their early 20s. At the time, they were filming the 2012 indie horror film Jack & Diane, in which they play, as Keough puts it, “lesbian werewolves,” or two women who fall into an obsessive love with each other.

More than 10 years later, they’ve both grown up, and their careers have grown as well. Temple has just wrapped up her third and most likely final season of Ted Lasso, playing scrappy publicist Keeley Jones, while Keough transformed into a ’70s rock star for the breakout hit limited series Daisy Jones & The Six.

Both currently in Los Angeles for a bit—though Temple says she’s “very transient right now” and will soon be back in the UK—the pair of good friends reflect on their transformative shows, what it’s like to let go of a part, and why they’re finally looking for grown-up roles.

Vanity Fair: When did you first meet?

Riley Keough: Was it in our apartment? We were living together for the film we were doing in an apartment. I feel like I just met you there.

Juno Temple: I think you just had your hair cut and dyed.

Keough: It was the first time I'd ever cut my hair in that way because my hair is really important to me, and so it was a real crazy thing. I think we just met in the apartment — which is crazy, to put two people in an apartment to live together who've never met.

Temple: You walked me through my first panic attack. Literally, I thought I was dying and you were like, "No, you're not. It's okay. I know what this is."

Keough: I'm like, "I get this every day."

How would you two describe where you were in your acting careers at that point?

Keough: Well, Juno was much more established than I was at the time. I think this was the third movie I'd ever done.

Temple: I remember that you had just booked Mad Max: Fury Road before coming out there, and you were supposed to go do it straight after and then it kept getting pushed, right?

Keough: Yes. I'd maybe done a couple jobs before this movie. And Juno was a proper established indie queen, I think.

Temple: I don't remember that, but I definitely had said yes to anything and everything and wanted to work all the time, which I still I do. I love work so much.

This was around the time you started landing on “Rising Star” lists, wasn’t it Juno?

Temple: That was after Killer Joe. That, for me, was really a gamechanger in how people saw me as an actress. And that Rising Star Award, kind of coincided with that — which again, is a decade ago — [I’m] still rising. [Laughs]

Keough: I know. I think that all the time when I'm like, “I've been hearing this for fucking 15 years.”

Temple: Even one when Ted Lasso came out. Someone emailed me something saying a link to IMDB's top people to watch. I was like, "I'm in my thirties."

Keough: You're like, "I've been doing this since I was 16." I feel like we both have that shared experience. I feel like we've both probably been on those lists for so long.

Temple: Also, I think it's about doing it from a place where you are just really interested in playing female roles. Right? It's not about where it's necessarily going to blow up your career or take you to the next. You just want to explore these different avenues of being a woman because it's such a fucking amazing thing to do. Which means that sometimes, yeah, you are on a watch list for two years, then you disappear.

Keough: Then you come back. Hey, at least we come back.

Temple: Exactly. Not forgotten yet! And it's better to still be rising, I think. Always.

Juno, what made you say yes to Ted Lasso?

Temple: Well, it was a crazy moment where I got a personal text from Jason Sudeikis about it, and I genuinely thought he'd texted the wrong actress because I was so not known for anything comedic. Dark, challenged young woman? Call Juno. I was in these movies that had a lot of healing that characters had to go through. There wasn't always a lot of light. I just wrote him back being like, "Are you sure this is for me?" Then he asked to go and talk about it. And what I loved about it from the get go with him is he was like, "Before we go through agents and teams and things like that, can I just send it to you personally because this one is quite personal, so if it's not for you, then we can just keep it between us. And if it is, then we'll move forward after that." I think that was something that I thought was quite special, too, because it meant that it was meaningful to him in a way that he wanted to have it be a bit personal to start with. Then I read the pilot, and then he was like, "What did you think?" And I was like, "Laughed out loud a lot. And it's got such heart to it too." He was like, "Let's go get a drink and talk about what your character might potentially be."

A big thing for me, and the reason to join it, was how much he talked about this relationship with Hannah Waddingham. Between Keeley and Rebecca and this kind of friendship between these two females, there was one that I hadn't really heard about before. With two women that are very different, and come from very different backgrounds, and have done very different things with their lives, and are at slightly different stages in their lives, but truly become friends in a way that I think TV and film need to show. These female friendships in life are so important. And sometimes I think that can get lost in projects.

How did putting on the hair and the makeup inform both of your performances?

Temple: There were some moments, Riley, watching Daisy Jones that I literally, I gasped. Because especially you on the stage, it felt like being shot back in time. It felt like a dream. It was really, I thought, your costumes were so fantastic. So fantastic. And your voice, I'm sorry. I was literally like, "Oh my God. Oh my God." I had never heard you sing before.

Keough: I never sang. It's funny. I keep doing these interviews and they're like, think I'm lying that I'm not a singer. But I think that because it's so much singing in the show, I think people think that I have some kind of singing background, but I didn't. It's a dream, to be in the seventies and have those sets and those costumes.

Temple: It's a different kind of performer, isn't it, when you're a rockstar that walks onto a stage and you're playing to an auditorium? So many faces that you don't know. I had do something a while ago where it was in a dream, a character who's in a tiny indie band imagines she's playing an auditorium and I was so nervous. It's the power that these people have, but you nailed it so beautifully. Was it scary to sing?

