Last summer, when director Daniel Espinosa’s Life was filming outside London, I got to visit the set with a few other reporters. The movie, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Olga Dihovichnaya, Hiroyuki Sanada and Ariyon Bakare, revolves around the six-member crew of the International Space Station as they come into contact with the very first evidence of biological life on Mars: a small, single-celled organism. As they begin to research the specimen, however, this “life” proves far more dangerous than they could have ever imagined. Life was written by Deadpool’s Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese and produced by Skydance’s David Ellison and Dana Goldberg along with Bonnie Curtis and Julie Lynn.

During a break in filming I got to participate in a group interview with the cast. It was a very fun and playful conversation where they talked about why zero gravity planes are the scariest, making a submarine movie in space, how the entire film takes place in zero gravity the entire time, why they wanted to be part of the film, and so much more. Check out what they had to say below.

But before getting to the interview, I’d suggest you watch the trailer for Life so you can get a feel for the tense thriller. Life invades theaters March 24, 2017.

What was your reaction when you first read the script and what made you want to be a part of this project?

*silence*

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Image via Sony

RYAN REYNOLDS: All at once guys.

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: I read the script and I was through it in, like, an hour. I actually read things...I sorta slowly pace myself through something. I'm not really sure why, but it just tends to be how I have always read. Ocassionally I'll read a script that I sort of like, really blow through. I got to the end, I was...legitamitely you could picture yourself terrified when you read something and there are those experiences where you are actually like, "Oh! F*ck!" And there were a number of times reading this script where I thought, admittedly I felt like you hear about what it is or when I was told about it I was like, "Oh, OK." Then as I read it I was like, "This is cool!" Sorry, that's so abstract but I guess that's to say, I liked it.

REYNOLDS: I only read my parts. *laughter* No, this process contained two...Daniel Espinosa is one of my favorite people I've ever worked with, and Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who are actually my life partners. So, it was kind of a match made in heaven and an amazing cast. It's hard to find great stories these days like this one. Great stories that contain real tension. Not just because of elements that are in the film but also because of you've drawn these six incredibly distinct charcters...

GYLLENHAAL: ...that allow for actual human behavior in something that's already structurely super tense. So we could actually act in the scenes with the thing holding us. We didn't have to be *gasp* all the time. It was actual human behavior and how we are...

REYNOLDS: ...and pretty tough to do a film that takes place on the ISS in which the human are the most interesting element. That's hard to write.

REBECCA FERGUSON: I had a good combination of reading the script whilst having Daniel on the phone. I think for me it was the combination of hearing where he wanted to take this script that was really, really exciting and fun. But I love the collboration of the producers, of the directors, of the writers - this could be a really fun, new enviroment to be in. I liked it. Actually, it's pretty cool.

OLGA DIHOVICHNAYA: When I read the script, beside this obvious sci-fi thriller, permits a very important idea in the script, about this common reflex people feel to any unknown, any new something they faced. For us it's life on Mars. For a stranger, foreigner resprented something very religious. You feel this fear. And you respond with defense and you cause for attack this something unknown. And it causes many problems. From the mental it causes many problems, but in the film it's like a step for a really intriguing story.

FERGUSON: Good answer.

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Image via Sony

REYNOLDS: Very good answer! Just put my name down to hers.

GYLLENHAAL: "I said that."

HIROYUKI SANADA: It was very unique. That was my first impression. We are discovering some strange creature on behalf of all human beings. It's so exciting mission. It's all about the creature but I think it's a great human drama into the ISS, all international crew working together, everybody has own thoughts and mission - totally different. I felt it was a great ensemsble drama. Great entertainment. Also, good warning for the future for us, I thought.

