How Jessica Chastain helped Andrew Garfield visit his dying mom

Andrew Garfield has opened up about how Jessica Chastain helped him during a personal tragedy.

The Tick, Tick…Boom! actor recently revealed that his Eyes of Tammy Faye costar made arrangements for him to visit his mother just before she died of pancreatic cancer in 2019.

“What was amazing was that [Searchlight Pictures’ David Greenbaum] and Jessica rearranged the schedule last-minute — put filming on hold [in North Carolina] for a few days so that I could go back [to England] and be with my mom for 10 days,” Garfield recalled in a new interview with PEOPLE.

The actor also remembered how another Tammy Faye costar, Vincent D’Onofrio, encouraged him to see his mother during that time. “Because he had his own experience with a loss that he wasn’t able to make it back for, he said, ‘Go. You got to go,'” Garfield recalled. “And I was like, ‘Well, I know I’ve got to go, and thank you.'”

Earlier this week, the Amazing Spider-Man star reflected on his mother’s death in a different context, discussing it with Elmo in a viral Sesame Street clip.

“It’s actually kind of okay to miss somebody,” Garfield told the red Muppet. “It’s kind of a lovely thing to feel, in a way, because it means you really loved somebody when you miss them. When I miss my mom, I remember all of the cuddles I used to get from her, all the hugs I used to get from her, and it makes me feel close to her, in a strange way.”

He continued, “When I miss her, I remember it’s because she made me so happy. So I can celebrate her and I can miss her at the same time.”

Elsewhere in the PEOPLE interview, Garfield reiterated his appreciation for his former onscreen wife, who won the Oscar for Best Actress for playing Tammy Faye Messner in 2022. “We would have deep conversations because we were both getting to know each other as people,” he said. “I’m really very grateful for that time with her because it was the time when my mum was really sick and ultimately passed away.”

The actor also remembered visiting Heritage USA, the defunct theme park founded by his Tammy Faye character, Jim Bakker, and Messner. “It was a beautiful ritual,” he said. “Every Sunday, we would go down there. And it was a combination of trying to commune with the spirit of Jim and Tammy and the place where they set up their temple, in a way, to their god but also to themselves.”

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Garfield and Chastain dove into their research to portray the evangelist couple. “It became a bit of a detective pursuit because there were people, like security guards and people, there who used to work for Jim and Tammy,” he explained. “So we were able to get access to more information, and so it was really funny and it was very deep.”