Keough: It was, but I also just didn't care. I really wanted the job, and once I got the job I was kind of like, "You know what? If I sound bad enough, they're going to find a stunt vocalist."

Juno, how do you feel with how Keeley's story ends on the show?

Temple: I guess I'm still kind of processing that in a weird way. Because it's obviously been something that has gone on for three years, which is the longest I've ever done anything before. And actually, because it was right in the heart of pandemic times and second lockdowns and all this kind of thing, I really figured out that she was a character which has really made me kinder to myself through a time that I was struggling quite a lot. I got this kind of amazing opportunity to play a girl, or a woman who's sometimes a girl. Sometimes she's a woman. Sometimes she's a pixie. Sometimes she's so many different things. But she really brought light into my life, which was kind of a lovely thing to have in that period. I'm definitely going to miss her. I actually, though, I do use quite a lot of my personal clothing and shoes and jewelry and stuff in the show. And a lot of my own personal fake hair, which I have an arsenal of. So I feel like I've got a lot of things that will always make me think of her.

Keough: I was just going to say, when you play a character who brings joy to you, when you're going through something in your life, it's hard to let them go.

Temple: Totally. I will miss her. But I also think the important thing with the show is that, when I first sat down with Jason, he was talking about it as two or three seasons as an arc, and I don't know, maybe a movie down the line or something like that. But I really respect staying true to that and not milking something that has been a success to just make money.

With acting, when do you feel most vulnerable in the process?

Keough: I think it's when I'm coming onto something that's established, or I'm coming in with a smaller role into a film or a show where I feel like a guest. Just where I feel like I'm fireable. If I have a smaller role, I feel more pressure for some reason. I don't know what that is. That that's when I feel the most vulnerable, I think.

Temple: I guess also, it's kind of whenever a job is coming to an end, right? Because I don't know if you still got this, but I do still have mornings like, "Well, might be the last one." So you enjoy every second.

Keough: That's a given. Any time, I think, you're close to an end of a job or finished a job, I think most actors feel out of work.

Both of your families work in entertainment. Did having that as part of your world growing up make it inevitable for you that you’d go into the same field?

Temple: Through my dad's perspective, and his kind of introduction to films for me was through Jean Cocteau films on laser disc. La Belle et la Bête was actually one of the movies that I really, one of my earliest memories of seeing. I had chicken pox, and I was itching so fucking badly. I was about four and a half years old, and my dad was like, "Okay, we've got to do something," and put this incredible movie on the projector screen. I remember when it finished, I realized I'd forgotten I had chickenpox. I was like, that's magic. For me, that was kind of a moment where I knew that I wanted to do something like that, where you could forget bad things that were going on because you could watch something like that.

I don't know if there's a world in which I would've ever really wanted to do anything else. I'm interested in fashion. I wanted to design lingerie and do surrealist lingerie. So there was a moment where I was going to go to fashion college, but then I just love this mad business so much.

Keough: Yeah, I think as far back as I can remember, I wanted to make movies, but I would make lots of movies when I was a kid, but I didn't act in all of them. I wanted to be behind the camera, actually, more when I was younger. I'm sure that growing up in Los Angeles and having it everywhere and being in a family of entertainers, it's more accessible and it's more like a reality. If your whole family are dentists, you're kind of like, "Oh, well, this is a real job I could pursue as a dentist." So I'm sure there's that aspect of it. But I don't remember a time where there was anything else I really wanted to do other than I think I wanted to maybe dance when I was really little.

How would you summarize what you're looking for, what you're saying yes to these days, and maybe how that differs from many moons ago when you two first met?

Keough: I think that most actors don't have the luxury of saying yes or no to things for a very long time. I think that it's longer than people realize. That's just sort of the nature of this industry, and until you're 10 Oscars deep, you have to kind of sometimes –

Temple: – fly by the seat of your pants.

Keough: A little bit. Of course, you can always say no to things, and we all do say no to things. I feel, right now, for the first time, and it might be my age, I don't want to do anything that I am not so in love with.

Temple: Also, I don't really want to be 22 any more on camera, or 25.

Keough: I have to say, the first time when I watched Ted Lasso, I was like, "You feel like a woman. I feel like you're always cast as young girls or cute. I thought that was so great.

Temple: And that's something that I think also mentally, is quite good for me, in the sense that you start actually getting to act with these experiences that you've had thus far and experiences that you are getting at this moment in your life. I feel like I would find it hard to erase some of those experiences and go back in time. It doesn't mean I want to start playing 35 yet. [Laughs.]

Keough: You know, maybe you want to be 28.

Temple: 28 to 30 for the next five years. [Laughs]. And I also think continuous TV shows is something that I really think about, in the sense I've only ever been a part of one before, and when it was canceled I was really devastated because I loved the character. It was a show called Vinyl, which was seventies music.

Keough: I remember I auditioned for it.

Temple: I really found the kind of shock of that being taken away suddenly — when you've made the choice to be like, "Oh, I want to commit to this” — hard. Then doing another continuous TV show was something that I battled with, and initially tried to say, "Can I only sign up one season?" And they were like, "No, two at least." I was like, "Okay, okay." That's something that I would think about, because I do really love getting to explore different perspectives of different women, and getting to work with different people who teach you things, and surprise you and take you to different parts of the world. I think that's something that I really treasure. I know I don't still want to be kind of too stuck somewhere for too long.