Sunita Mani and John Reynolds cant quite recall when they first met. Probably sometime around 2014 when Manis claim to semi-fame was her three-person comedic dance troupe, Cocoon Central Dance Team . Reynolds had just moved to New York City from Chicago. A mutual friend recommended he attend the ensembles show, where they could have been performing a choreographed routine to Beyoncs Love on Top, Gloria Estefans Turn the Beat Around or Kate Bushs Hounds of Love. The details dont matter. There, in some Brooklyn club, sat 23-year-old Reynolds, marveling at a three-person comedic dance troupe, unaware that one of its members would later be his co-star right as their careers were blossoming. The set was a doubleheader, and he loved it enough to stay for seconds.

During the next few years, Mani and Reynolds were fixtures in the New York comedy scene, which was enjoying the same millennial transfiguration that has exploded across popular culture. Now 29, Reynolds is a tall, gangly Wisconsin native with a thatch of wayward brown hair; part of his bag involves poking fun at male egotism. Mani, a 34-year-old multihyphenate from Tennessee, has a slight frame and large, earnest eyes. Her dancing background makes a bit more sense if you know that shes the woman possessed by a violent urge to boogie in DJ Snake and Lil Jons popular Turn Down for What video.

I met Mani and Reynolds a couple of weeks ago, on the first day of fall. Wed each emerged into the sunlight from our respective COVID-19 hibernations. A publicist arranged for us to convene at Westlight, an unpopulated cocktail bar atop the swanky William Vale hotel in Williamsburg. Sitting six feet apart opposite the Manhattan skyline, we discussed Mani and Renyolds pandemic-appropriate new movie, Save Yourselves!

The comedy, available Oct. 6 through video-on-demand services, marks the first lead film role for both actors, who in the late 2010s became TV breakouts: Reynolds on Search Party and Stranger Things, and Mani on GLOW, Mr. Robot, The Good Place and Progressive commercials. In what is essentially a two-hander, they play Su (Mani) and Jack (Renyolds), a social media-addled Brooklyn couple who seek self-improvement by borrowing a friends cabin upstate and chucking their devices for one whole week. While Su and Jack tread through the analog getaway, furry alien critters descend upon Earth, unleashing a potential apocalypse that the two dont find out about until it might be too late.