It took Steve Carell and Tina Fey 15 years to become friends after starring in ‘Date Night’

Sounds like the making of Steve Carell and Tina Fey‘s 2010 movie Date Night was, well, like an awkward date, perhaps a first one.

“Steve Carell and I made a whole movie together without ever breaking through to the other side because we’re both very shy,” Fey told The Hollywood Reporter. “Without anyone to make us talk, he and I would both sit in polite silence. After working with this big group, I feel like Steve and I are actually all-the-way friends now.”

At the premiere of the duo’s new Netflix series, The Four Seasons, Carell agreed. “It only took 15 years for us to become super tight besties,” he told the same outlet.

Not that Date Night, a comedy about a bored couple’s attempt to add some romance into their lives turning into an action-packed night of danger, was bad or anything.

“We had a great time together before, but we are super shy. This is about as gregarious as you will ever see me, right now, in this interview,” the former star of The Office said. “So, the two of us, I think we’re very similar in that we don’t want to bug the other — it’s like, ‘I shouldn’t text her, should I call her? No, she’s got kids, and they’re busy.’ But she was thinking the same thing, and we’re very protective of each other that way, I know she’s got a lot going on. So, yeah, on this one we became buds. It was really fun, she’s the best.”

Back in 2010, the actors were friendly enough in an interview with Entertainment Weekly to imagine what might happen if their iconic characters Liz Lemon of 30 Rock and Michael Scott, the regional manager of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, went on a date.

“Oh, Liz Lemon would f— it up,” Fey said. “Michael Scott would probably be very open, but Liz Lemon would be sour and judgmental and she’d blow it.”

But Carell saw things differently and mentioned one of Lemon’s love interests, Dr. Drew Baird, who was played by Jon Hamm.

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“Blow it? With Michael?” Carell said. “I don’t think there’s any way she would agree to go out with Michael Scott unless she had been tricked into it. I don’t think you go from Jon Hamm to Michael Scott. Michael Scott should be so lucky.”

Their new project, The Four Seasons, depicts three married couples whose tradition of quarterly getaways becomes tricky when one of the couples split. Costarring Colman Domingo, Will Forte, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Marco Calvani, and Erika Henningsen, the series premieres May 1 on Netflix.

Watch the trailer for their reunion above.