Why Mark Ruffalo 'Is So Daddy' According to "Hal & Harper" Costars Lili Reinhart and Cooper Raiff (Exclusive) Julia MooreOctober 26, 2025 at 8:00 PM 0 Roy Rochlin/Getty From left: Lili Reinhart, Mark Ruffalo, and Cooper Raiff attend "Hal & Harper" premiere during the 2025 Tribeca Festival at Spring ...
- - Why Mark Ruffalo 'Is So Daddy' According to "Hal & Harper" Costars Lili Reinhart and Cooper Raiff (Exclusive)
Julia MooreOctober 26, 2025 at 8:00 PM
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Roy Rochlin/Getty
From left: Lili Reinhart, Mark Ruffalo, and Cooper Raiff attend "Hal & Harper" premiere during the 2025 Tribeca Festival at Spring Studios on June 08, 2025 -
In Hal & Harper, Mark Ruffalo plays Cooper Raiff and Lili Reinhart's dad, and the stars tell PEOPLE why the actor is 'so daddy'
Reinhart and Raiff — who wrote and directed the series — also spill on their "rare" bond, which the Riverdale alum calls a "karmic brother-sister tie"
New episodes of Hal & Harper premiere Sundays on MUBI
Having Mark Ruffalo play your dad in a project is about as good an experience as it sounds like it'd be.
In Hal & Harper, Ruffalo stars as the unnamed "Dad" to Cooper Raiff and Lili Reinhart, who play his eponymous kids, and Reinhart says that it was "like having your dad around" working with the Task star.
"He's a very light, very spiritual person, and being with him is so — he is just a very, very kind heart, and he's kind to everyone," Raiff, who wrote and directed the series as well, tells PEOPLE during a joint interview with Reinhart, 29.
Ruffalo is "extremely down to earth and it's very freeing to be around him, because he's so lovely," Raiff, 28, says. "He's amazing."
In the series, which premiered at Sundance in January and now drops weekly on MUBI, Ruffalo plays a complicated father figure mourning the loss of his wife. The show explores how that grief impacted his kids, Hal and Harper, through dual timelines, both when they're in elementary school and when they're adults.
"Acting with him and watching him on the monitor, it's a whole different thing," Raiff says of Ruffalo, 57. "And he's so funny and he's so daddy."
Cooper Raiff, Mark Ruffalo and Lili Reinhart in 'Hal & Harper'
Reinhart couldn't agree more. "He's our daddy," the Riverdale star echoes.
Their relationship with the actor was so familial that Reinhart says when Poor Things came out, which earned Ruffalo his fourth Oscar nomination, she was shocked. "I was like, 'Dad!' "
Hal & Harper started as an idea Raiff had of "adults playing kids because the kids grew up too fast, and then I realized that I should explore the adults and their present."
"It became about these two emotionally-stunted adults, and going back to see what time period they were stunted in, and when things started to change, and it all became intertwined in a way that ended up being a show that was two timelines: one of [the siblings] coming together, and then the present, trying to come apart."
Cooper Raiff and Mark Ruffalo in 'Hal & Harper'
Reinhart calls it "the best script [she's] ever read" outright. "I feel so lucky that I got sent this thing, and I think that it was just divine timing, or God, or the universe putting it in my life."
"I just love the grounded realness of Hal & Harper, and that's what I just love as an actor," she says. "So to be able to do that right off of a seven-year show ... I just feel incredibly lucky. I'm so proud of the show and so honored to be surrounded by the people that I did it with."
The pair are, unquestionably, bonded for life after making the show together, and it's a relationship Reinhart knows is "rare," despite having had a similar experience on Riverdale.
"I hope to work with Cooper for the rest of our lives on various things," Reinhart says. "I don't have a brother in real life, but Cooper feels like a spiritual brother to me, and one that I genuinely hope to work with again professionally, but also — Cooper's not going anywhere in my life, ever."
Lili Reinhart, Mark Ruffalo and Cooper Raiff in 'Hal & Harper'
She adds, "It does feel like there is some sort of karmic brother-sister tie that we have."
Raiff is on the same page, and says of his bond with his costar, "Our souls, I think, have been dancing with each other for many lifetimes."
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New episodes of Hal & Harper drop Sundays on MUBI.
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