ARIYON BAKARE: I didn't read it. *laughter* No...when I read it I had this visceral, immediate reaction to it. One of the things is just like, how you interpret the creature and how you respond to it in its own way and for me, I have my own personal journey with it. It just seems to jump off the page really, really quickly. Then on top of that, also the fact that people were from different nations - How are we all going to come to together and how's that going to work? You think, "Wow, this is a world, out there, that no one else is really going to see." Because our own world is so contained and we're just in it. We're in this box together. How are we gonna communicate? The script just allows that to breather a lot. It allows us to have that...it’s almost as if I wasn't playing a slave story. It's as if I'm playing an intelligent man. An intelligent black man. He has a journey - beginning, middle and end. Which represents life as we know it now. I felt that was a very simple part and I felt that was the most exciting thing about it, for me. How am I going to get to the underbelly of it? Am I going to be able to make this real in some way?

What percentage of the movie are you not on wires?

REYNOLDS: Percentage are we NOT on wires? I'd say it's a pretty healthy mix. We're all on wires at different times but they have a lot...a lot of R & D has gone into this and some of the R & D were other movies. How to be weightless in space. It's sort of the first thing they address and then you don't really address it again. I don't know what percentage but off and on. They both have their drawbacks. If you're not on wires you sort of have to maintain this annoying type of "float" that's happening in everything that you do. And when you are on wires the work is sort of off your back but you're suspended from, well I'm suspended from my good testicle - they wrecked my other one.

How conscious is that throughout the acting portion? Because to be weightless is one thing, it's sorta something you always have to pay attention to.

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Image via Sony Pictures

REYNOLDS: It's true. At home we all want to just toss something, and watch it float across the room. It forces you to be very mindful about everyting that you're doing. Everything is sort of intentioned. When you're at zero G's have to be very intentioned, because you can actually get stuck at zero G's. There are astronauts that get stuck in the middle of a room. Think about it, they have nothing to push off of and they're totally at zero G's. There's no way to move without someone helping you or saving you. I found that kind of intersting.

What was the preperation you all did? Was it preperation together - the weightlessness and all that - or was it just indiviual stuff?

BAKARE: Both really. We had a really good movement teacher, Alex, who really helped with zero G. And we also worked all together with objects and puppeteers. It's quite a lot of work. There's a lot of people behind the scene helping us create this...thing. The wire work was the hardest.

How long did you have to work on stuff like that - a few days?

BAKARE: Personally? A few months. *laughter* I was the heaviest. So I had to become the lightest.

The zero gravity planes are the scariest because obviously most people on Earth will never experience zero gravity. We're used to have up/down and that's it. We're stuck to the ground. One of things people found scary about Gravity, she's just spinning off in space - there is no up, there is no down. Is that played with at all in the movie?

GYLLENHAAL: I think there are numerous third and fourth dimensions in this movie that play psychologically with these things that we fear and then, being out of control in more ways than one. Not just phsyically in space. Yes, we have chase sequences and things like that, where we're tyring to get towards something or away from something in the midst of not having our feet underneath us. But there's also the fact this being, this thing, is a very particular thing. It poses a psychological terror that I think creates it's own non-metaphoric non-gravity in our minds. We're all trying to figure out what it means to each one of us and it means something different. What it becomes is something different. And I think it will be for the audience too. We're just constantly filled with question marks everywhere. So yes, physically, but also throughout the whole story it's like that.

One of the things about this is you guys have practical sets. It looks like they built a ton of this space station. What was the reaction walking on set for the first time and seeing everything? Talk a little bit about the practical aspect.

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Image via Sony Pictures

REYNOLDS: I was blown away when I saw that space station. I had been contact with this guy Commander Hatfield, who's a Canadian astronaut, who's spent a long time up on the ISS. I showed him a little picture of piece of the lab and he's like, "It's exactly that. It's a perfect representation of what's up there." A lot of effort went into making it as authentic as possible. Coming back here three months ago and doing some of the wire work and wire training, were all the sets were these sort of rudimentry pillars, things that you grab and just represented the space station. And to come back and see it, you open a cupboard and it's full of space food - it's wild. They really dotted all their I's and crossed their T's.

I'm curious with all the wire working and the choreography, what's the shooting like? Are they all one long tracking shot? Do you guys rehearse a lot? Do you have to do a lot of reshooting?

