Noah Centineo and Will Poulter on How Their Real-Life ‘Brother’ Bond Shaped “Union County”

The two actors first met while training for the 2025 war movie ‘Warfare’ together

Will Poulter and Noah Centineo share a brotherly bond in real life that’s reflected on-screen in their latest movie together, in which they play foster brothers.

Union County, in theaters Friday, Aug. 14, centers on Cody (Poulter) and Jack (Centineo) as they navigate a county-mandated drug court program while attempting to rebuild their lives amid the opioid epidemic in rural Ohio. For the stars, the film marked their second collaboration shortly after making 2025’s intense Iraq War film Warfare together.

“I looked up to Will a lot on Warfare, and his process and his leadership and the way he treated everyone,” Centineo, 30, tells PEOPLE in a joint interview alongside his British costar and friend. “He was our officer in charge on that movie, and beyond that, he became like my brother. When [Union County director] Adam [Meeks] was like, ‘Look, I’m meeting with Will,’ I was like, ‘What are the odds?’ It was so great.”

As Poulter, 33, recalls, their bond was formed during the intense training for Warfare.

“The three-to-four-week bootcamp that we did, it’s designed to bond you in a very unique way. It is so intense, and it pushes you physically and mentally as a group, probably less so as an individual and more so as a team member, that you come out the other side feeling like you’ve known people for a year. It’s really crazy.”

Adds Centineo, “We spent eight and a half weeks together in the countryside of the United Kingdom, and the first four of those weeks, we were together for probably 17 hours a day. We ate our meals together, we trained together, we did bootcamp together. We went to the pool, sauna together, everything. It was just everything. And we relied on each other. So we got close.”

Their relationship only deepened when they both began work on Union County, which embedded the actors with a real-life recovery community. Apart from Centineo and Poulter, the film largely features non-actors, primarily made up of social workers, judges and real program participants.

“Adam is from the area. He knows intimately lots of people who’ve been affected by the issues that the film copes with. I think that there was a really conscious effort to make sure that the process by which we made this and our characters were weaved into the experience didn’t infringe on the recovery process,” Poulter explains.

For both Centineo and Poulter, the experience changed how they approach their roles.

Says Poulter, “I know that, if I can help it, I never ever want to do a project whereby I don’t advocate for the time to really, really work on backstory with my co-lead in the way that me and Noah did. It was just so important. The opportunity to spend time in the community with the people we made it with, that was just sacred, and I’m so grateful for it. So wherever and however I can do that again in the future, I would love to. I definitely took that away from the experience.”

“I never do background character stuff,” Centineo says. “I kind of fire from the hip, generally, and I think that this kind of put an end to that really quickly. I agree with Will. What was reaffirming for Will was like, ‘Oh, duh, what the f—- have I been doing this whole time?’ “

Another thing that connects the actors: their love for making smaller films like Union County and throwing themselves into big blockbusters. Poulter has starred in the Guardians of the Galaxy and Maze Runner franchises, while Centineo will next be seen in the anticipated Street Fighter video game adaptation.

Via: Yahoo