The result is a film that explores the bounds of chosen family with humor and heart, starring a cast that formed a fortuitous kinship of their own. “I had my first in-person meeting with Andrew the morning after the Golden Globes. And I told him, ‘I love the script. I love your other films. But honestly, I think the biggest sign for me to take this is that it’s Bowen playing Chris,’” Gladstone, who now refers to Yang as her “star brother,” tells Vogue.

Gladstone—who earned a historic best-actress win for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon at the Globes last year—says that she’d felt a kind of spiritual connection to her co-star well before agreeing to do the film. The Indigenous actor, who grew up on the Montana reservation of the Blackfeet Nation, knew as a kid that her mother had miscarried only a few months before becoming pregnant with Gladstone. After spending much of her childhood imagining what her brother, named August, would have been like, she was watching Saturday Night Live with her mom when, suddenly, they saw him. “Bowen had joined the cast, and my mom says, like, ‘That’s him!’” Gladstone recalls. “‘That’s who he would have been.’”

Fast forward to 2024, and Gladstone, known for her turns as strong, stoic women in projects like Killers of the Flower Moon, Fancy Dance, and Under the Bridge, was approached by Ahn about playing Lee in The Wedding Banquet. Despite her reservations, which included tackling a comedy and honoring her character’s struggle with IVF, she jumped at the chance to star opposite Yang, who had already signed on to play Angela’s codependent best friend, Chris.

“I had my feelers out anyway for something more lighthearted,” Gladstone says. “Reading this, there was romance and there was comedy, but it was so grounded in such beautiful, important dynamics and situations.” And besides, she says, “I was like, I need to give my mom the gift of doing a film with Bowen Yang. I need her to see her daughter and her son onscreen together.”

If the universe reuniting her with a long-lost brother on set seems a little far-fetched, Gladstone says that every meaningful film she’s made has had “little supernatural signs or touches to them.”