The Drama: Spoiler Episode

about the latest and greatest in movies, TV, music and more. And if you're a popculture junkie

“who's not following the show yet, you need to fix that right now by following Popculture”

Happy Hour on your favorite podcast app. And now, on to the show. The drama is But Dark and Twistie Comedy, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a story of couple preparing for their upcoming wedding. But just days before the big day, she reveals a horrifying truth about her past self that threatens to undo their nut jewels and their bond. I'm Lisha Harris, and on this spoiler packed episode of MPR's Popculture Happy Hour,

we're getting into all the surprising drama in The Drama.

Join me today. It's Philadelphia and Quires, Arts and Entertainment Editor and Film Critic,

Pediatry D. Chaudry. Hello, Pediatry. Hello, hello. And also with us, it's journalist and host of the movie review podcast, seated. Trayville Anderson, Hagerville. Hello, beloved. Hello, I'm so I was excited for our previous conversation. I'm very excited for this one because we can just get all into it. So yeah, on Friday, we dropped a spoiler-free episode about The Drama with three of us. This time, we are going to get into it. Here's the gist of what goes down. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson,

play Emma and Charlie, a couple who are days away from getting married. A provocative

“question comes up during a casual conversation with friends, which is, "What's the worst thing you've”

ever done?" So Emma's answer is, you know, pretty disturbing. When she was 15, she planned, but did not go through with, that's key here, a mass shooting at her school. Of course, you know, this unsettles Charlie normal, totally normal. To the point where he's now insured, whether or not he truly knows his student to be wife. And as they put together the final details of their ceremony, he spirals in, yeah, so does their entire relationship. The film also stars Mamadoo Ache and Alana

Hiam as Mike and Rachel, the couple's best man and made of honor. The drama is directed by Norwegian filmmaker Christopher Borgley, who previously directed the similarly dark movies, dream scenario, and sick of myself. The drama's in theaters now, and, you know, we are recording this conversation. The Wednesday before the movie is released, we've had like a data process this. Let's process this. Trim out. I'm going to start with you. Oh, oh, hey, let's take a

essential side. Because there's a lot here. Okay. And if you listen to the Friday episode,

you know that there's a lot for us to wrestle with with this movie, right? It is an interesting

“provocation. I think for us as the audience to be like, do you really know your partner?”

Do you know the worst thing that they did? What I will say is, I was surprised at this backstory for her, for black character, especially when we don't see that, right? We'll talk about that. I just found it quite provocative. Like this question of someone going up to the point, and they make a point to go through the steps, right, that she took to find out how close she was to carrying out the shooting. But what I expected as that reveal came, the movie

doesn't really do anything with for me. It was kind of a let down by the time we get to the end of the movie that like we had this really interesting narrative that I thought would have built interesting layers for the day as character that aren't quite there, which is why I said before that I came for the day, but I kind of stayed for Robert Pattinson. Yeah, but I'll try. Yeah, and it's not just Robert Pattinson who, you know, is having doubts about her, right? Like

you said the best friends, they kind of just like especially Rachel, which is Alana Haim's character. And, you know, we come to know that she's had a cousin who's a mass shooting survivor, is a wheelchair user, she thinks very personally about it. And thank God we're in a spoiler episode, because now I can talk about what she says is the worst thing she did, is yeah, can we get it to do it? Yeah, then she was a kid. She takes her friend slash neighbor to this abandoned little spot

in the woods and then there's a cupboard or a closet that happens to be right there and she locks this kid up and runs away home. Yeah. There is a search party, this child who's locked up, their father comes asking after that child and young little Miss Rachel says I don't know where this person is, which before I heard what's in his character did, I was like this is an absolute

worst person in the world been Zandy as character says that, you know, she planned a mass shooting and

it's an interesting arc because she plans it then she doesn't do it and then she becomes like this

“young anti-gone activist, right? Yeah. And I really I think that arc is interesting and I wish”

we had gotten more into that, but I cannot get over Rachel turning around and pointing fingers at Zandy as character, which of course brings us to this, like she is one of the two black characters in this film. She kind of gets, I think, punished or pinned down for like, what is essentially the sins of this country? Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up because for me, there's a way that this movie is clearly trying to comment upon American gun culture and culture

and provoke in a way and ask these questions that, you know, people have been asking for all of eternity, which is like, what is humanity capable of? Like, can anyone kill? Does everyone have it in the, whether or not the act on it is another thing, but like, is that capable? And I think,

