Sofia Pernas is opening up about her love story. ET’s Nischelle Turner spoke to the actress about her first impression of her now-husband, Justin Hartley, and the way they turned their friendship into romance.
“My first and only impression was, God, that guy comes in and leaves as soon as the bell goes ding,” Pernas informed ET of Hartley, who she met on the set of The Younger and the Stressed. “… Sometimes he’d do up to 65 pages a day. He was just ripping pieces off, throwing them in the trash, as soon as he’d be done with the scene. It was almost like pop smoke and then he would leave. It was incredible.”
On the time, Hartley was married to Chrishell Stause, so it was only a friendship between the This Is Us star and the actress. Hartley and Stause known as it quits in 2019, although, at which period Pernas “was going through a really bad dry spell.”
Pernas ultimately determined to “start throwing out feelers” for a possible love match, and one bloomed when she messaged Hartley in the beginning of 2020.
“I remember I texted him ‘happy turn of the decade’ in January,” she mentioned. “That was it.”
For a time, the duo acted as “pen pals,” Pernas mentioned, however, when the COVID-19 pandemic started in March 2020, that each one modified.
“We did a dip in the pool with quarantine. I kind of never left him and we got married a year later,” she mentioned.
Whereas Pernas famous that it is “really cliche when you’re in a relationship to say that that person is kind of obligated to be your best friend,” she insisted that Hartley “really is” that for her.
“It’s very rare when you just seem to be on the same page with everything,” she mentioned. “Of course there’s growing pains with certain things, but when you know, you know. When you have the right person as your partner you just sort of glide through the growing pains.”
“It felt so wrong ’cause so many people were going through hard, tough time during COVID and I was kind of having the best time of my life, just falling in love,” Pernas added. “… For us, it was working and working and working. [It was] so seamless and easy that it was just a no brainer.”
Now, the couple is again to sharing the display on Hartley’s present, Tracker. Pernas mentioned that working alongside her husband once more “was fun,” earlier than describing the character she performs on the CBS sequence.
“She’s a fellow reward seeker. It’s sort of one of those things where they do the same job, but they just have a different bag of tricks,” she teased. “He does a very specific thing. She does a very specific thing. They used to work together back in the day.”
“I kind of was doing a job I wasn’t really into when I met him and found out what he was doing and kind of got entangled in that world. And then I, of course, got a chip on my shoulder and I’m like, ‘I can do this too,'” Pernas added. “I kind of go out on my own branch, if you will, and there was a tough speed bump in their past when I did that.”
Throughout their time working collectively, Pernas revealed that she and Hartley obtained to boost the script a bit.
“It wasn’t really scripted for us to kiss,” she mentioned. “We played with some moments where felt was like, do they kiss in this moment? Just because there is so much history, and there was so much tension, and there was a certain life-threatening event that happened right before, so it’s all of this pent up pressure.”
As for if she’ll return to the present, Pernas mentioned that her look “opened the door a sliver” for a potential continuation of her storyline.
“I love her. She’s such a cool character. She’s trying to hide so much ’cause, obviously, she’s so vulnerable,” she mentioned of her character. “I think that’s what’s so cool, watching both of them play. He’s obviously so self-assured and commanding and powerful when he walks into a room, but I think, because of their history and everything going forward, it’s nice to see that peep hole in the vulnerability.”
Pernas’ episode of Tracker will air March 24 on CBS.
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