Monday is a sexy romantic drama from Greek director Argyris Papadimitropoulos in the tradition of 9-1/2 Weeks, Wild Orchid and White Palace. The film stars Avengers star Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough, cast in the upcoming Star Wars’ Rogue One prequel TV series, Andor.

The two play Americans working in Athens who meet at a party one hot summer night and embark on a steamy, torrid affair. Chloe (Gough) is coming off a bad breakup with her boss at the law firm where she works and Mickey (Stan) composes music for commercials when he’s not deejaying at clubs and parties. Their one-night stand extends over the weekend when Mickey invites Chloe to a nearby island where he’s slated to deejay the next night. Though she is scheduled to return to the states where she’s accepted a lucrative job at a law firm (arranged by her ex), Chloe throws caution to the wind and decides to join her new paramour instead. A frenzy of sex, clubbing, drinking and partying ensue. Even when they return from the island, their passion is unabated and the couple soon move into together. But will their hot passion and satisfying lovemaking be enough to sustain a long-term relationship?

As adults in their mid-30s, Mickey and Chloe have other obligations and issues they have to contend with. Chloe, who’s slightly older than Mickey, has her career to think about, and is still emotionally scarred from her previous relationship with a man who tried to control her, while Mickey is dealing with a child-custody matter with his ex-girlfriend.  Eventually, like all wonderful, whirlwind romantic weekends that sometimes extend into months, the metaphorical Monday is always looming.

Stan, rumored to be in line to play a young Luke Skywalker, is best known for playing Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier in the Avengers franchise as well as the hit Disney+ spinoff series The Falcon And The Winter Soldier. He enthusiastically signed up for Monday as did Ireland native Gough, undeterred by the nude and intimate scenes. They spoke—Stan from Los Angeles and Gough near London—about their sexy independent film and working with its charismatic and easygoing director, who gave them leeway in improvising their dialogue while sheltering them from any uncomfortableness that the intimate love story required.

IFC Films’ Monday opens in select theaters, on digital platforms and on video-on-demand (VOD) April 16.

Angela Dawson: Was there any hesitation at all in filming this because of the nudity?

Denise Gough: I initially read it and thought, “I can’t do it because there’s too much sex, and I’m Irish, and we’ve got weird stuff about doing sex scenes.” I’ve been saying this a lot because it’s usually down to the woman to do all the sex acting, and I said, “I just can’t do that. It’s mortifying.” Then, I watched Argyris’ (Papadimitropoulos) film, Suntan, and Elli (Tringou) was so incredible in it and made all the more incredible by Hristos Karamanis, the DOP, who is so phenomenal as was Argyris. I spoke to Elli and asked how safe she felt. Once I knew those were the hands I was going to be in, I felt fine. Then, when I met Sebastian, I realized that he was somebody that I could partner with on this.

Sebastian Stan: I felt really great about it. I feel now that we have this thing that always will exist between Denise, Argyris and myself because it was a very collaborative process. He wanted us to take these characters that were on the page and expand them and make them our own. We got a chance to do that, and you don’t always get a chance to do that. It was an interesting time in Greece. We shot for about two months and then took a month off, and then we came back for Christmas to shoot the second half of the relationship. It was weird but by the time we left Greece, we basically had lived there, it felt, for a year.

Gough: Sebastian went away to do (the love-triangle drama Endings, Beginnings) with Shailene (Woodley). I remember thinking, “He is having an affair on me.” I was so intensely in a relationship at that point that for him to go off and pretend to be in another (pretend) relationship with another woman, I was like, “She’d better stay away from him.” (She laughs.)

Stan: It was a really difficult thing because (Endings, Beginnings’ director) Drake Doremus is a person I’ve always loved; I’ve loved his movies. This was the only time that movie could be made, and Argyris wanted the month off so we did it. But I don’t think I’m ever going to mix anything again like that for the sake of my sanity.  When we came back to shoot the second part (of Monday), we were able to pick up right where we had left off. Weirdly, some of the stuff we’d shot had managed to digest itself when we returned, which was great because the characters had spent more time together. It felt like it was all pretty parallel, on par.

