Pop Culture Happy Hour - The Drama: Spoiler Episode

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

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.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour, the podcast that keeps you plugged in about the latest and greatest in movies, TV music, and more. And if you're a pop culture junkie who's not following the show yet, you need to fix that right now by following Pop Culture Happy Hour on your favorite podcast app. And now, on to the show. 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 nup. 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. Join me today is Philadelphia Inquirer's Arts and Entertainment Editor and Film Critic, Badatri D. Chaudhry. Hello, Bedatri. Hello,

and also with us is journalist and host of the movie review podcast Seated. Cravel Anderson. Hey, Trevelle. Hello, beloved. 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 feeling. 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 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 Mamadu Aceh and Alana Hayim as Mike and Rachel, the couple's best man and

made of honor. And 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, uh, 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. Trevelle, I'm going to start with you. Oh, okay. Listen. Deep existential 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?

Yeah. 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 don't 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 letdown by the time.

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 kind of stayed for Robert Pattinson. Yeah, Bedatry. 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 a lot of, Lana 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.

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. Yeah. Can we get it to it, please? 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. 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 Zendia's character did, I was like, this is an absolute worst thing someone can ever do. And then to see this person do a 180 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?

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 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. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up because for me there's a way that, 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, 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 Zendaya has the capability to do this. And I think you're absolutely correct, Badatri, 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. As a 15-year-old. As a 15-year. 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 Treveh, 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 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 Corrette. 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 and seeing her getting teased. Like, those moments I really felt for the character and I understood. 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. Yeah, till 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. Yeah, military. Yeah. And a young black girl at the time carrying this out. But then years later, both of the main friendships and relationships, right, right, in this film are interracial relationships.

Yep. Right? And we don't talk about that. It don't come up. It is odd to me. And so in my head and how that lands 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 un wrestled with, I should say. Yeah. 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 U.S. 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 Zendaya. 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 gotten into. It would have been a very different film. But you can see that confusion in him. 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. to what you said, Trevelle, 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 skin 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 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 wait 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 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 at 15? Yeah. 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, oh, she was really mad at that person who almost hit us. Like, I didn't necessarily buy that.

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. Near the end of the film, when Robert Pattinson's character cheats? Is that what we're calling it? Or, like, harassing? It depends on your definition of cheating.

Right. Goes astray. Goes astray. I'll take it. With a colleague, no less. With a colleague. That, to me, is the bigger issue. It's like, this is your colleague, dude.

Yeah, who is at the wedding, right? Who comes to the wedding. Listen. With her boyfriend. With her boy. Yeah. That is Misha, right? Who's played by Haley Beckengates.

Yeah. Yeah. That piece of the storyline, I don't know. It felt unearned to me. I don't know. Maybe the men 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 start that action with that person just felt, I don't know. It just, something was odd about it to me. 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? Exactly. 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 not to be a broad stroke here. Not all men, Aisha, 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 Trevelle, 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'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, we wouldn't get him getting head butted by Nisha's fair.

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 is a concussion. Probably. Again, people are irrational. 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. Yeah, oh, yeah, I guess at that point they are 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, 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 ever done. 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.

Oh, my God. Smoking heroin, I guess. When that first popped in, I was like, where are we going? What is happening? Yeah, and I was like, what's it to you? 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 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 set 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 so close to Boston because, of course. Yeah. No shade, though. I love when we can talk about spoilers because there was just so much to pick a party. This is so nice. Yeah. Listen, I know the Internet will be raging, okay? The Internet is going to be raging, okay?

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. Yes. And that is our show. Bedatri, D. Chaudhry, Trevall Anderson. Thanks so much for being here.

Oh, this was so nice. I feel so much lighter. Yes. Yes. Thank you, Ayesha. Yes. Thank you, Ayesha. Yeah.

I feel a little cleansed. It's nice to get that out there. This episode was produced by Liz Medsker, Hufzavadima, Carly Rubin, and Mike Katzv, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. Halil Kamen 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.