'Love Hard' stars Jimmy O. Yang and Nina Dobrev had a 'real role reversal' while filming their rock-climbing scenes for the movie

• Warning: There are spoilers ahead of the new Netflix holiday rom-com titled "Love Hard."
• Star Jimmy O. Yang (Josh Lin) spoke to Insider about his rock climbing scene with Nina Dobrev.

Jimmy O. Yang said that he and "Love Hard" costar Nina Dobrev had a "real role reversal" while filming their rock-climbing scenes for the new holiday movie.

"I have a fear of heights," Yang, who portrays a small-town guy named Josh in the Netflix film, told Insider in an interview. "My dad always made fun of me. I cried at the Grand Canyon when I was 13 years old, so I don't do well with heights. I never rock climbed ever in my life."

"Love Hard," released on Friday, focused on the unlikely romance that forms when an LA-based writer named Natalie Bauer (Dobrev) falls fast for a guy on a dating app named Josh and flies 3,000 miles to Lake Placid, NY to surprise him for the holidays.

When she arrives, she learns that Josh has been catfishing her and the photos on the app were actually of his former best friend and "standard hot guy" Tag (played by "Never Have I Ever" star Darren Barnet).

Josh then offers to set up Natalie with Tag in exchange for her pretending to be his girlfriend until Christmas.

After Natalie lies and tells Tag that she's a skilled climber, he invites her to go rock climbing - much to her concern since she's terrified of heights. To keep the ruse going, Josh teaches Natalie how to effortlessly scale a climbing wall.

When the group later goes rock climbing, Natalie's able to reach the top and return to the ground thanks to Josh's tips and pep talks.

Yang said that in reality, he and Dobrev are the opposites of their characters when it came to that scene.

To make it look like he knew what he was doing on-screen, Yang attended a few rock climbing lessons with the stunt coordinator present.

"It was pretty nerve-racking," the actor recalled. "Especially when we shot it, the scene where I'm trying to calm her down on the top of the rock climbing wall, I was very scared, but I had to pretend everything was OK and I have to be the one calming her down. Whereas actually Nina is a daredevil and she's very athletic. So she had to pretend she was scared, but she was actually crushing it up that wall."

"It was a real role reversal," Yang said. "It took a lot of, I think, acting for the both of us."