Timothy Hutton and Felicity Huffman play divorced parents, who must come together after the murder of their adult son in the new ABC series "American Crime."

Huffman's character still holds a deep animosity toward her ex-husband and wants to stay strictly committed to finding the person who murdered her son. To best replicate the distain on screen, the two actors kept their distance while filming the show.

"It's a dark place to be in," the "Desperate Housewives" alum told E! News. "So it took concentration and it took sort of keeping my eye on the ball. You have to be in a very concentrated place. You can't play at lunch or in between takes or anything like that."

Hutton also kept clear of his TV wife while not in front of the cameras, but their separation wasn't necessarily deliberate.

"The entire time we were doing the show," Hutton said. "We never spoke to one another. It wasn't intentional. We just had to, based on who we were playing, had to kind of stay in our own bubble."

The actors gave such great performances, they had their director Ridley Scott fooled about their relationship off screen.

"The director thought we hated each other!" Huffman said. "At the end of the shoot, he was like, 'Do you guys actually hate each other?'"

"American Crime" airs on Thursdays at 10 p.m. on ABC.