Helen Mirren and Alden Ehrenreich are tackling one of crime fiction's most tangled relationships: the one between an author and her most famous creation. The pair sat down with Polygon for an interview about their new film, A Talent for Murder.

The movie casts Mirren as Patricia Highsmith, the novelist behind The Talented Mr. Ripley and its sequels, while Ehrenreich takes on Tom Ripley himself — the charming, amoral con man Highsmith introduced in 1955 and returned to across five books.

It's a premise that puts creator and character in the same frame, a hook that has drawn plenty of curiosity given how many actors have already left their mark on Ripley, from Alain Delon and Matt Damon to Andrew Scott in Netflix's recent series.

The film comes from Bleecker Street and LD Entertainment. Polygon's full conversation with Mirren and Ehrenreich digs into how the two approached playing a real author and her fictional counterpart.