Alana Haim Is *So* Good At Being The Worst In The Drama

Spoilers for The Drama ahead.

The drama in The Drama is much more outrageous than you could ever predict, with the film’s bride Emma (Zendaya) sending her fiancé Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and their friends into a complete spiral thanks to an unsavory revelation from her past.

However, her bridesmaid Rachel is arguably the real villain, simply because she’s the worst — and Alana Haim (yes, from the beloved sisters Haim) might be the film’s true star because of it.

Rachel is petty from the get-go, chastising Emma when she discovers that she considers her fiancé Charlie her “first love” at 28 years old. And Rachel’s low-key responsible for the couple’s wedding turning into the titular drama, as she’s the one who suggests that everyone confess the worst thing they’ve ever done at what was supposed to be a cute little reception menu tasting.

While Emma’s answer sets the movie in motion (no spoilers on this front), Rachel’s response is wild too — she once stranded a teenager with disabilities in an abandoned home, causing a 24-hour search mission that she never took responsibility for. What makes it worse is that she basically laughs it off, showing no remorse and acting like the most annoying girl you dealt with in high school.

As Rachel, Haim is both the film’s much-needed comedic relief and its most irritating character (complimentary), which is a tricky line to navigate. She makes every situation about herself, ignores everyone else’s feelings, and gives the worst bridesmaid’s speech of all time — or the best, depending on how you look at it.

It’s so biting, sarcastic, and duplicitous that it would stop a normal wedding reception in its tracks, but in this case, the tension became pure unhinged comedy. Her eyerolls and groans as she becomes increasingly more wasted would, in the real world, make her the messy wedding guest who gets kicked out, but it ends up being the perfect contrast to the mounting chaos surrounding her.

Even Haim herself thinks Rachel is kind of the worst — and she had so much fun with the characterization because of it. “She's so mean!” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I've never been that person that's so insanely blunt and mean and doesn't care if she's upsetting people. I think that was why it was so fun to play. It was basically the first time I was playing a character that was so not me.”

In fact, she got so caught up in her character’s brazen demeanor that she found herself apologizing to Zendaya on set. “Shooting that scene at the dinner table, we were having the best time,” she recalled. “But it's so hard because right before it ends, I'm screaming at Zendaya. So it'd be like, ‘Cut,’ and then me being like, ‘I'm so sorry!’”

Haim has proven herself to be just as strong of a movie star as she is a musician, earning Golden Globe and BAFTA nods in 2022 for her leading film debut in Licorice Pizza, which was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. The Drama is proof that Haim needs to stay in the acting world a bit longer. Any star who can turn an annoying, self-centered valley girl into a comedic hero should be applauded — and maybe even nominated for an Oscar.