Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer really have become each other's ride or die

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Set us as preferred London — It’s a scorching day and the city feels blanketed by the heat.Even the unusually strong air conditioning in a suite at the Raffles hotel is no match for the temperature.

Octavia Spencer immediately peels off her jacket after entering the room and realizing there are no cameras present for our interview.Hannah Waddingham, her co-star in “Ride or Die,” kicks off her heels as they settle onto a plush sofa.“You’ve seen that we look nice,” Spencer says.

“So now we can do this.”There’s a relaxed, familiar vibe between the actors.They didn’t know each other prior to filming the series, now streaming on Prime Video, but they did develop a real-life friendship during production in Prague last year.

It was perhaps inevitable considering that “Ride or Die,” created by Tessa Coates, is about two best friends whose relationship is upended when one of them is revealed to be a professional assassin.Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer star in a rollicking action comedy series on Prime Video, while Anya Taylor-Joy stars in an adaptation on Apple TV that leans into violence.Spencer, 56, plays Debbie Claybourne, a lawyer whose career has been put on hold due to her British husband David’s political aspirations.The actor was approached by Skydance, now part of Paramount, as part of a development deal with the studio.

She said yes almost immediately, and by happenstance both she and the producers imagined Waddingham, 51, in the role of Judith Burton, a skilled assassin who works for a shady organization run by the Director (Bill Nighy).“It was always just the two of us for these roles,” says Spencer, who won an Oscar in 2012 for “The Help.” “We did a Zoom and I was sitting there thinking, ‘I hope she says yes.’” In “Ride or Die,” Spencer plays Debbie, a lawyer and...