Tess Dinerstein and Jared Staub have the kind of onscreen chemistry that you cannot manufacture. Sometimes co-stars can be perfectly fine individually, but when they are put together, it feels forced. The dialogue does not flow, the flirting feels rehearsed, and you find yourself wondering why the characters are supposed to care about each other in the first place.
That is not the case with Dinerstein and Staub.
The first time I watched them together in Offside: My Fake Marriage with the Soccer Superstar, their dynamic immediately felt easy, natural, and fun. They knew how to play off each other, but more importantly, they knew how to listen to each other. Their chemistry did not just live in what their characters said—it was in the looks, the reactions, the tiny shifts in expression, and those little moments that make you believe there is a full relationship happening even when the characters are not speaking.
THE VILLA
So, I honestly did not expect to see them paired up in another vertical so quickly. But thank you, CandyJar, for taking that chance with Vow Villa and giving us another opportunity to watch these two share the screen.
In Vow Villa, Dinerstein and Staub play Stella and Nate, two lifelong best friends who could not be more different. Stella has built a quiet, stable life for herself. She has a career, she keeps things low-key, and she is not interested in becoming the center of attention. Nate, meanwhile, has built his entire life around attention. He is a reality-TV fixture with a reputation for chaos, questionable choices, and an image that has made him something of a joke. To the public, Nate is a playboy. A fuckboy. The guy everyone expects to mess up eventually.
And, unfortunately for Nate, his latest reality-TV appearance did not exactly go according to plan.
A NEW SHOW
Now, he has an opportunity to join a new show—but he needs Stella to agree to go with him. Which means Nate has to convince his best friend to step out of the life she has carefully built and into a world she has spent years trying to avoid.
Nate is outgoing, charming, loud, and very much the life of the party. Stella would probably be perfectly happy if no one ever knew her name. She loves Nate, but she does not always understand the lifestyle he has chosen or the version of himself he presents to the world. Tessa may act like she has not been keeping up with his reality-TV antics, but she absolutely has. She knows more than she lets on.
LOVING ONES BESTIE
Part of Stella has been waiting for Nate to remember that she exists outside of his chaotic life. She wants to believe that he is asking her to join him because she matters to him—not because she is convenient, not because he needs someone to save his image, and not because he needs another person to clean up his mess.
And because Stella loves him, she believes she can help him. She thinks she can be his rock. She thinks that if she is there, she can keep him grounded, help him navigate the pressure of the show, and maybe even help him prove that he is more than the shallow image everyone sees.
But, as always, nothing goes according to plan.
SHINE
And thankfully, that is where Vow Villa gives Dinerstein and Staub the space to shine. We already know they can handle dramatic material. They both know how to play yearning, tension, hurt, and romantic uncertainty. But Vow Villa also lets them lean into comedy, and it is genuinely one of the show’s biggest strengths. Their comedic timing works because their connection feels so lived-in. They can make a ridiculous situation funny, but they can also make a small look between friends feel loaded with history.
The reality-TV setting is a smart choice, too. We are fascinated by reality television because it gives us chaos, competition, romance, jealousy, betrayal, and people making decisions we would never make—but cannot stop watching. Still, the premise alone is not enough. A show like Vow Villa needs a strong script, a clear angle, and characters compelling enough to make us care about what happens after the cameras stop rolling.
This drama has all of that.
SURPRISES
The surprises inside the show-within-the-show are entertaining, but the reason to keep watching is the cast—especially Dinerstein, Staub, and Olivia Rose Williams. They understand the tone. They know when to make us laugh, when to lean into the ridiculousness, and when to slow everything down long enough for the emotion to land.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: a great actor can make a weak script feel watchable. A bad performance can make a strong script feel impossible to finish. But when a project has a genuinely fun script, a cast that understands the material, and actors who know how to elevate every scene? That is when a vertical drama really works.
Vow Villa works.
And a huge part of that is Tess Dinerstein.
A TROPE
I am always going to be here for a best-friends-to-lovers story. It is one of those tropes that can completely wreck me when it is done well, because it is never just about falling in love. It is about realizing that the person who has known you all along might also be the person who sees you most clearly.
Dinerstein makes Stella feel relatable in a way that pulls you in immediately. Stella is not just “the best friend with feelings.” She is someone who has protected herself because she has learned that hoping for too much can hurt. She has feelings she is not sure she is allowed to have. Tessa has watched Nate live this loud, public, messy life while she has built something safer and quieter for herself.
And watching her, you see pieces of yourself.
FEELINGS
You see every time you have developed feelings for someone you were not supposed to fall for. Every time you acted like you were fine with being “just friends” because admitting you wanted more felt too risky. Every time you convinced yourself that someone could never choose you, so it was easier not to ask them to.
Stella and Nate have both developed ways to protect themselves. Stella hides behind stability, boundaries, and the idea that she does not need attention. Nate hides behind the party-boy image, the reality-TV persona, and the belief that nobody expects more from him anyway. They are both afraid of being truly seen, but for very different reasons.
THE THING IS
Vow Villa forces them to confront feelings they did not expect to have—or perhaps feelings they have both been avoiding for a very long time. And through all of the chaos, the jokes, the reality-show nonsense, and the emotional curveballs, they begin to find themselves. More importantly, they begin to redefine what they mean to each other.
A lot of the time, it is easy to look at Jared Staub and assume he is simply the actor with the muscles—the charming leading man who knows how to play the confident athlete, the bad boy, or the guy who walks into a room and immediately knows everyone is looking at him.
But shows like Vow Villa are a reminder that there is much more to Staub than that.
CONFIDENCE
Yes, he has the looks and the confidence. Yes, he knows how to lean into a character’s swagger and make the audience understand why people are drawn to him. But he is also talented, versatile, and clearly willing to have fun with the roles he takes on. Nate could have been played as nothing more than the reality-TV “fuckboy”—a guy who lives for attention, makes bad choices, and expects everyone else to deal with the fallout. Instead, Staub gives him layers.
Nate is still messy. He is still chaotic. He is still very much the kind of man who needs someone to take his phone away before he says something ridiculous on television. But underneath the image he has created for himself, there is someone who is afraid of being truly known.
And that is what makes Nate’s journey work.
STAUB
Staub lets us see that Nate’s loud personality is not the whole story. Like Stella, he has built walls around himself—he has just built his differently. While Stella protects herself by staying quiet, staying grounded, and avoiding the spotlight, Nate protects himself by becoming the person everyone expects him to be. If people already think he is a joke, a player, or someone who does not care, then maybe they cannot hurt him by discovering what he actually wants.
But through Stella, Nate starts to realize that he cannot keep hiding behind that version of himself.
He has to learn that caring for someone means more than showing up when it is convenient. It means protecting them. It means being honest, even when honesty is scary. And it means recognizing that the person who has stood beside you through everything deserves to know that you love them.
REALIZING
That realization does not happen overnight, and it should not. Growth is not instant. People do not wake up one morning and suddenly know how to communicate, trust, or let down the walls they have spent years building. But Nate gets there. He begins to understand that Stella is not simply his best friend or the person he can always count on to fix things for him. She is someone he has to choose, support, and love out loud.
And when he finally starts to understand that? It is one of those moments that makes you sit back and think: okay, maybe he can grow. Maybe he can become better.
SURPRISE
Sometimes people can surprise you.
If we let them.
The show is funny. It is chaotic and dramatic. It is a little ridiculous in the way reality-TV stories should be.
But sometimes, that is exactly what we need.
Sometimes we just need an escape—something that makes us laugh, gives us a couple to root for, and lets us believe that maybe the person who has been there all along could become something more.
Vow Villa gives us exactly that.