“you know, we live in a current state of affairs where we have this idea of what a mass shooter”

will look like and like, you know, this is the rare avenue, the rare piece of American culture where it's like, yeah, white men are stereotyped in a negative way. Lonely white man. Right, in a way that, you know, black people especially black men and black women have been punished and stereotyped and villainized in this country for hundreds of years. And so you have a director

who is turning that on its head and saying, well, first of all, maybe we all have the capability

to do this. Also, maybe someone who looks like Zindaya has the capability to do this. And I think you're absolutely correct by that trait and that like the way Rachel reacts. And also all the other stories that they tell are stories that actually happened where she's just like, I thought about this. As a 15 year old. As a 15 years old. Yeah, yeah, as a child. Yeah. And like 15 is hard. I remember being 15 and having dark thoughts and also like raging out to, you know, the hardest music I

“could find in my bedroom because I was angry at my parents. Like, I remember that. And so I think”

that is such a provocative thing. But Travelle, like you said, it throws that provocation out

there. But then what do we do with that? And I was hoping that when you have a premise as like third

rail as this, as like, don't touch this as this, that this would be a great opportunity to see Zindaya really like dig into what that means, what like a black woman or like young black person's rage or anxiety or depression can look like. And unfortunately, I don't really think we get that here. I do think we get more of it from the younger version of Emma who's played by Jordan Cratt. We see that her in flashbacks while Zindaya's character is sort of telling Charlie, like explaining

what she was going through and seeing her like, you know, trying to film a video with her dad's rifle and like beyond menacing and and seeing her getting teased like those moments I really felt for the character that I understood and and that was where I thought this movie was really at least interested in trying to interrogate what that meant. But like the fact of her gender is kind of like mentioned, but then the fact of her race is like barely mentioned and yeah,

do we see her father, African American father at the wedding? Yeah, I often say that it's interesting to me certain kinds of movies feel like it was written for white people and then they had the opportunity to put a black person in it and so some characters have to be black because she's black, but they don't really contend with the cultural element that would be present in a story like this with a black father who is in the military or a cop or something like that and a young

black girl at the time carrying this out. But then years later both of the main friendships and relationships right in this film are interracial relationships right and we don't talk about that, it don't come up, it is just it's it's odd to me and so in in my head and how that lands on on me as someone who's been doing this for as long as I've been doing and I'm like, oh is this one of those narratives where y'all just changed, you know, the actor that you had in mind,

but it didn't really have anything to do with the story, right, the narrative itself. That was something that felt a little unrestled with, I should say. Yeah, I think it's also very interesting

around the American con culture as a British person who has come into the US for either work or

study, whatever. That is very interesting. The cultural difference is like, you know, there's one point where he's trying to build a case in defense of Sunday and he says, well you have a mass shooting here every day, how can children not be affected by that? Yeah. And I really wish that difference, that cultural difference between owning guns and gun violence was got into it would have been a very different film, but yeah, you can see that confusion in him and I and I wish they got a

little bit more into that. Yeah, again, that is the thing, it's like you're going to throw this out

“there, right, but then what do you do with it? And I mean, I think going back to what you said,”

trade out about how this movie like throws in black characters or blackness, but doesn't

really enmesh them. Like, I think this is kind of become a feature of Sunday's work and I want to give her grace because she has talked very explicitly about going out for rules that might be written for white women or don't specify the race. And you talked about it in a way of framing it as like, well, A, like I should be able to play whatever I want, good for you, go for it, but also she's framed it in a way of like, I also, I'm a lightskin black woman, I recognize my privilege

and I don't want to be necessarily the way she's phrased it. It's kind of people have interpreted this way and not sure to explicitly have said this, but she's kind of suggested or implied that she

doesn't want to take rules that might be meant for black women characters who are darker than

“her. She's like, I don't want to wait into that. I think that's great, but there's a difference”

between, you know, seeing and representation, just like casting versus like intentionally working that into the narrative. And this was initially with challengers, too, which is like, there was like a throwaway line where she references like her little white boys or whatever, but like you have a black woman and a notoriously white space, we all are aware of Serena and Venus Williams and you're not going to engage with that. And so there's such an opportunity here that I think

is really, really missed and also just a connection between who Emma is as a young person versus where she is now and like, yeah, we do see, you know, in the flashback that like what it took was her just being feeling like she belonged, which is a radical thing, right? It's like people just reaching out to her. And then 15? Yeah. Yeah, that's all that matters. That's all that matters. But like,