GYLLENHAAL: I mean we have Seamus McGarvey shooting the movie. In terms of precision and beauty, there's no second team. It's looks beautiful and I think Daniel and he have designed the look of the film that incorporate...because you're in one big space you have the ability to float throughout it and I think that they use that. I also think in terms of how we shoot it and it's just to go back to what the sets are like. I don't tend to make larger size films that often. I tend to stay in a different...like you know...we're lucky to get a piece of that set. This whole movie has a sense of a smaller film within a huge context. The attention to detail in that space and they're shooting it in a very similar way. It's really about behaviour. There's massive scope. It's insane. But we're hiding that scope through the chracters' eyes. Some of the previz in some of their shots, how they take us through the beginning of the movie, is all based on character and how the character takes you through. And then there's the craziest shot, but it's not sitting there to say, someone saying, "We need scope. We need..."

REYNOLDS: It's masked in a weird way by intimacy. It feels so intimate in there. But weirdly Seamus, and Daniel to his credit, credit this universe out of this small space. You feel like you're in this, what is a very contained area for six adult people to be in, but yet it feels quite, each room of it feels unlike the last one - even though they're interconnected in someway.

How well do characters get along? Because I imagine being in this space together, just the six of you, the six people on the space station, do you get long very well? You're like a family or is there friction between you?

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Image via Sony Pictures

FERGUSON: In real life or in the movie?

Both. We've heard the way Jake and Ryan can act, ya know?

GYLLENHAAL: That's true. Unfortunately I'll tell you anything that's true. I would. I don't care. But yeah, no, we all liked each other maybe a little too much. *laughter*

REYNOLDS: I really think that's what concerns Daniel, f*cking all the time. *laughter*

GYLLENHAAL: All the time. That's what I do. We were trying to get mad at each other in the last scene...

REYNOLDS: ...in the last scene and I was, "I can't stay mad at you." I just can't.

GYLLENHAAL: We were trying to rev her up for her close up and I was like, "Dude what the f*ck are you, why are you...", and he's like, "I don't know..."

FERGUSON: I was like, "Thanks guys. This is great."

REYNOLDS: I was mumbling all of my anger at you instead of like, if I was really mad, "YOU MOTHER F*CKER!" *laughter* *pretending to be Daniel Espinosa* "Why are you so controlling?"

GYLLENHAAL: *pretending to be Daniel Espinosa* "Let's get mad at each other before the scene. Like totally, like when we were hanging out last weekend, like something about that."

REYNOLDS: *laughter* Yeah, that's what he said. I was like, "Oh you mean the weekend we spent laughing our ass off...for 48 straight hours?"

GYLLENHAAL: But yeah, we all get along.

REYNOLDS: But the characters certainly have elements of friction, how could you not? I think it's interesting because when you're in space, and you're in the ISS, the heirarchies sort of disolve when you get up there. Because you have a commander and you have all these other things, but then they all sort of vanish. It's like a family.

FERGUSON: Team work.

REYNOLDS: It's so weird going commando in these because of the zippers.

Obviously Life is an ensemble piece as well, it is kind of that same dynamic as Sunshine or is it totally different?

GYLLENHAAL: Of course.

FERGUSON: Such a good movie.

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Image via Sony Pictures

From reading the script, to actually starting to shoot, did you guys learn anything about your characters, anything different or more about your characters?

GYLLENHAAL: Constantly.

REYNOLDS: Oh yeah.

BAKARE: Constantly developing.

GYLLENHAAL: We're finding sh*t all the time. That's how it works. That's why it's cool.

FERGUSON: We play off each other.

GYLLENHAAL: It's written a certain way and then all of the sudden some dynamic happens and Daniel will move on that dynamic. We joke but whatever happens last week or some sh*t we got into, it'll be put into the movie. Daniel's not afraid of that kind of stuff and that's what I mean by...I think sometime movies of a certain size end up being driven by fear and driven by other people's fear who aren't there. God forbid someone makes a choice that hasn't been produced to the absolute T. It's been so well structured as a whole, like I was saying, the tension holds itself, that when we get into to the interpersonal stuff, things change. He allows for that to happen. Like, the scene we're shooting now was, I think, the tensions were the same, but a wholely different behaviour from all of us as we were written. As to how we are.

