The Drama is about a couple, Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson), who discover new things about each other a week before the wedding. They play a drinking game with their friends and fellow couple, Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie).
The game starts off harmlessly enough, but then it asks a very dangerous question, What’s the worst thing you ever did to somebody? Secrets are revealed, and one is so dark that it jeopardizes the relationship before it officially starts. Nobody knows how to navigate this shocking truth, but Charlie’s friends have plenty to say.
Alana Haim (One Battle After Another, Licorice Pizza) and Mamoudou Athie (Elemental, Kinds of Kindness) bring a certain type of humor to the film that the other characters aren’t afforded. Rachel is a passive aggressive, shady bridesmaid who insults Emma with every other breath, which fits well alongside Mike’s more politically correct contempt. The two characters are special in the sense that they can see the proverbial iceberg from miles away but still stay on the Titanic just so they can say, “I told you so.”
The cast of The Drama is small but mighty, and it was the ultimate pleasure to speak with two of its stars. Haim and Athie are a powerhouse duo. The two multi-talented actors have one Grammy nomination and two Emmy nominations between them, and they show no signs of stopping yet.
They took a minute to chat with us about lessons learned throughout their careers, character motivations, and even some Hollywood drama.
Watch the full interview with Alana Haim & Mamoudou Athie below:
The Drama explores how some ideas tend to linger years after we’ve had them. I asked the actors if there were any ideas or themes they found themselves revisiting throughout their careers, whether it be musical or acting.
Haim said, “I had a teacher in high school that said, ‘If you’re nervous, it means you care.’ And I think the thing that I’ve always held on to for my whole career – I mean, you kind of set me up for this. You like alley-ooped me, but anytime I perform with my siblings, or I get the opportunity to be in a movie, I always, especially the first day, like, you get so nervous. And I think the comforting thing that I always go back to is that I had that teacher that said, ‘If you’re nervous, you care.’ And I care so much. And for it, I got to work with incredible people that, you know, I had Mamoudou tell me, like, ‘Why are you nervous?’ Exactly what’s happening right now, but I’m very lucky, but it always stuck with me.”
In the movie, there is an intense dinner scene at the beginning where a big the big reveal happens. I asked the pair, what it was like to prepare for a shot like that, and how do you come down from it afterward.
Athie said, “It’s gonna be a short one for me. You read the script [laughs]. I swear to God.”
Haim shared, “I called Mamoudou the day before we shot that scene, and I was like, ‘Should we go through this?’ Because that scene was a beast of a scene. Like it was, I think it was 20 – 35, minutes. We’re just gonna keep making it longer. But we went through before, and I think that also helped us, you know, fall in love as as a couple, and really solidify our relationship. But it was, I think, if we didn’t do that, we would have been bad.”
Athie added, “But I will say even in the first rehearsal, because it is well-written, it just like lays in your brain in a way that something that’s not thoughtfully written just doesn’t. Like you have to really force it in.”