Aisha Harris (2:50)

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 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 Aceh and Alana Haim 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. Trevel, I'm gonna start with you.

Trevel Anderson (4:14)

Oh, okay, listen. Cause 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?

Aisha Harris (4:28)

Yeah.

Trevel Anderson (4:29)

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 we get to the end of the movie, the 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.

Aisha Harris (5:38)

Yeah, but Audrey.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (5:39)

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 Alana 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 are in a spoiler episode because now I can talk about what she says is the worst thing she did is.

Aisha Harris (6:10)

Yeah, can we get into it, please? Yeah.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (6:13)

When she was a kid, she takes her friend slash neighbor to. 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 Zendaya'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 and 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 Zaleaya'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.

Aisha Harris (7:45)

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 stereotyped in a negative way.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (8:33)

Lonely white men.

Aisha Harris (8:34)

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. 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

Badatri D. Chaudhary (9:07)

this as a 15 year old.

Aisha Harris (9:09)

As a 15 years old child.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (9:11)

Yeah, as a child. Yeah.

Aisha Harris (9:12)

And like, 15 is hard, man. I remember being 15 and having dark thoughts and. And also like raging out to the hardest music I could find in my bedroom. Cause I was angry at my parents. I remember that. And so I think that is such a provocative thing. But Treva, 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 Corette. 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 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.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (10:38)

And until we see her father, African American father, at the wedding.

Trevel Anderson (10:44)

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.

Aisha Harris (11:08)

Yeah, military, yeah.

Trevel Anderson (11:09)

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. Right. And we don't talk about that. It don't come up. It is just. It's 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 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 unwrestled with, I should say.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (11:52)

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 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? 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.

Aisha Harris (12:40)

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, Trevill, 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 wanna 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 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 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 if 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. 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 gonna engage with that. And so there's such an opportunity here that I think is really, really missed. And also just connection between who Emma is as a young person versus where she is now. And, like, 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.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (14:31)

And at 15.

Aisha Harris (14:32)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (14:33)

That's all that matters.

Aisha Harris (14:34)

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 rage. 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.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (15:05)

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

Trevel Anderson (15:21)

end of the film. When Robert Pattinson's character cheats, is that what we're calling it? Or, like, harassing?

Aisha Harris (15:29)

It depends on your definition of cheating.

Trevel Anderson (15:31)

Right.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (15:31)

Goes astray.

Trevel Anderson (15:33)

Goes astray. I'll take it.

Aisha Harris (15:35)

With a colleague, no less. With a colleague. That, to me, is the bigger issue. It's like, this is your colleague dude.

Trevel Anderson (15:41)

Yeah. Who is at the wedding. Right. Who comes to the wedding with her boyfriend.

Aisha Harris (15:46)

With her boyfriend, yeah. That is Misha. Right. Who's played by Hayley Betting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trevel Anderson (15:52)

That piece of the storyline. I don't know. It felt unearned to me. I don't know, maybe the mens 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.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (16:19)

Mm.

Trevel Anderson (16:20)

I don't know. It just. Something was odd about it to me

Badatri D. Chaudhary (16:24)

and it wasn't it for dad. It wasn't. Oh, my to be wife planned a mass shooting at 15. Let me kiss my co worker. I'm like, what is this logic exactly?

Aisha Harris (16:35)

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 not to paint a broad stroke here.

Trevel Anderson (16:45)

Not all men, Aisha. Not all men.

Aisha Harris (16:47)

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 Treyvale, 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.

Trevel Anderson (17:15)

We got plenty.

Aisha Harris (17:16)

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 Misha's stand.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (17:26)

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

Trevel Anderson (17:39)

probably.

Aisha Harris (17:40)

Again, people are irrational.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (17:42)

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.

Aisha Harris (17:52)

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? 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.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (18:45)

Oh, my God.

Aisha Harris (18:46)

Smoking heroin. I guess when that first popped up, I was like, where are we going? What is happening?

Badatri D. Chaudhary (18:53)

Yeah. And I was like, what's it do you like?

Aisha Harris (18:56)

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.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (19:10)

It's never really made clear.

Aisha Harris (19:12)

Yeah, 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 that you can do? And everyone has a different take. It's just really fascinating.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (19:32)

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 in. This is so close to Boston, because, of course.

Aisha Harris (19:51)

Yeah.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (19:52)

No shade, though.

Aisha Harris (19:57)

I love when we can talk about spoilers because there was just so much to pick apart.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (20:02)

This is so nice. Yeah.

Trevel Anderson (20:03)

Listen, I know the Internet will be raging. Okay. The Internet's gonna be raging.

Aisha Harris (20:09)

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. Bidatri D. Chaudhary Trevelle Anderson. Thanks so much for being here.

Badatri D. Chaudhary (20:28)

Oh, this was so nice. I feel so much lighter than John.

Aisha Harris (20:33)

Yes.

Trevel Anderson (20:34)

Thank you, Aisha.

Aisha Harris (20:35)

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 Fatima, Carly Rubin and Mike Katsif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy.

Trevel Anderson (20:47)

Hello.

Aisha Harris (20:47)

Come in. 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 Ayesha Harris. We'll see you all next time. These days it feels like the news changes every hour. Well, NPR has a podcast that does that too. NPR News now brings you a fresh five minute episode every hour of the day with the latest, most important headlines in episodes that are clear, fact based and easy to digest. Listen to NPR News now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.