REYNOLDS: The words are changed a lot too. They sort of morphed into what was needed for that.

One of the things about this, you're essentially - and other people on the production have said it - you're essentially making a submarine movie but in space. I'm curious if any of your guys watched any particular films prior to filming to set the mindset or get ready for what you were making?

GYLLENHAAL: The Little Mermaid. *laughter* Because I wanted to know what it felt like to be under the sea.

REYNOLDS: We found Dory. I just want you to know. It was a search mission.

BAKARE: Mine was Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

So you guys are visiting us from the near future. So a part from aliens, what can you tell us about the near future? What's it like?

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Image via Sony Pictures

BAKARE: It's not too dissimliar to what we're living in now, actually. We're not that far ahead in the future, are we really?

REYNOLDS: We could say, not too distant.

Is it a little bit nicer or a little bit worse?

REYNOLDS: I was ad-libbing something weird from the present and you were like, "Gah! That Donald Trump thing. That worked out great!"

I saw you guys filming earlier, you were hanging up and you were trying to come through the door. The monitors were on and I sorta peeped and watched and my first thought was, "Please don't let the black guy die first."

BAKARE: Well I'm gonna say, the black guy dies first. *laughter* No, no that's not true. What can I say?

That's another headline, right there. Black guy does not die first...but he does die first.

REYNOLDS: Also, I think that's the working title of the film. *laughter*

You guys have been filming for a number of weeks now, for each of you, is there a memorable moment from filming thus far? Like a particular day?

REYNOLDS: It's weird. The film is so tense but I find myself apologizing all the time because we're laughing so hard. I find that when you shoot a comedy, nobody's laughing inbetween takes. Everyone's like f*cking dead serious but when you're shooting, the more dramatic the movie is, the more people are joking.

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Image via Sony Pictures

BAKARE: I think it's the day where we all became a team at one time. That was really quite an interesting.

REYNOLDS: I think everyone cares for each other.

FERGUSON: I think for me when I tried on Ryan's spacesuit.

REYNOLDS: Yeah, she just randomly tried on my spacesuit.

Did it fit?

FERGUSON: I was just doing sexy poses in it, just trying to show him how to work it. But I couldn't get up, I was literally lying on the floor.

REYNOLDS: Because it weighs sixty pounds.

FERGUSON: It's so heavy. I had the entire team come and just, knock me over just to be able to get up.

REYNOLDS: Jake and Rebecca's spacesuits were like sex on legs. I wear this Stay Puft Marshmallow suit. It's brutal.

GYLLENHAAL: I was behind you in that thing. This is when I knew I was really like...I made a mention of Small Wonder, that movie...

REYNOLDS: ...that TV show, you mean...

GYLLENHAAL: ...the TV show, I'm sorry. When I was opening up his backpack, I said, "This is like Small Wonder."

REYNOLDS: The critically acclaimed television show.

GYLLENHAAL: This is where we know how old everyone is.

REYNOLDS: We're all about Small Wonder and everyone else is like, "I'm sorry?"

GYLLENHAAL: "You like Small Wonder, right?" "Ah man! Did you say Small Wonder?" He was in his suit...

REYNOLDS: Open up my back! Open up my back!

Every day, is anyone in charge on the ISS that you're on? Is someone in charge or are you all on the same level?

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Image via Sony Pictures

REYNOLDS: Is someone in charge? Olga is in charge. She's the commander.

So when things go wrong, it's your fault?

DIHOVICHNAYA: Yes, I'm in charge as a commander but we have two teams: Grey and Brown. Brown is about science.

REYNOLDS: Science and doctors.

Talk a little about on set, when you have a cast like this - there's six actors - everyone like to have a different process. Maybe some like to be loose before a take, some are a little more serious. How to you guys work together when everyone has a different take on the acting process?

FERGUSON: Well, Hiro floats...

REYNOLDS: ...all the time. Any time you see Hiro he's like *pretends to float*. In line at the lunch counter.

