Pod Insights Pop Culture Happy Hour The Drama: Spoiler Episode About this episode The Drama is a dark and twisty comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a storybook 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 nuptials, and their bond. In this spoiler-packed episode, we’re getting into that reveal, and all the surprising drama of the movie.
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0:39 Aisha Harris? The drama is a dark and twisty comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a storybook 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 nuptials and their bond. I'm Aisha Harris, and on this spoiler-packed episode of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're getting into all the surprising drama in the drama.
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2:22 Aisha Harris? Joining me today is Philadelphia Inquirer's arts and entertainment editor and film critic Badhatri Dechoudri. Hello, Badhatri. Hello, hello. And also with us is journalist and host of the movie review podcast Seated, Travell Anderson. Hey, Travell.
2:35 Speaker 05 Hello, beloved.
2:38 Aisha Harris? Hello. Oh, 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
3:22 Aisha Harris? he's now unsure whether or not he truly knows his soon-to-be-wife. And as they put together the final details of their ceremony, he spirals and yeah, so does their entire relationship. The film also stars Mamadou Ache and Alana Hayam as Mike and Rachel, the couple's best man and maid of honor. And the drama is directed by Norwegian filmmaker Christopher Borgli, 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's release. We've had like a day to process this. Let's process this. Travell, I'm gonna start with you.
4:01 Speaker 05 Oh, okay. Listen. Cause there's a lot here, okay? And if you listened to the Friday episode, you know that there's a lot for us to wrestle with, with this movie, right?
4:16 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
4:16 Speaker 05 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 a black character especially. 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 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.
4:56 Speaker 05 But what I expected as that reveal came, the movie doesn't really do anything with for me. It was kind of a letdown 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 Zendaya's character that aren't quite there, which is why I said before that I came for Zendaya, but I kinda stayed for Robert Pattinson.
5:26 Aisha Harris? Yeah, Padadri?
5:27 Speaker 06 Yeah, and it's not just Robert Pattinson who, you know, is having doubts about her, right? Like, like you said, the best friends, they kind of just like, especially Rachel, which is Alana Hayim'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, so she feels 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.
5:58 Aisha Harris? Yeah, can we get into it, please?
6:00 Speaker 06 Yeah, when 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.
6:18 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
6:18 Speaker 06 There is a search party, this child who's locked up, their father comes asking.
6:25 Aisha Harris? Mm hmm.
6:25 Speaker 06 After that child and young little Miss Rachel says, I don't know where this person is.
6:32 Aisha Harris? Mm hmm.
6:33 Speaker 06 Which before I heard what Zendaya's character did, I was like, this is an absolute worst thing someone can ever do.
6:43 Aisha Harris? Mm hmm, yeah.
6:44 Speaker 06 And then to see this person do a one eighty and be like, hey, you are the worst person in the world. When Zendaya's 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-gun activist, right?
7:05 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
7:05 Speaker 06 And I, 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 Zendaya's 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?
7:32 Aisha Harris? 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 them? Whether or not they 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 stereotypes.
8:19 Aisha Harris? In a negative way.
8:21 Speaker 06 Lonely white man.
8:22 Aisha Harris? 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 Zendaya has the capability to do this. And I think you're absolutely correct, Badhatri, in that like, the way Rachel reacts, and also all the other stories that they tell, are stories that actually happened, whereas she's just like, I thought about this.
8:55 Speaker 06 As a fifteen year old.
8:56 Aisha Harris? As a fifteen years old.
8:58 Speaker 06 A child, yeah. As a child.
8:59 Aisha Harris? Yeah, and like fifteen is hard, man. I remember being fifteen 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 Travell, 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 Zendaya really like dig into what that means, what like a black woman or like young black person's rage
9:42 Aisha Harris? 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 Corret. We see that her in flashbacks while Zendaya'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 seeing her getting teased like. Those moments, I really felt for the character and 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
10:26 Speaker 06 Yeah, till we see
10:28 Aisha Harris? Her father.
10:28 Speaker 06 African American father at the wedding.
10:31 Speaker 05 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.
10:55 Aisha Harris? Yeah, military.
10:56 Speaker 05 Yeah, 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.
11:10 Aisha Harris? Yep.
11:10 Speaker 05 Right? And we don't talk about that. It don't come up. Uh, 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 it, 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 unrested with, I should say.
11:39 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
11:40 Speaker 06 I think it's also very interesting and something the film didn't go into is, you know, this confusion that Robert Pattinson has around the American gun culture as a British person who has come into the US for either work or study, whatever. That is very interesting. The cultural differences, like, you know, there's one point where he's trying to build a case in defense of Zendaya. And he says, well, you have a mass shooting here every day. How can children not be affected by that?
12:10 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
12:10 Speaker 06 And I really wish that difference, that cultural difference between owning guns and gun violence was gotten into. It would have been a very different film, but
12:21 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
12:22 Speaker 06 you can see that confusion in him. And I and I wish they got a little bit more into that.
