Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein met at a mutual friend’s Bat Mitzvah. It was the mid-2000s, in Los Angeles, and the two struck up the kind of conversation—out in the cocktail area—that walled them off from the rest of the event. “We sort of got in trouble because we like, weren’t really hanging out [with anyone else],” Feldstein recounts.

This was before they each had cell phones, so the pair didn’t connect again until high school, when they reconvened on the first day of ninth grade, as students at Los Angeles’s prestigious Harvard-Westlake School.

“Ben was wearing that shirt with a recycling symbol on it, I’ll never forget,” Feldstein says. “And light gray Urban Outfitters tight jeans,” Platt adds, immediately.

They discovered that Feldstein’s free period was seven—and Platt’s was, too. “And then,” Feldstein says, “it was like, history.”

Just over a decade later, Platt and Feldstein, now both 24, are currently performing in Broadway shows across the street from one another. In June, Platt won the Tony Award for lead actor for his remarkable, nuanced turn in Dear Evan Hansen; he’ll leave the show on November 19. Meanwhile Feldstein—who also has a featured role in Greta Gerwig’s heralded film Lady Bird—is starring in Hello, Dolly!, opposite Bette Midler.

Giving their first joint interview, on an afternoon in early November, Platt and Feldstein almost seem to function as a single person. One of them almost always has a body part placed atop the other. They share quick asides, in shorthand, in the way siblings might (Feldstein casually recalls both of their AIM handles; she whispers at one point that she can’t wait to introduce him to Saoirse Ronan; they praise each other continually with a sweet but affecting earnestness). It’s not so much that they finish each other’s sentences as it is they answer questions as one effervescent, high-octane unit.

Both of them come from show-business families (Feldstein’s older brother is Jonah Hill; Platt’s father is La La Land producer Marc Platt), but neither has a Hollywood “don’t look me in the eye” vibe about them. Since both are on a Broadway show schedule, with their days free, their time spent together recently typically involves “lunch, shopping, [and then] we just sit and watch TV like this”—limbs interwoven—“usually half asleep.”

At seemingly every major moment in their lives, they have found a way to include each other. Prom? They attended together, with Ben asking her via lyrics from Funny Girl. The Tonys? They sat across the aisle from one another; “We felt like it was Ben’s wedding,” Feldstein says. Social media? Not a picture posted by either goes without a like and comment from the other.

“It’s weird that we’re doing an interview together,” Platt says at one point. (“It’s insane!” Feldstein echoes.) “But the individual thing, the way that it’s worked out time-wise has been . . . that’s what’s the most surreal, because each thing has happened one after the other. We can kind of take them in one at a time; it’s been really helpful. I feel better since we get to go through it together.”

“It really is not to be believed,” Feldstein adds. “I can imagine us in high school if we read about a best-friend duo that was on Broadway. We’d be like, ‘We’re obsessed with them!’ We would watch every Broadway.com interview they did.”

After high school, Platt attended Columbia University and Feldstein selected Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut, about two hours away. “Ben was always super, super bright and thrived academically,” Feldstein says. “I had more ups and downs and found myself much more academically in college.”

Platt—who had at this point already appeared in the first Pitch Perfect film (he found out he got the role when he was on vacation with Feldstein’s family, naturally)—left Columbia six weeks in, after getting cast in Book of Mormon. But they were able to keep in touch without much difficulty. “I think it was good because I think we always both knew that, as actors, we were going to be in different projects at different times, and be wherever we were,” Platt said. “So, for her to be essentially ‘on location’ at college, and for me to be in Chicago for Book of Mormon and then New York, then filming in Atlanta or Baton Rouge . . . it just felt like something we were prepared for.”

After graduating Wesleyan as a sociology major, Feldstein kicked off her own acting career, in 2016, with a role in Neighbors 2; but she is poised for a different level of attention thanks to Lady Bird, now in theaters. She plays Julie, the best friend of Ronan’s Lady Bird—a sweet, plucky, theater kid, the sort whom you can talk on the phone with for hours and who is game to tag along on any sort of adventure. On screen, Julie immediately reminds you of seven different people you knew in high school.

“[Lady Bird] is just the best, which everyone’s noticing, which is making me really happy,” Platt says. “Sometimes when something is so warm and strange and small like that, you’re worried that people are not going to get how special it is. But everyone’s totally getting it. It’s amazing.”

Feldstein breaks out into a full-faced grin when recalling her audition with Gerwig (Frances Ha had been an “important movie” for Feldstein, one she had watched countless times). “And I never leave auditions feeling great, but I left and I was like, ‘That’s all I can do,’ and I was skipping out of the audition just because even if I didn’t get it, I knew that I put my best foot forward, which is so rare.”