Can you all do the floating at the same time? I'm interested to see what it looks like.

REYNOLDS: Don't make us do that. It's our lunch break. Please. For God's sake. I will say, I'm high as a kite right now.

GYLLENHAAL: I can do everybody. She, Olga is always like she's so light. Rebecca always has her toes up and she's always sort of moving, climbing up on her thing. *laughter* I don't know what I'm doing. And Ryan is literally just standing there.

REYNOLDS: I'm using Hiro as an anchor. F*ck you.

GYLLENHAAL: He's f*cking amazing. He can stand on two toes...

REYNOLDS: I'll tell you what Jake does. It usually involves this *falls onto table* *laughter*

GYLLENHAAL: So true.

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Image via Sony Pictures

FERGUSON: *pretending to be Jake* Can you see me now? Can you see me now?

REYNOLDS: What's awesome, it's actually not in his control because we're being puppeteered by wire cables. For whatever reason, the first few days Jake's guys were just like, "Let's throw him right into the wall." In the middle of a scene, "What the hell?"

GYLLENHAAL: My sh*t gets caught everywhere. They have to cut the top halfway, so you have to get through the little thing. F*cking every other take I just hit the edge of something and I go f*cking spinning and I hit a wall. Or I drag my whole...

REYNOLDS: It's sorta like you're in the middle of a scene and you hear a car accident behind you and you're like, "Do I look? If the camera didn't see it maybe I can just keep going." *laughter*

I’m just curious what you said about the UK or Britain in general to make the people on set hate you that much?

GYLLENHAAL: Yeah, right? I know.

REYNOLDS: No. They've got it sorted now. Now you're flying like, "What?"

GYLLENHAAL: Being an American I was desperate for control, obviously. You know you have to push off things. We were working, when Ryan was talking about early on, we had a lot of control because we had tons of space. They were showing us how to move in these harnesses and these wires. Now we have very little space. So now we are mirroring edit around. They're up there. There are eight guys up there. And they're pulling and pushing and throwing us to each other and grabbing us. Before we could sort of move, what they do - they probably already explained it to you guys - they move all the sets to the wire work and vice versa. So, we don't really have as much control as we did early on. I came in a little later, so I was just, "I got this guys." I'd like, push off sh*t and they'd be, "WHOA F*CK!" and then I'd slam into walls. So once I let go and they're just like, "Don't f*cking touch anything...idiot." *laughter* After that, when that happened, everything's fine.

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Image via Sony Pictures

FERGUSON: How about the moment when you think you're going to go faster but you don't?

REYNOLDS: And you're like, "Um...guys?" *laughter*

GYLLENHAAL: You do feel very, at least I feel, in a number of scenes I found myself in the background of them and in them, in the back of a scene you have to make a very specific action, it has to look like you're entering or you're moving in and you f*ck that up? It's such a bummer because it was working where it was important and you're f*cking up your stuff in the back - which I've done a lot. I'm sorry, that's happened a lot. You feel responsible...

REYNOLDS: It makes me laugh though.

I'm surprised you're still talking to him.

REYNOLDS: Oh my God, it's so funny. You have no idea. They don't shoot on film anymore, it's digital. They can waste as much as they want.

I'm curious, I don't know of another film - and maybe I'm just not remembering - of a film that's tried to do zero gravity the entire time. Talk a little bit about that aspect of the film because it's really cool.

REYNOLDS: It's tough. I remember the first day, maybe it wasn't the first day, it was the fourth day or something, and we were doing a scene in the kitchen, the Unity Kitchen. At one point I started doing something like this, and I realized you can't do that. That's gravity. If I were to lean on my hand it would just be like that. You constantly have to re-evaluate how you just sit.

GYLLENHAAL: I had a water bottle in my mouth like this, because the water bottles were sticking out like a straw. It was like this in the scene, and I was talking with the water bottle in my mouth. They cut and Daniel walks up to me and he's like, "If you continue to do that, that's going to be two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for that shot."

REYNOLDS: Because the water bottle would float beside you.

