Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson on Breaking Out, Their Real-Life Bromance, and Adapting Stephen King

At first glance, they have very little in common.

Cooper Hoffman is a born-and-bred New Yorker, the 22-year-old son of the late acting titan Philip Seymour Hoffman, who grew up around his parents’ creative circle and, as a kid, made iPhone action sequences with Paul Thomas Anderson. For 31-year-old David Jonsson, art was a saving grace in his working-class immigrant east London household, where he was taught by his cinephile dad to revere classic films like Malcolm X and Waiting to Exhale but whose reality was a world away from Hollywood.

But if you hear them tell it, those differences dissolved instantly when they met—it sounds, in fact, a little like love at first sight.

This was on the chemistry read for The Long Walk, an upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s dystopian 1979 novel, going over scenes for Francis Lawrence, the director behind the blockbuster Hunger Games franchise. The success of the adaptation hinged on finding two actors who might initially seem starkly different but, later, telegraph a connection as intense as that between brothers.

“It was like I was on a first date,” Hoffman says, laughing. “I couldn’t stop smiling. I was like, ‘David, you might be the most charismatic person I’ve ever met in my life.’ ”

The boys spent a chunk of the read shooting the shit, talking about sports. “About the Knicks game the night before,” Jonsson explains. “And then we moved on to socc—.”

The Brit just about finishes that sentence before he realizes his grave misstep. “Fuckin’ football!” he corrects himself, turning to Hoffman in mock indignation. “You’re not getting into me! It’s pronounced football,” he says, slicing the word with gesticulating hands.

Hoffman cackles. “I’m rubbing off, sorry!”

“I love this guy from the top of my heart,” Jonsson says.

The two are regaling me with stories from their meet-cute while we’re lunching at an Italian restaurant in downtown Manhattan that Hoffman calls his spot. (It’s a family favorite, it turns out, the place where the Hoffman siblings celebrate their birthdays.)