Joaquin Phoenix couldn't look Nathan Lane in the eyes on set of Beau Is Afraid

Joaquin Phoenix had a hard time keeping it together while working with funny man Nathan Lane on Ari Aster's Beau Is Afraid.

"It’s funny. He and I, Joaquin, we really hit it off, although we have very different sensibilities. He’s very intense, and I am just tense," Lane said during The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. "But he thought I was funny, so every time we did a take he would say, 'I can’t look you directly in the eyes, or I’ll break up.' So just know that in every close-up and in a scene with me, he’s just looking directly at my nose."

In the trailer, Beau decides to push through what appears to be some post-apocalyptic all-out chaos in order to make it to the airport. After being hit by a car, Beau awakes in Roger's (Nathan Lane) house with a monitor attached to his ankle – because he's not allowed to leave.

Written and directed by Ari Aster, Beau Is Afraid is a "decades-spanning surrealist horror film set in an alternate present." Bobby Krlic, composer of Midsommar and Snowpiercer, created the score. Per the trailer, the film looks to be a technicolor nightmare of epic proportions.

The film also stars Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, Kylie Rogers, Armen Nahapetian, Parker Posey, Michael Gandolfini, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Denis Menochet, Hayley Squires, Zoe Lister-Jones, and Richard Kind. This marks Aster's third collaboration with A24, following the immensely popular and intensely disturbing indie horrors Hereditary and Midsommar.

Beau is Afraid, previously titled Disappointment Blvd., will hit theaters in the United States on April 21, 2023. The UK release date for Beau is Afraid is May 19, 2023.