GYLLENHAAL: And I was like, "Oh sh*t, you're right." Daniel's like, "Either we cover that sh*t in green or you take it out of your mouth." *laughter*

FERGUSON: Like, a natural position would always be, we talk about it, would be hands up. Your hands would always go up.

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Image via Sony Pictures

I'm interested to get as brief as possible a breakdown of each of your characters and their role, both on the ship and in the dynamic.

BAKARE: I'm the microbiologist and I analyze the specimen and I bring my findings to the team.

Are you excited about the specimen?

BAKARE: Very excited about the specimen. I can't say too much but yeah, I'm very excited.

SANADA: I'm an experienced astronaut. Maybe this is the fourth mission? And maybe the last mission because I have a newborn baby during the mission. I have a baby on the earth. I'm chatting with my wife via tablet.

So you haven't met the baby yet?

SANADA: No. First baby in this age. So that changed my mind and I start fighting against myself and that sort of thing and bothering mission, as a position. In his mind, maybe next mission is go back to the Earth safely and then spending time with the family. I have two missions now but something's happened so...to be continued.

REYNOLDS: I play Roy Adams. He's an engineer, sort of a generalized mechanic. My specialty is the space walk and the mechanical arm, which extends beyond the ISS and serves as a giant catcher's glove, basically. That's my sort of mission up here, is to operate those things...and to just fix crap that breaks. Grey suit. Dumdum. Grey suit. Smart guy. Brown suit. That's how we sort of break it down.

FERGUSON: Well we need loos that work.

REYNOLDS: What's that?

BAKARE: We need loos that work.

REYNOLDS: *chuckling* Didn't they say that yesterday? I was like, "Remember when we had our shower scene?" It's this scene where I'm fixing the shower and he's there.

BAKARE: You shouldn't have said that.

REYNOLDS: I know but we do have a shower scene together.

So brown suit, smart guy. Is that right?

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Image via Sony Pictures

GYLLENHAAL: Smart guy?

REYNOLDS: Doctor, scientist...

GYLLENHAAL: Scientist, doctor but that's relative. *laughter* I play, his name is Doctor Jordan and he's in the shower a lot. He's name is David Jordan. He's a doctor, sort of the internist on the ship and he's been there the longest. He's the bad guy...no I'm just kidding. He's just the doctor and makes sure that everybody's healthy.

Does he succeed by the end of the movie?

GYLLENHAAL: Um...

FERGUSON: Miranda North, very smart. Center of Disease Control. My job is basically to, whatever we find, to protect Earth from it and to protect it from us. I'm like a giant condom.

GYLLENHAAL: You're the giant what?

FERGUSON: Condom.

REYNOLDS: Yes she is. She plays the giant prophylactic.

FERGUSON: I have to make sure firewalls are up. Everything is safe. I make sure they all stay, especially...

GYLLENHAAL: Everybody's like, "I'm going to go see that movie now."

REYNOLDS: Somebody bleeds, she screams, "CLOSE YOUR MOUTHS! CLOSE YOUR MOUTHS!"

BAKARE: My mouth is always open.

FERGUSON: I'm the protective shield.

DIHOVICHNAYA: I'm a commander and I think I'm the protector but sometimes I make mistakes. So it makes the story more interesting.

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Image via Sony Pictures

GYLLENHAAL: Yeah, it's like a group of people have been put on set for a number of reasons to serve specific functions. None of them are sent up there for a particular movie because they've all trained together for a very long time. This really isn't a group of people who've had the same type of, they're all put there for different reasons, for different functions. But there's not a lot of experience with each other, necessarily. Which I think is also interesting.

REYNOLDS: I just like how serious we're all being. Normally Jake would be like, "I play the hair stylist."

One last thing, no one in the movie is really playing an antagonist. It's more about the situation you're in and that's the antagonist.

REYNOLDS: Yes and no. I think we each, everybody serves both parts at times.

DIHOVICHNAYA: We have conflicts. Different approaches to the station.

I understand.

REYNOLDS: Greys against browns. *laughter* No, it's not...well, kind of.

Look for more from our Life set visit next week.