She bonded quickly with Ronan (Platt and Feldstein had seen Ronan’s Brooklyn together), whom she calls “the Meryl Streep” of her generation, as well as Lucas Hedges, who also stars in the film. During filming, Hedges was staying in a hotel in the Valley by himself; Feldstein invited him out one night to join her, Platt, and a bunch of their high-school friends. He has since “become best friends” with their crew. “Sweet, sweet Lucas Hedges, who we both love so much,” she says. “He’s like a little bird that I feel like I need to take care of. Like we would be on set and I would be eating and he’d be like, ‘What are you eating?’ And I’d actually take it out of my mouth and feed it to him.” (“[Hedges] is an open book emotionally,” Platt says.)

Feldstein is eager to see what sort of awards-season journey awaits Lady Bird. “I think that Laurie [Metcalf], and Greta, and Saoirse are some of the most talented women. I just can’t believe that I get to be in their company, and I worship them and I think they’re extraordinary. And Greta is an immense talent, and I can’t wait to see what she does next. So if all of [the awards discussion] helps people see how incredible they are, they deserve it, you know what I mean?”

Just as Platt can vividly recall his mind-set watching Lady Bird, Feldstein remembers all the times she has seen Platt in Dear Evan Hansen in exact detail. At the Broadway opening, she “was wearing a dress with a collar, and my collar was soaked with tears.” Feldstein continues, recounting the way Platt was celebrated at the Tonys: “It was this feeling of: you think your best friend is the best, and even in high school, we knew Ben was special, like he was a special talent. But it was this moment of realizing that everyone saw him the way that I see him. It was beyond tears.”

The role has catapaulted Platt to a new level of fame, and everyone from Beyoncé to Reese Witherspoon to Zac Efron has ventured backstage to snag a photo with him. “Ben is truly the mayor of the Upper West Side,” Feldstein says. “The Upper West Side is the key Broadway demo, and when we walk to dinner in the Upper West Side, they’re like, ‘BEN!’ It’s just like these Jewish mothers, I love it.”

Platt—who has shouldered an immense physical and mental weight in taking on the role of the depressed high-school senior—is still processing what his time on the show means to him. “That’s the hardest thing. You can come to terms with, ‘It’s going to be so great not to have to come and sing every day and not wear out my voice, and I can have a drink and not curse to the heavens if I don’t get 10 hours of sleep.’ But I mean, it has changed every single aspect of my life. . . . I feel very confident that I’ll get to do lots of projects that I love and this has put me in a position to do things I never dreamed I could do, and to be looked at in a different light and be taken seriously as an actor. It’s incredibly wonderful. You can never really pin down the things that are going to become so culturally pervasive and really make a difference.”

Platt doesn’t seem to mind the intrusion in his daily life too much. “It varies. I try to be as nice as I can [to well-wishers], but there are times when I’m just trying to be with Bean, or be with our other friends, or be in our normal life . . . we’re also both pretty anxious people. I know certainly I am,” he says. “I love that people get moved, and I love to talk to people about the fact that [the show has] affected their lives. I don’t necessarily love when someone’s like, ‘What do I know you from? I’m going to stand here until you help me figure out what I know you from.’”

Platt is at work recording an album (Feldstein, yes, has already heard one of the songs), and recently filmed a guest appearance on the rebooted Will & Grace; the friend his character FaceTimes in his episode is, you’ve got it, played by Feldstein. He’s looking to focus on film and television following this period on Broadway. “That’s the main focus. I have a TV thing I’m not at liberty to discuss, but that’s going to be really great and wonderful, that I’m looking forward to. And I’m trying to find some films to do as well. And then I’m sure I’ll come back to the Broadway soon.”

The two say they lean on each other for business and career-related decisions. Platt explains, “I literally was just having this conversation with Beanie a while ago about these two projects, one of them was a little more of a sure thing but creatively wasn’t maybe the right thing. And then the other one was a really exciting thing that was more of a gamble, but anything like that is . . . we really trust each other.”

Will they ever work together professionally? They definitely want to find a project to collaborate on soon, though they are waiting for the right one. (The list of actors they’d love to work with includes Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Kristen Wiig.)

As they walk out into the streets of New York together in the early evening, about to head uptown for the calls for their Broadway shows, whispering, giggling, a single unit, I think about how Feldstein described watching Platt at the Tonys. “Just for the whole world to see him through my lenses, you know?” she had said, before turning to address him directly. “That’s what’s been so special about watching this year for you: the whole world is your best friend now, and is appreciating you the way I’ve always appreciated you.”