Matt Damon Says His 43-Year Friendship with Casey Affleck Is Based on 'Trust and Love' (Exclusive) (original) (raw)

‘The Instigators’ costars Matt Damon and Casey Affleck “have this 43-year shared history,” Damon tells PEOPLE

Updated on August 9, 2024 02:28PM EDT

Matt Damon and Casey Affleck go way back — over four decades back, in fact.

“We have this 43-year shared history,” Damon, 53, says of Casey, 48, and his brother Ben Affleck in this week’s issue of PEOPLE. “We grew up together.”

The Boston, Mass. natives’ “shared experience and relationship and trust and love,” as Damon puts it, is what makes collaborating on movies like The Instigators (currently in theaters and on Apple TV+ Aug. 9) such a natural process. “There's an underlying understanding of who we are,” he says.

Matt Damon and Casey Affleck. Photo: Courtesy Casey Affleck.

Courtesy Casey Affleck; Alexia Barroso

“In our business, there's a whole language that gets created around trying to protect people's feelings because people's egos are involved,” adds Damon. He and Casey “don't waste any time on diplomacy, which I love.”

Damon stars in the new Doug Liman-directed heist comedy as Rory, a father who teams up with Casey’s ex-con, Cobby, to rob a corrupt politician. “When the heist goes wrong, the two find themselves engulfed in a whirlwind of chaos, pursued not only by police but also by backward bureaucrats and vengeful crime bosses," reads a synopsis. Co-written by Chuck MacLean and Casey, The Instigators costars Hong Chau, Michael Stuhlbarg, Paul Walter Hauser, Alfred Molina and Ron Perlman.

It also takes place in and was filmed in the leading duo’s childhood city. For Casey, The Instigators was a chance to reconnect with roots that included growing up alongside Ben, now 51, and Damon. “Boston has changed a lot,” notes Casey. “It's really not the city that we grew up in.

“On the other hand, it's the place I still feel more at home than anywhere else. So that says something about what a place does to you when you're growing. I’ll forever be connected to this place no matter how much it changes.”

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The Instigators.

Courtesy of Apple TV+

Damon’s memories of pursuing Hollywood dreams alongside the Affleck brothers in the years leading up to the Oscar-winning success of 1997’s Good Will Hunting included not being “afraid to be vulnerable with each other as young men” in Boston.

“Part of being an actor and putting yourself in those positions and getting rejected constantly — knowing that somebody else is living that same life and making those same sacrifices, that shared sense of experience, that's why we would clump up and hang out together and talk about it,” recalls Damon.

The Instigators is now in theaters and begins streaming on Apple TV+ Aug. 9.

Reporting by Jordan Fein