Drop Director and Cast on Chemistry, Romance & Trauma Bonding

In Blumhouse’s latest thriller Drop, Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus, The Good Daughter) plays Violet, a single mom still healing from an abusive marriage. Finally ready to dip her toe back into the dating waters, she meets a seemingly nice guy, Henry (Brandon Sklenar; Yellowstone spinoff 1923, It Ends With Us), on a dating app. After weeks of texting, they decide to meet for dinner. But the date goes south when she starts receiving DigiDrop (think AirDrop) messages from an anonymous someone with the handle “Let’s Play.” This mysterious figure threatens to kill her son and sister unless she obeys its terrifying text directives.

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A nightmare scenario born out of our digital age and “always on,” phone-reliant lives, Drop takes it to extremes as someone else in the restaurant turns Violet and Henry’s first date into a life-or-death situation. 

Drop‘s believability lands entirely on the shoulders of who plays Violet and Henry — how much the audience likes them as people and as a potential couple. NBC Insider recently sat down director Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky), Fahy, and Sklenar to talk about how the director’s gut instincts paired these two actors together.

Christopher Landon “trusted my gut” when casting Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar

For his fifth collaboration with Blumhouse, director Christopher Landon said that he was attracted to scribes Jillian Jacob and Chris Roach’s original Drop script for its Hitchcock-like sensibilities and the potential relationship blooming between Violet and Henry. It’s their rapport that really pulls audiences into the story, so when it came time to cast, Landon said he knew who to offer the roles to just based on their bodies of work and his gut — without doing chemistry tests.

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“They’re both very in-demand actors, so this was an offer-only scenario,” he said of selecting Fahy and Sklenar. “I was such a big fan of both of them, and I had met with them both individually and got a sense of who they are as people and artists. I had a pretty good feeling about it and I always have trusted my gut when it comes to casting.”

When both actors agreed to come aboard, Landon said he purposefully had the two hang out as much as possible during pre-production.

“I think that that kind of quality time just allows for a lot of bonding,” he explained. “I wanted them to have a certain kind of rapport off screen, especially because the two characters in the story have been talking for a while. They haven’t met in person yet, but they have been talking, and so I thought they’d still know each other. And that’s what makes them even more nervous when they finally arrive on the first date.”

Fahy and Sklenar on selling audiences that Henry might be the right one

When Violet and Henry finally meet at the fine dining restaurant Palate, located at the top of a high rise in Chicago, there’s some initial awkwardness, but they also have immediate chemistry. In fact, Henry might be a little too good to be true, which keeps the audience — and Violet — on their toes throughout the film. 

Asked how one rides that line of mystery, Sklenar said that building out Henry’s personality was key because in earlier drafts the character “didn’t have much going on,” and that was purposefully remedied. 

“We tried to give him more life and give him more perspective, and also do it in a way where he felt like you could feel his life outside of this date,” Sklenar told NBC Insider. “Really, the audience is learning about both of them the same way anyone would on a first date, so you’re trying to chip away as much as you can to figure out who this human is. We just wanted him to feel as dynamic as he could, while he’s really there to be in service of Violet, right? It’s really Violet’s story and what she’s going through. He’s just trying to hold space for her and figure out what’s going on, and also enjoy himself, because he genuinely likes this woman.”

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One of the most memorable scenes in Drop is when the pair get a chance to just sit and be honest with one another about their complex lives, their traumas, and the mistakes they’ve made. 

“For that scene, we were both looking forward to it because so much of the film is us not actually getting to connect in a real way,” Fahy explained. “To actually show up to work one day and be like, ‘Oh, I get to actually have a connective moment with my scene partner’ was very exciting. And I do think it’s a very, very sweet moment. I think it brings so much to the film. Brandon is so good in it. It’s a really tricky thing especially because Violet shares some real trauma, and so as a man, how do you respond to that?”

Sklenar agreed that was a tricky aspect to the scene: “You don’t want to trauma dump on this woman who’s trying to open up to you,” he joked. “It’s for him to say, ‘Hey, I relate to you,’ but how to do that in a way that’s not like, ‘I’m kind of messed up, too!'”

Drop is now playing exclusively in theaters. Click here for tickets!