Joseph Gordon-Levitt Is ‘So Happy’ His ‘Good Friend’ Shailene Woodley Agreed to Go to Greece for New Movie (Exclusive)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt was thrilled to work with Shailene Woodley again on their new murder mystery movie.

While speaking with PEOPLE recently about his new Prime Video movie Killer Heat, Gordon-Levitt, 43, says it was “such a pleasure” to reunite with Woodley, 32, on the new film, which releases eight years after the pair costarred in the 2016 thriller biopic Snowden.

“When I called Shae it had been a few years since we’d spoken,” Gordon-Levitt tells PEOPLE of recruiting Woodley for Killer Heat. In Snowden, Gordon-Levitt portrayed title character Edward Snowden, while Woodley played the whistleblower and former CIA contractor’s wife Lindsay Mills.

“You know when you have a real good friend and it’s been awhile, you just fall right back into all the comfort and friendship that you’ve had in the past, that’s how you know it’s a real good friend? That’s just like it was with Shae,” Gordon-Levitt says of reconnecting with Woodley for Killer Heat.

“I was like ‘Hey, want to go to Greece?,’ ” he added. “And I’m so happy it worked out.”

In Killer Heat, Gordon-Levitt portrays a private detective named Nick Bali, who travels to the Greek island Crete to investigate the accidental death of a young man from a rich family on the island. Richard Madden plays both victim Leo Vardakis and his identical twin Elias, while Woodley portrays Elias’ wife Penelope, who hires Nick on the hunch that something suspicious happened to her brother-in-law.

“It’s funny because he is just such a sweetheart,” Gordon-Levitt adds of his other costar in Madden, whose dual performance brings much of the tension at the heart of the movie. “And he’s playing this really diabolical — two guys, and both of them in different ways are pretty damaged, nasty character. And Richard himself is kind of a teddy bear, a real sweetheart.”

Gordon-Levitt, Woodley and Madden shot the film — which is based on author Jo Nesbø’s The Jealousy Man — on location in Greece, to which Gordon-Levitt says he felt “so lucky” to get to work against such beautiful scenery on the island.

“I just consider it such a privilege. I feel so lucky,” he says. “I’ve gotten to go to lots of different places and there are very, very few places I’ve been that were more beautiful than the island of Crete. I’ve never been to Greece before getting to do this movie, and it’s a cliché — the beauty of Greece — but it’s a cliché for a reason. It’s flipping beautiful!”

Killer Heat begins streaming on Prime Video Sept. 26.

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