“at the same time, you have to wonder like, okay, what is she like as a person now? And because”

so much of what we see is like really either internalized or just not there as an adult or we see her through the eyes of Charlie, now he's dreaming up all of the like the worst parts of her, but even the worst parts of her don't really like, I don't know, I don't buy her rate like the moments that are supposed to be like, well, she was really mad at that person almost hit us like, yeah, I didn't necessarily buy that. And one of those instances is like a car not letting them use

the pedestrian crossing when they're supposed to. I mean, I live in New York. Like, you know, that guy doesn't get to come out of the car. Like, yeah, if he does that near the end of the film, when Robert Pattinson's character cheats, is that what we're called when they're like, a raft, it depends on your definition of cheating. Right. Go as a stray. Go as a strength. I'll take it. With a colleague, no less, which like, that to me is the bigger issue. It's like,

this is your colleague, dude. Yeah, who is at the wedding? Right. So the wedding with her boyfriend, with her, yeah, that there's a meat shot, right, who's my daily baton gauge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That piece of the storyline, I don't know, it felt unearned to me. I don't know, maybe the men's are just acting out like that. I do not know. You know, I used to moonlight as a man. My experience was quite different, but you know, his spiraling would take him to that place to absolutely start that action with

that person, just felt, hmm, I don't know. It just, it was odd about it to me. And it wasn't did for that. It wasn't, oh, my, to be wife planned a mass shooting at 15, let me guess my court. I mean, what is this logic? Exactly. I don't think there is logic, right? I'm not defending us by any means, but like knowing the way men can be and I'm not to be a broad stroke here. I'm not on it. I should not all be. But people do dumb things when they are spiraling. And

hesitation because it does feel like just trying to add to what is already a very chaotic situation

in a way that maybe, yes, feels just like putting a hat on a hat, right? It's like, okay,

“we've already got more than enough things going on here. We got plenty. We got plenty. Do we need more?”

But yeah, I think the movie would have been fine without that extra thing. But then, of course, he wouldn't get him getting headbutted by me. That ending. Again, like I think he should have called 911 and checked himself into a hospital instead of eating a burger in here. You know, I think that man has a concussion. Probably. Again, people are irrational. Yeah, I don't

when Zendaya joins in and orders whatever. I'm like, no, can you call an ambulance? You know,

your husband's not doing very great here. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I guess at that point, they aren't married because they already have the ceremony. So now it's just after. Yeah, I will say for all the issues I had with Zendaya and all of that. And also just the fact that she doesn't have any friends other than his friends, which, again, is a choice that is an interesting choice to make to have it. And I feel like I've seen this now play out in so many movies and TV shows where it's like a black woman

has a bunch of friends, most of them are white or all of them. But then they're also like not really

“her friends. And I'm like, what does this mean? I think what this movie is also a part from Zendaya”

is good at sort of conveying is the fact that like it's not just the four of them, these two couples where they go around and talk about, you know, what sort of thing you ever done. But also right before they have that, they talk about Charlie and Emma talk about how they think they saw their wedding DJ outside. Oh my God, smoking heroin, I guess. But that first part of it was like, where are we going? What is happening? Yeah, and I was like, what's it do you? Like,

but that's the thing, right? Because like Rachel overreacts Charlie overreacts to Emma, and then Emma overreacts to, you know, this DJ who they think, I'm assuming it's supposed to be her, although I

can't remember when we see her if it actually turns out to be her. It's never really made clear, yeah.

Yeah, because that she, when they confront her about it later, she denies it. But like, I did think that was like an interesting sort of way of building on this idea of like how everyone's meter

“for like, what is bad and what is good and like, what is the worst thing you can do?”

Everyone has a different take. It's just really fascinating. And also this is literally in the shadows of Harvard University because this film is said in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So like, I think this whole very rigid lines of this is okay, this is not okay. That was interesting for me that, you know, this is in, this is so close to Boston because of course. Yeah. No shade, though. Okay, okay, okay. I love when we can talk about spoilers because there was just so much to

pick apart. This is so nice. Yeah. Listen, I know the internet will be raging. Okay. The internet might be raging. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we're taping this on the Wednesday before that's already bubbling up and, you know, we're here for the drama. We're here to some extent for the discourse. Yes. That is our show. Gadotri, D. Chaudri, Trill Anderson. Thanks so much for being here. Well, this was so nice. I think so much lighter. Yeah. Yeah. I feel a little cleansed. It's nice.

It's nice. I get that out there. This episode is produced by Liz Metsker, House of Bathama, Carly Ribbon, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Readie. Hello, come in. Provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Coach of Happy Hour from NPR. If you're not already following the show, do that right now. I'm Alicia Harris. We'll see you all next time.