Life can change in a moment, for the better and sometimes for the worst. The way you see others or even yourself can change in a moment as well. This is just one of the many poignant themes explored in Hulu’s new film The Drop. In this case, that moment comes when Lex (Anna Konkle), along with her husband Mani (Jermaine Fowler), are at her ex Mia’s (Aparna Nancherla) Mexican destination wedding to her new partner Peggy (Jennifer LaFleur). It’s here that Lex makes the ultimate “womanhood fail” of dropping a friend’s infant.
The film is director and co-writer Sarah Adina Smith’s (The Midnight Swim) gender-flipped take on the film Force Majeure that opens up a surprising — and ultimately affirming — can of worms about who Lex truly is, as well as how her partner and friends come to see her post, well, drop.
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Joshua Leonard, who both stars in the film and co-wrote it with Smith, explains that it started as a conversation between Smith and her partner, cinematographer Shaheen Seth. “Sarah was obsessed with Force Majeure, this movie about a man who kind of breaks the societal — or are they biological — tenants of manhood by abandoning his family,” Leonard tells PRIDE. “Sarah was really curious about gender-swapping that and going like what? What could a woman do?” she says. “And she asked Shaheen, and she was like, ‘we’ve been together 15 years, is there anything I could do that would make you feel like you married a dud?’ Without skipping a beat, Shaheen said, ‘I don’t know. If you dropped a baby?’ Then we just started talking about what a dumb and maybe amazing premise for a movie.”
As to setting the film at a queer wedding, Leonard explains that it just makes perfect sense for the film to be queer-inclusive. “I think at this point not representing that would feel more like make-believe than representing it. I think that speaks to this community of creatives that we get to be a part of,” he explains. “As a straight white guy, I’m so glad to be included in the group. And really exploring the humanity of all these different kinds of characters and all the complexity, and the fact that the queerness and the sexuality don’t even have to be the fucking point anymore. Like it’s just part of the fabric of the story,” he says.
In the lead-up to the infamous drop, Konckle’s character Lex is actively trying to start a family. But when the baby falls, it forces her to confront the reality that who she is, and what she wants, might not actually be an aspiring mother. “Something I really loved in the script was the idea that...the expectation of women often [is that] you’re just gonna want a baby, that limited thinking...and then in this day and age, it’s also like, well, and you’ll work full time. And you have to be perfect, of course. As all mothers are,” Konkle tells PRIDE. “So I love [how] she begins on that trajectory, and then she drops someone else’s baby, and it drops away. She’s dealing with questioning of like, are the societal expectations and the expectations of myself what I really want?”
That moment also serves as a shocking realization for her husband Mani, who has no question he wants to be a father, but wonders if the woman he loves is actually equipped to be a mother — or if that’s even really her heart’s desire. “His world shatters as soon as that baby is dropped,” Fowler tells PRIDE. “His world was perfect. Leading up to that moment. He didn’t want to go on that vacation. He tolerates her friends because he loves her. And he tolerates a lot, honestly. Unfortunately, that baby had to get dropped for him to figure that out.”
Mani is a fascinating character who flies in the face of toxic masculinity. He’s self-sacrificial, emotionally supportive, and the driving force behind starting their family. It’s a role Fowler was excited to take on. “I’ve always just kind of wanted to do things differently as a father, and as a man. I didn’t want to repeat cycles. So I’ve always felt the same way about the roles I wanted to do. I didn’t want to keep doing the same thing over and over, or things that were expected of me as a black male actor. I didn’t want to do that,” he says. “He’s not the funny guy. He’s just the center of the storm, right? So I was more intrigued to kind of be as still as I could, in this sort of film.”
While their love is tested by the experience, the film doesn’t have a cynical take on love as evidenced by the queer love story at its heart between Mia and Peggy, who are both the parents of the baby and the brides-to-be. However, the themes of change and relearning who your partner is throughout your life together are something that these two are also facing. Unlike Mani and Lex, whose perceptions turn in a moment, Mia is having to contend with a changed partner in a more slow-burn style, following their becoming parents.
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For Mia, motherhood completely shifted her worldview... to the right. It’s something Peggy is trying to understand and take in. “I think it definitely makes Peggy feel nervous and unsettled,” LaFleur tells PRIDE. “I think even beyond how it affects their relationship, Peggy loves Mia, she doesn’t want her to feel this anxiousness or this need to kind of viscerally protect her through, you know, guns and violence. I think Peggy feels very comfortable and confident as a mother. Maybe that’s her background as an OBGYN. She has a lot of experience with babies, she probably came from a very different background. But more than anything, she just wants her wife to feel OK in this world... and that everything’s going to be OK. Because it is.”
Nancherla says she jumped at the chance to play a character as complex as Mia. “That’s what honestly first drew me to the character, just the thought of how can a person fundamentally change in such a one-eighty way,” she tells PRIDE. “What about motherhood sends Mia on this path? And I think that just that theme of like, what do we expect for mothers, what do we expect from ourselves as parents, and I’m not a parent but getting to play with that and explore that as an actor just really hooked me because I had never gotten to do something similar before. Also, Mia is just kind of a wild card, and that felt fun.”
Jillian Bell’s character, Lindsey, owns the property (along with Leonard’s character Josh) where all the action is taking place. It’s a beautiful resort location, but she’s feeling some regret about her life choice — an idea that excited Bell when she first read the script. “I’ve never seen this hippie bohemian couple that secretly doesn’t want to be that couple anymore,” she recalls to PRIDE. “I’ve only seen those people commit hard to ‘this is our lifestyle. This is who we are as people; we don’t touch anything plastic, and, you know, Kumbaya,’ and I love those people. By the way, they’re some of my closest friends, but the idea of seeing them be like, deep down, just secretly want to be in an air-conditioned house drinking a plastic bottle of water. ‘I committed hard to this and now I can’t walk away and go to the mall and buy a bra. I am so deep in that. Now. I don’t even recognize myself anymore. And how do I go back?’”
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Ultimately, the film proposes that change is inevitable, but what matters is how we deal with that in our loved ones and also ourselves. “It does a really good job of exploring how none of us are really the same over the course of our lives, like when we meet as friends in college versus, you know, 15, 20 years later,” says Nancherla. “This movie especially explores the dysfunction that can emerge in relationships and how you navigate that in a way that still puts love at the heart of it.”