Dawson: Had either of you spent time in Greece previously?

Gough: I’d been there on holiday before, but now I’m learning to speak Greek. I’m going to move there. That’s where I want to spend half of my time if I can as soon, as we’re allowed to. I had planned to spend August there this year but it’s not looking likely because of the pandemic. I was renting a house (during filming). I just love it so much. It was such a brilliant place for me because I can be intense and, while I was there, it was like, “Bring it. We want all of your intensity, and more.”

Dawson: The party scenes felt very authentic with their raw, pounding frantic energy.

Gough: They were actual, real parties that continued after the cameras stopped. Lots of people knew each other and there were posters put up around town, “Do you want to come to a party?” It was really crazy.

Stan: I remember walking around while I was out shopping or getting food and I saw these posters all over the place and I thought, “Wow, this is our movie.” It really drove home the realization that people are going to see this (poster) and show up.” The biggest party scene—the one in the middle of the film—Argyris managed to get 300 extras to be in the sequence.

Dawson: Just last night, celebrants burned a couch in the road in Westwood (Los Angeles) after UCLA advanced in the Final Four basketball game, and I thought of your scene in Monday, where you drag a couch to the middle of a square when you can’t get it up the stairs, and you and the crowd burn it in celebration.

Gough: Hey, we started a thing!

Stan: What a fun thing to take away from the film: arson. (He laughs.)

Dawson: Your characters in this film are adults, not kids.  So, their affair has more at stake.

Gough: And my character is older. That was a big thing for me. She’s older than him and I loved telling that story too. What happens to a woman who’s a little bit older and maybe she’s got all that stuff going on. Like, does she want to have children? If she wants to have children, she’s facing a deadline. I love that Argyris made her older than Sebastian’s character.

Dawson: That biological clock-clicking phase can be scary.

Gough: Thankfully, I don’t have it. I’m so glad I don’t have it.

Dawson: What was your takeaway from these characters? The film starts out on Friday with a party and then ends up on Monday, a time to get serious. Where are you in your lives?

Gough: (laughing) It’s been a perpetual slump for the past year.

Stan: I’ve found myself, quite often, in a Wednesday. It’s like the weekend is on the horizon but the weekend still seems far away. Even during the pandemic, I’ve found myself thinking, “Oh my God, it’s Friday!” and then you think, “But it doesn’t mean anything.”

Gough: You can’t do anything.

Stan: Wednesdays are OK because you’re in-between. You’re still kind of focused on things but you can let the foot off the gas a little bit.

Dawson: What can each of you say about what you’ve got coming up? Star Wars?

Gough: Star Wars. But neither of us can say anything. All I can say is I’m having the time of my life. I never thought I’d be in a franchise but even though I wasn’t a big Star Wars person growing up, when I walk on set I’m thinking, “This is the coolest thing ever.”

Stan: I think these kinds of projects kind of get intertwined in a certain way. You learn certain things that are personal and collaborative on these smaller movies and then you take them to that environment. You’re like, “Cool. Now, I’ve got 30 people talking to me about this scene because everyone has an idea—from the props people to the lighting people. But then, sometimes, you can take some of that and bring it to the smaller projects and apply it there. There are aspects of each that you can apply to the other.

Gough: They complement each other but it’s always about doing the best work. You want to do the best work. For me, after this year, I’m devastated by the loss of what’s happening to theaters because it’s the longest I’ve ever gone without being on stage, and it doesn’t look like (stage productions) are going to come back for a while. At least not to the extent that I was doing it before the pandemic.

Stan: But once it does come back, it will full-on. It’s not like movies and streaming. The theater is always about the live audience, and it’s never going away.

Gough: I know, but I don’t want to do socially distanced theater. I was playing to crowds of 1,000. I think we’ve all found out things about ourselves over the past year.