Adria Arjona Dishes on Her Wild New Comedy About Open Relationships: 'It's So Foreign to Me' (Exclusive) Nigel SmithAugust 22, 2025 at 9:00 PM Savion Washington/WireImage Adria Arjona Adria Arjona tells PEOPLE about Splitsville, her new film from the team behind the 2019 acclaimed comedy The Climb "...
- - Adria Arjona Dishes on Her Wild New Comedy About Open Relationships: 'It's So Foreign to Me' (Exclusive)
Nigel SmithAugust 22, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Savion Washington/WireImage
Adria Arjona -
Adria Arjona tells PEOPLE about Splitsville, her new film from the team behind the 2019 acclaimed comedy The Climb
"It's one of the funniest scripts I've ever read," the Andor actress tells PEOPLE of first reading the screenplay for Splitsville
Splitsville, which also stars Dakota Johnson, is in select theaters now and everywhere Sept. 5
Adria Arjona doesn't hold back in her new movie Splitsville, which she dubs "an unromantic comedy."
In the opening moments of the film, from screenwriter duo Kyle Marvin and Michael Angelo Covino, Arjona's character Ashley confesses to her husband Carey (Marvin) that she's cheated on him and wants a divorce.
What follows is a wild and honest comedy centered on two couples (Dakota Johnson and writer-director Covino play the other pair) who explore non-monogamy to varying degrees of success.
Arjona tells PEOPLE it is "beautiful to be a part of something that is reimagining what a romantic comedy might feel like or be like."
For the Puerto Rican actress, 33, whose romance with Jason Momoa is going strong since going public in 2024, Splitsville marks the latest acclaimed project after a busy few years: In 2024 she appeared in Hit Man opposite Glen Powell, as well as Zoë Kravitz's directorial debut Blink Twice. This year, she finished her run in the second season of the Emmy-nominated Star Wars series Andor.
In her interview with PEOPLE, Arjona talks about what drew her to making a film exploring the concepts of open relationships, having Momoa's support at its Cannes Film Festival debut, working with Johnson, and more.
PEOPLE: It's rare to see a comedy tackle the concept of open relationships in such a frank way. What did you make of the movie's themes?
ADRIA ARJONA: I loved what I read. It's one of the funniest scripts I've ever read, to be honest. Sometimes when you read comedy, you're like, oh, this will become a bit through improv or whatever, and you see sort of its potential depending on who's cast or who's directing it. I had already watched The Climb, so tonally I was pretty in sync with what the boys wanted to make, and then getting to read it just really spoke to me and made me giggle as I was reading it. The first 15 pages of the script and the opening of this movie is one of the wildest things I've ever read or performed.
It was exciting for me to tackle Ashley, a character that is so different from me. I found her to be really interesting. I think it all stemmed from curiosity. The idea of open relationships always sparks a lot of questions. If I have a friend that's in an open relationship, I have so many questions because it's so foreign to me, or it's something that I'm not. So I don't have all the knowledge. I just found it interesting and cool to be a part of a movie that gets to dabble in those questions.
Courtesy of Neon
Adria Arjona and Kyle Marvin in Splitsville
Ashley is bold, almost to a fault. Did you feel the need to rationalize some of her actions, or did you just play what was written?
You play what's on the page. And sure, I can rationalize it, but more than anything I really wanted to empathize with her and what she was going through. She's in a relationship, goes through a near-death experience or a death experience as she says in the movie, and she questions the future of her life, and she doesn't really know what she wants. I think we can all identify with that. We've all been in moments in our life when we have no idea what we want, who we are in that moment. And she's there.
I know countless stories of even my own girlfriends when they go on dates and stuff, and it's like on the third date they date a yogi and they're like, "Oh my God, I love yoga." And I'm like, she never liked yoga. We're so desperate for love that we'll try so hard to put our first foot forward and kind of mimic the person that we're dating to satisfy their ego. And we turn into different people. I don't know, I just thought it was really interesting just by experience of hearing people going on dates. So I called Mike and I was like, "I really would love for her to change a little bit of her personality depending on who she's dating." And that kind of turned into that whole montage.
The men largely act like fools in Splitsville. You don't share many scenes with Dakota, but you both balance the movie out nicely. What was it like to have her energy on set?
I didn't have too many scenes with Dakota but, again, you have two really beautiful and sensible males sort of leading this movie, and so much so that they give the women all the power in this film. So in that way, the bro element of it was so on-screen, but off-screen they were really protective of our characters and making sure that we sort of felt happy with the way that they wrote our characters and kind of really gave us ownership over them. It's rare, and I'm really thankful to them for that.
VALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty
Adria Arjona and Jason Momoa at the Cannes Film Festival
It's rare for the Cannes Film Festival to premiere comedies. But Splitsville did screen there and you had the support of Jason [Momoa] on the red carpet. What was that experience like?
I don't think a lot of people understand just how nerve-racking [Cannes] can be. Like at the end of the day, we're so human. We put ourselves in those situations for the sake of a celebration of our movie. But I was s----ing myself. I was so nervous. It's such a big carpet, and to be able to have my partner there with me just made all my nerves sort of go away. So in that way, it made it so much easier to have his hand to hold through that whole process and so cool that we got to celebrate it together. And the fact that I got to celebrate it with Dakota and Michael and Kyle. We worked really hard on this movie. Again, it's a tiny little movie, so to be there at that stage meant so much to us. I just remember looking at Mike and just seeing his smile. It just filled my heart up so much.
Splitsville is releasing into theaters shortly after Andor received such love from the Emmys. Does this feel like an especially gratifying time in your life?
Oh, absolutely. I feel like a lot of the stuff that I've dreamt up or worked really hard for is kind of paying off. And thanks to all these directors taking a chance on me, Tony [Gilroy, creator of Andor] being one of them. He was a pioneer in my career and really saw something before anybody did and before even I did. So to be able to have that show which was huge for my career and be dominating the Emmys is huge. It feels really special. And I've got to thank that show and I have to thank Tony for everything that is happening to me right now.
Splitsville is in select theaters now and everywhere Sept. 5.
on People
Source: "AOL AOL Entertainment"
Source: CR MAG
Full Article on Source: CR MAG
#LALifestyle #USCelebrities