Alana Haim and Mamoudou Athie on Supporting Each Other Through ‘The Drama’

How does one confront the drama behind The Drama?

For the uninitiated, “the drama” in question involves the film’s main character, Emma (played by Zendaya), revealing during a pre-wedding dinner game that she planned a school shooting when she was a teenager but didn’t go through with it. The confession shocks her fiancé, Charlie (Robert Pattinson), and their married friends, Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie). It also put the film in the media storm, as some questioned whether director Kristopher Borgli was being insensitive or irresponsible, given America’s long, unresolved history with gun violence.

For Haim and Athie, there is no confrontation to make.

“I don’t think about it,” Athie said about considering audience expectations and reactions to The Drama. “How do you do anything while thinking about that, I wonder. How do you actually do anything fully? I think that’s focusing on the ego as opposed to what you’re actually doing.”

It’s an impressive sentiment when you consider that the film’s foursome could be a microcosm of the next twenty or so years of Hollywood. Pattinson has carved out a path as one of the industry’s most outré performers, with films ranging from The Batman and Mickey 17 to The Boy and the Heron and The Lighthouse. Zendaya has proven her box office potential in both original works (Challengers) and franchise fare (the upcoming Dune and Spider-Man films). Athie has been making a name for himself in television and film, receiving an Emmy nomination for his role in Cake. And then there is Haim, whose first role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 film Licorice Pizza landed her Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for Best Actress. 

Despite the bevy of accolades and acclaim spread between them, the concept of ego was dispatched with in making The Drama, according to Haim. “We all came together, we all wanted each other to succeed: Zendaya, Rob, me, and Mamoudou. We were all excited to get to the finish line together.”

It’s a far cry from the two couples in the film, fractured by Emma’s disclosure and Rachel’s outraged reaction. Haim plays Rachel with a haughty, indignant air that reads as volatile as the powder keg that Charlie and Emma are trying to tamper down before their nuptials. She relishes the chaos that she can inflict on her former friends’ big day, stalking along the periphery with a glint of menace in her eyes. When Rachel steps up to give her maid-of-honor speech, Haim leaves you on pins and needles as she teeters between annihilation and subterfuge, almost gleeful in the power she wields.  

That tightrope was what drew Haim to the role in the first place. “I read the script, and it was such a page turner,” Haim explains. “There was no relief. It’s just tension, tension, tension, tension. Then, finally, you get to the end, and it’s like you’ve run a mile.”

Haim was especially taken with Rachel and how far the character stepped outside her own comfort zone. “She’s unapologetically blunt,” she says. “I’m just not that person. I feel like I really want everyone to get along and have a good time. And it was very freeing to have the opportunity to just be extremely blunt and not care. Unfortunately, I had to scream at Mamadou, Zendaya, and a little bit at Charlie. Everyone was getting screamed at by me; it was crazy.”

While not exactly screaming, both Haim and Athie’s most fun scene to shoot was the one that formally sets the film’s premise in motion and launches the ongoing discourse: the wedding-dinner tasting. It was also a considerable challenge. The scene was structured “like a play,” with Borgli shooting continuously from start to finish. The foursome didn’t believe that they would actually shoot the scene that way until they all arrived on set the next day. When it was time to shoot, Borgli started from the beginning and kept them going until they worked through the whole scene.

“I literally dug my nails into Mamadou’s thigh and said, ‘Oh, my God, this is not the plan,’” Haim jokes, with Athie quipping, “The plan we decided ourselves.”

The scene required everyone to run the emotional gamut over the course of an hour, which was grueling but satisfying. “We all start out so happy, like the world is our oyster,” Haim explains. “And then within a split second, it turns very quickly. Being able to have that journey, it was insane to act out. We had to go through basically every emotion on the wheel, and we couldn’t have done it unless all of us were in it together. We were all acting our butts off.”

When the scene was wrapped, there was a feeling on set that they had been put through the proverbial ringer. “I felt like we needed merch,” Haim says. “That’s what we needed. We partied every time we said cut. I got my napkin out, I was twisting it in the air, and we were all laughing. But we were all communicating. It was a beautiful collaboration that we all got to do.”

Even through trauma bonding through one of the year’s most grueling scenes to date, or wading through the discourse still to come, the connection that formed between the cast will likely be what matters most to them.

As Haim puts it, “We are all so supportive of each other, and we all just really wanted to make a great movie. I think we achieved that, and we did it together.”

The Drama is currently in theaters from A24.