  The main aim of this work is to explore the possibility that cold dark matter
(CDM) and early dark energy (EDE) can be described by canonical scalar fields
that are coupled at the level of its conservation equations. The formalism
covers dynamical aspects at the background and linear perturbation levels for
an arbitrary coupling function, followed by an example of it. We emphasize the
impact of this model on the Matter Power Spectrum and the Cosmic Microwave
Background (CMB) spectra, with or without direct interaction. Our findings
indicate that the presence of a scalar field can partially counteract the known
effects of the other, opening the possibility to avoid some undesired aspects,
such as the increase in $\Omega_{m}$ that usually is needed in the case of a
purely EDE scalar field scenario, in order to fit the CMB spectra. This opens
up the possibility to analyzing whether the interaction can help to ameliorate
the cosmological tensions.