12:27 Aisha Harris? Yeah, again, that is the thing. It's like, you're gonna throw this out there, right? But then what do you do with it? And I mean, I think going back to what you said, Trevel, about how this movie like throws in black characters or blackness, but doesn't really enmesh them. Like, I think this has kind of become a feature of Zendaya's work, and I want to give her grace because she has talked very explicitly about going out for roles that might be written for white women or don't specify the race. And she's talking 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 light-skinned black woman. I recognize
13:09 Aisha Harris? my privilege, and I don't want to be necessarily... The way she's phrased it, it's kind of, people have interpreted it this way. I'm not sure she explicitly has said this, but she's kind of suggested or implied that she doesn't want to take roles that might be meant for black women, characters who are darker than her. She's like, I don't want to wade into that. I think that's great, but there's a difference between, you know, seeing and representation and just like casting versus like intentionally working that into the narrative. And this was an issue 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 in a notoriously white space. We all are
13:52 Aisha Harris? 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.
14:18 Speaker 06 And at fifteen?
14:19 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
14:20 Speaker 06 Yeah, that's all that matters.
14:22 Aisha Harris? 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 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, whoa, she was really mad at that person who almost hit us. Like, I didn't necessarily buy that.
14:52 Speaker 06 And no, and I, 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, if he does that.
15:08 Speaker 05 Near the end of the film, when Robert Pattinson's character cheats? Is that what we're calling it?
15:15 Speaker 06 Yes.
15:16 Speaker 05 Harass?
15:16 Aisha Harris? It depends on your definition of cheating.
15:18 Speaker 05 Right.
15:19 Speaker 06 Goes astray.
15:20 Speaker 05 Goes astray. I'll take it.
15:22 Aisha Harris? With a colleague, no less, which like, that to me is the bigger issue. It's like, this is your colleague, dude.
15:28 Speaker 05 Yeah, who is at the wedding, right? Who comes to the wedding.
15:32 Speaker 06 With her boyfriend.
15:33 Speaker 05 With her boy-
15:34 Aisha Harris? Yeah, that is, um, Misha, right? Who's played by Hayley Betengates. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:40 Speaker 05 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-
16:01 Speaker 06 You're absolutely right.
16:03 Speaker 05 Start that action with that person just felt, hmm, I don't know, it just, something was odd about it to me.
16:12 Speaker 06 And it wasn't it for that. It wasn't, oh, my to-be-wife planned a mass shooting at 15, let me kiss my coworker. I'm like, what is this logic?
16:21 Speaker 05 Exactly.
16:22 Aisha Harris? Well, but I don't think there is logic, right? I'm not defending this by any means, but like, knowing the way men can be, and I, not to bait a broad stroke here, I-
16:33 Speaker 05 Not all men, Aisha, not all men.
16:35 Aisha Harris? Not all men, but people do dumb things when they are spiraling. And I didn't find that necessarily unbelievable, but I can also understand, Travell, your sort of 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, we've already got more than enough things going on here.
17:02 Speaker 05 We got plenty.
17:03 Aisha Harris? 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, we wouldn't get him getting headbutted by Nisha's.
17:14 Speaker 06 And that ending, again, like, I think he should have called 911 and checked himself into a hospital instead of eating a burger at a diner. You know, I think that man has a concussion.
17:27 Aisha Harris? Probably. Again, people are irrational.
17:29 Speaker 06 Yeah, and then when Zendaya joins him and orders whatever, I'm like, no, can you call an ambulance? You know, your husband's not doing very great here.
17:40 Aisha Harris? Yeah, oh, yeah, I guess at that point, they are married because they already had 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. 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, apart 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's the worst thing you've ever done?
18:25 Aisha Harris? But also, but right before they have that, they talk about, Charlie and Emma talk about how they think they saw their wedding DJ outside.
18:33 Speaker 06 Oh, my God, yes.
18:34 Aisha Harris? Smoking heroin, I guess. When that first popped up, I was like, where are we going? What is happening?
18:40 Speaker 06 Yeah, and I was like, what's it to you?
18:43 Aisha Harris? 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.
18:58 Speaker 06 It's never really made clear, yeah.
19:00 Aisha Harris? Yeah, yeah, because 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.
19:20 Speaker 06 And also, this is literally in the shadows of Harvard University, because this film is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So like, I think this whole very rigid lines of this is OK, this is not OK. That was interesting for me, that, you know, this is in, this is so close to Boston, because of course.
19:39 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
19:39 Speaker 06 No shade, though.
19:45 Aisha Harris? I love when we can talk about spoilers, because there was just so much to pick apart.
19:50 Speaker 06 This is so nice. Yeah.
19:51 Speaker 05 Listen, I know the internet will be raging, OK? The internet's gonna be raging, OK?
19:57 Aisha Harris? Yeah, I mean, we're taping this on the Wednesday before. It's already bubbling up. And, you know, we're here for the drama. We're here, to some extent, for the discourse.
20:07 Speaker 05 Yes.
20:10 Aisha Harris? That is our show. Padhatri Dechadri, Trill Anderson, thanks so much for being here.
20:16 Speaker 06 Oh, this was so nice. I feel so much lighter.
20:18 Speaker 05 Yes.
20:21 Aisha Harris? Yes.
20:21 Speaker 05 Thank you, Ayesha.
20:22 Aisha Harris? Yeah, I feel a little cleansed. It's nice. It's nice to get that out there. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Hafsa Fadma, Carly Rubin, and Mike Cassiff, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. Halil Khomeini provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. If you're not already following the show, do that right now. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next time.
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21:08 Speaker 03 This week on the NPR Politics Podcast. The midterm elections are wrapping up, and millions of people have already voted. We're taking one final check of the electoral pulse with a new NPR PBS News Marist Poll. It shows Democrats still poised to make gains, but also with some warning signs for just how many. We'll explain on the NPR Politics Podcast.
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