How Kristen Stewart & Steven Yeun Tried To Do Their "Best Human Impression" In Sci-Fi Romance Love Me Revealed By Stars

Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun may be Oscar-nominated actors in real life, but they're only playing at being human in Love Me. The sci-fi romance movie serves as the feature film debut of co-writers and co-directors Sam and Andy Zuchero, and debuted at Sundance Film Festival in January 2024 before finally arriving in theaters a year later thanks to Bleecker Street. The movie follows a water buoy (voiced by Stewart) who, upon connecting with a satellite (voiced by Yeun) in the wide vast nothingness of post-apocalyptic Earth, sets out to imitate human life.

An introspective commentary on the growth of AI and the preponderance of social media life vs. "real" life, Love Me finds Stewart's buoy (dubbed "Me" at the start) twisting itself into various forms to become "Deja," an Instagram and Youtube influencer from many years ago. Me discovers Deja through Yeun's satellite (known as "IAm"), who has been left behind to keep a record of human life on Earth long after it's gone, and immediately hopes to fashion IAm into the perfect romantic counterpart. The facsimile of life as attempted by artificial intelligence collides with the genuine need for connection that humans ascribe to anything sentience, making Love Me a very sincere attempt at understanding love and life.

ScreenRant interviewed Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun about how they approached their tentative connection in Love Me, and both actors had fascinating takes on what it means to be human — even when you very much feel like you're not. Additionally, Stewart revealed which scenes in the movie were her favorite to tackle, and why "Me" may have been her biggest challenge as an actor yet.

Steven Yeun Explains Why His Satellite Is So Against Being A Lifeform At The Start Of Love Me

IAm and Deja approach the remnants of long-lost humanity very differently.

Steven Yeun and Kristen Stewart lying on a bed in Love Me

ScreenRant: Kristen, Me or Deja is quite different from your other roles. What was it like playing against type in such a drastic way?

Kristen Stewart: It was fun. It was defining itself every day. The script is such a diving board, and it's so astute in terms of how it offers itself to you. I hope that the movie does that as well, even though we've kind of peopled it.
But it just felt like anyone could have played that part, and so it felt like such an invitation to [say], "Well, okay, maybe it can be you." You're like, "Well, what does that mean? Who am I?" The whole movie is about trying to figure that out; reckoning with our sameness, our individuality, and finding ways to express that understanding. It changes all the time, really.
Really, in terms of character, I thought it was a nice, open-ended opportunity to allow that to become anything - which is kind of everything. You're kind of playing everyone. You're playing somebody who just wants to be seen.

Me becomes Deja precisely due to its desire to be seen, and so it reflects what it likes best about humanity based on the Instagram feeds and YouTube videos it has scrolled through thanks to its internet connection. While Love Me takes the idea of AI (and even plagiarism) to a humorous illogical extreme, Stewart is right that Me’s search for self-identity is a relatable throughline that doesn’t require knowledge of sci-fi concepts to grasp.

While Me tries countless reinventions of the same formula to best approximate Deja, Yeun’s IAm is much more resistant to imitating a lifeform. It knows who it is from the start of the movie (or as Stewart put it, “He’s really honest.”), but the siren call of connection also convinces him to attempt the influencer couple lifestyle with Deja.

Yeun gave a particularly poetic interpretation of IAm’s journey from acceptance of reality to striving for humanity.

Steven Yeun: I think IAm, at first, is just exhilarated by connection; by just getting to connect with anything. At first, it's fulfilling its function, which is just exciting in and of itself. And then afterward, it's kind of like being the thread's being pulled at, and I think he's starting to reveal himself to himself by this reflection that's just telling him and showing him who he is.
That's the symbiotic nature of relating to anyone.

Kristen Stewart Reveals Her Favorite Love Me Sequence

Nothing beats sitting on the couch with Steven Yeun, repeating the same scene over and over.

Avatars of Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun smile on a couch in Love Me

ScreenRant: You both go through various forms in the movie, whether it's electronic appliances, Sims-style characters, or actual facsimiles of live-action people. Was there a sequence that was your favorite to approach?

Kristen Stewart: At this point, we made [the movie] a long time ago. When I think about the experience, I think about sitting on the couch and doing the same scene over and over and over and over and over. Not to call everyone to the theater for an exciting romcom, but we do the same scene, and it changes every time.
We're trying to do our best human impression, which I don't know about you, but I often feel like I'm trying to do my best human impression.

Yeun gave an enthusiastic “Oh, my God, yes,” in response to his costar, revealing the very essence of Love Me. Though the movie operates on the conceit of a buoy and a satellite falling in love, any two beings who experience a connection – romantic or not – often go through the stages of trying to understand themselves through each other.

People in relationships not only see themselves through each other’s eyes, but they also see that relationship through the eyes of their peers or society at large. That’s what makes the couch sequence so riveting, because many of us have taken different stabs at the same interactions in the hopes of landing better results or reactions. That being said, Stewart promised that, “Once we got off the couch, it did get really exciting.”

The actor also shared another one of her favorite sequences, this time specifically having to do with the liquid of life: water.

Kristen Stewart: Actually, playing with water for the first time; looking at it, feeling it, and then all of a sudden it kind of throws her into a physicality that is something that we can relate to, which is really bodily and not a cartoon. That was so fun. Just the idea of trying ice cream for the first time, or drinking a glass of water; the sort of elation of the simple stuff, the mundanity coming in and reminding you how truly incredible it is to just take a breath. That was fun, to be naive about that.

ScreenRant: I had never thought about the taste of water, but that sequence where Iam going through all these different "flavors"...

Kristen Stewart: Yeah, I know! It's so funny, and he's so serious. He looked so angry the whole time. So intense.

More About Love Me (2025)

Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy (Kristen Stewart) and a satellite (Steven Yeun) inherit the Earth, and with only the internet as their guide, learn what it means to be alive and in love. In this groundbreaking first feature from Sam and Andy Zuchero, Love Me explores AI and identity through live-action, animatronics, and classic animation in an epic tale of connection and transformation.

Check out our other Love Me interview here: