ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to The Drop stars Jennifer Lafleur and Aparna Nancherla about the hilarious Hulu comedy, which is now streaming. The pair spoke about their character’s dynamic and the many aspects of Peggy and Mia’s remote wedding.
“Lex (Anna Konkle) and Mani (Jermaine Fowler) are a happily married young couple, running their dream artisanal bakery in Los Angeles and excited about starting a family together. A trip to a tropical island resort for a friend’s destination wedding, coinciding with Lex’s ovulation cycle, feels like the perfect opportunity to conceive,” says the synopsis. “But good vibes and high hopes are cut short when, shortly after their arrival to paradise, Lex accidentally drops her friend’s baby in front of all their friends. Paradise becomes purgatory for our couple as recriminations, passive-aggression, and old wounds begin to permeate the island reunion and throw Mani and Lex’s future into deep uncertainty.”
Tyler Treese: Jennifer, one of the fun aspects to see play out within The Drop is that we see very two different types of parenting on display. How fun was it to go off each other? Because there’s that great exchange where you’re talking about Mia adding The Joe Rogan Experience to Spotify and you’re like, “Motherhood has really changed you.” That had to be fun to play as the characters are kind of diverging despite being in love.
Jennifer Lafleur: Totally. I mean, we’re there on this trip to get married and yet maybe the most in the history of our relationship, not quite fully aligned. I think for Peggy, especially considering that their baby is dropped and it’s just going to make Mia spiral out even further down this crazy path that she’s starting to go down. I think it’s really important for Peggy to just keep everybody together, keep everybody calm, keep everybody focused, and more than anyone, she’s focused on Mia. This is not Peggy’s friend group. She really only cares about Mia and Ani and everybody else can deal with their crazy stuff. But I’m focused on my wife and my baby for sure.
Aparna, your character is so protective after becoming a mother. What did you find most interesting about that to play with? Because it leads to some great comedy. I was just in stitches when you yell out, “You know what? I’m a libertarian.” That was just such a great line.
Aparna Nancherla: Well, I think what really interested me about the character is just how she basically did a 180 with her own principles after becoming a mother. Like before, she was very diehard liberal. Then she kind of starts verging into more right-wing views and it just really fascinated me, like internally what can make that change in a person and the fact that the incident is the baby being dropped feeds into her increasing paranoia and suspicion about the world being a dangerous and untrustworthy place. So I think just having that permission as a character to be like, “Yeah, I’m right. Like, my paranoia is confirmed and I am allowed to just behave like a[n] unhinged person.”
Jennifer, you have some great interactions with Elisha Henig. In the film, he’s this teenage anti-masturbation advocate. How was it working with him? Because I thought he was like constantly a scene stealer and has such a bright future.
Jennifer Lafleur: Yeah, he was really funny. That scene that we have together where I’m putting the baby down and he comes in to talk to me about some body things of the teenage boy. He was so funny and really natural and great. Your background photo of that rehearsal dinner reminded me of when we were filming. Out of nowhere, all of a sudden, a salamander — like a little lizard — just dropped from the ceiling straight into his hair and was crawling around on his head. I don’t think that we were able to use it for the film because the camera was on the wrong side, so you couldn’t even see it. But it was so funny, and just the way that he took everything in stride was really hilarious. I think you’re right, I think he does have a bright future.
Aparna, I wanted to ask you about the rehearsal dinner scene because it is such a wonderful disaster. What were your favorite memories from just shooting that?
Aparna Nancherla: Yeah, I mean I think it just proved what a great cast it was because everyone was so genuinely nice and hilarious. When you got to do these group scenes, you could just — in addition to being on your character’s journey — just genuinely enjoy watching other people perform. Like Robin [Thede] doing her one-woman show excerpt. I just felt so lucky because I would watch these people on my downtime and I get to do it for work. So this is the best.
Jennifer, I really liked that after all the comedy and mishaps, there’s a real lovely marriage ceremony that you two get to do. How was it exchanging the vows and actually getting to play that one scene straight because it was really nice?
Jennifer Lafleur: Great. I loved that scene. You really see the depth of emotion and love between Mia and Peggy and the actual reason that they are all down there. I just thought it was really lovely. I think Sarah wrote those vows and she said just say them like you’re saying them to your actual spouse in real life. That really helped to tap into the depth of those words and what they actually mean to them. It was beautiful. I mean, it was also the most stunning location that you could imagine. So it was really awesome.
Aparna Nancherla: We shot that scene first. So it was like we started out beautiful and then we kind of spiraled. It was the reverse of the movie.
