How Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg make their unlikely partnership work

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"We weren't supposed to get along."

Mark Wahlberg is speaking about Peter Berg, his bro and collaborator. The pair, who first teamed on the amped-up Navy SEAL film Lone Survivor (Wahlberg was the titular isolated soldier; Berg wrote, directed and produced), are together once more on Deepwater Horizon, a disaster drama at sea. The blockbuster, which premieres at TIFF on Tuesday, is a real-life story about a British Petroleum rig going kablooey off the shore of Louisiana in 2010.

Berg and Wahlberg had all the partnership prospects of oil and water.

Berg is a brash New York jock. Wahlberg is a former rapper and ripped Calvin Klein underwear model from Boston. Berg's most notable acting role was his portrayal of the cocky Dr. Billy Kronk on 106 episodes of television's Chicago Hope. Wahlberg? He an A-list movie star, whose relationship to television mostly comes by the flat-screen plasma on his private jet and his co-producer credits on hit HBO series such as Entourage and Boardwalk Empire.

For all we know, Berg's a little bit country, and Wahlberg's a little bit rock 'n' roll.

But the pair hit it off on 2013's Lone Survivor.

"We trust each other completely," says Wahlberg, calling from Scotland, where's he's filming the new Transformer movie. "We push each other. We challenge each other."

(They punch each other, too. During a break in the filming of Lone Survivor, they got into a boys-will-be-boys mid-air scrap on Wahlberg's jet, which took a few thousand dollars worth of damage to the interior due to the roughhousing.)

Besides Deepwater Horizon, directed by Berg and starring Wahlberg as the heroic last oil worker on an exploding drilling rig, the director-actor duo have just completed another calamity drama, Patriots Day, about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Going forward, the pair is connected to the action film Mile 22, with Berg directing and Wahlberg toplining.

Walhberg, 45, can't say enough about Berg, 42. "It's one of those great relationships. After our experience on Lone Survivor, I told him that I'd make anything with him."

But while the two men share passions and the same agent – the domineering powerhouse Ari Emanuel, portrayed as the indomitable, insult-flinging Ari Gold on Entourage – there is the matter of a football rivalry.

New Yorker Berg is a diehard Giants fan. Wahlberg watches New England Patriots games in the owner's box, and counts the team's hunky QB Tom Brady as a personal friend. He even arranged for a special advance screening of Deepwater Horizon for the team in Boston a couple of weeks ago.

For those who don't know a gridiron from a waffle griddle, Berg's Giants have defeated Wahlberg's Patriots twice in Super Bowl games. That's a problem.

"We don't see eye to eye on that," says Wahlberg. "It could possibly cause a riff in our relationship."

When Wahlberg says that, I laugh. He doesn't.

Really, it's a problem? Trouble in bromance land? "No, not really," Wahlberg admits after a pause. "Our relationship for me is more important than any of that stuff."

You have to believe him, because it was on Wahlberg's suggestion that Berg ended up directing Deepwater Horizon. "The studio had decided it wanted to go in another direction," says the actor. "I recommended Pete."

In Deepwater Horizon, we see Wahlberg and Kurt Russell as foreman arriving by helicopter on the rig. The atmosphere is tense, with the BP bigwigs on board – one of them excellently played by John Malkovich – wanting to waive safety concerns and get drilling on a project that was weeks behind schedule.

Likewise, the filming of Deepwater Horizon was behind as well. According to a story by the Hollywood Reporter, the project was in deep water indeed, delayed by the lateness of a rewrite by the original director J.C. Chandor. "Creative differences" were cited when it was announced that Berg, who hadn't exactly captained 2012's Battleship to any great victory at sea, would take over as the director on Deepwater Horizon.

Both Berg and Wahlberg are appearing at TIFF, with the Ted and Boogie Nights actor participating in an onstage interview on Tuesday afternoon. Asked about his family burger joint, Wahlburgers, in downtown Toronto, Wahlberg mentions the closeness of the restaurant to that ballpark at Rogers Centre.

"I'd like to make it out to the ball game," he says. "And I want to thank all the fans who stop by Wahlburgers when they catch a Blue Jays game."

As it happens, the Boston Red Sox are in town this weekend. Wahlberg is a big-time Sox fan, but says that if his team doesn't win it this year, he'd be okay if it were the Blue Jays who ended up in first place. "As long as it's not the Yankees. Anybody but the Yankees."

Whoa. Did the New Yorker Berg hear that trash talk? Anybody but the Yankees? Trouble is on the horizon.