Margaret Qualley explains how Tommy Lee Jones inspired her character in new 'raunchy comedy' film 'Drive-Away Dolls'
Drive-Away Dolls focuses on the budding relationship between two wildly different lesbian friends on a road trip gone awry. The film has a steady stream of A-list cameos, from Pedro Pascal to Matt Damon to Miley Cyrus, but at its heart, it is a tale of self-discovery and romance among its three leading ladies — Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan and Beanie Feldstein.
Qualley, who plays the chaotic but endearing Jamie, told Yahoo Entertainment about her “dream scenario” in which her ideal audience should see Drive-Away Dolls.
“It would be the vibe of one of the scenes in the movie — a bunch of girls in a basement making out,” she said. “That’s our dream.”
The chaotic mischief in Drive-Away Dolls is reminiscent of the telltale Coen brothers flair in movies like Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski, but only one of the siblings worked on this project. Ethan Coen directed the film and wrote the screenplay alongside his wife, Tricia Cooke, who also edited the movie. It’s a breezy 84 minutes long (notable in an age of three-hour epics), unabashedly R-rated and queer.
Coen and Cooke first dreamed up the script two decades ago, and in an interview with the Associated Press, the pair say they hope its spirit will lead to a B-movie revival. The goal was, through bawdy mishaps and pulpy aesthetics, to make the audience feel “glee.”
“I would describe the movie as a screwball, raunchy comedy caper,” co-star Viswanathan, told Yahoo Entertainment.
As the buttoned-up Marion who serves as Jamie’s foil, Viswanathan's character is a woman stuck in a boring routine of hitting the lesbian bar in postwork business casual attire, but scared to break out of it. She embarks on a road trip from Philadelphia to Tallahassee, Fla., to visit a relative, teaming up with her free-spirited friend Jamie, who is fresh off a breakup with her domineering girlfriend Sukie (Feldstein) and in need of a new start.
Set in 1999, the friends take advantage of a “drive-away” program that offers discounted car rentals so long as they can deliver the vehicle to a certain location in a short time. Everything goes wrong, both because the women are distracted by their quest for sex and because they’ve mistakenly been given a car containing a mysterious, highly coveted package. Impulsive stops at lesbian bars, ill-timed sexploits and loads of phallic imagery ensue.
As they encounter hijinks and danger, Jamie’s molasses-coated Southern charm coaxes Marion out of her shell. Part of getting into character for Qualley was mastering Jamie’s thick accent.
“I grew up in the South, so I did a generic Southern thing in my audition,” Qualley, who lived in Asheville, N.C., told Yahoo Entertainment. To perfect the Texas twang, Coen encouraged her to “listen to Tommy Lee Jones interviews.”
As Jamie and Marion take off on an adventure, the scorned Sukie is left in their wake, listed as a reference at the drive-away company and hereby legally responsible for their antics. She responds with rage. Feldstein told Yahoo Entertainment that Coen and Cooke encouraged her to focus on that emotion.
“They said, ‘All you think about is Jamie — getting her or getting her back,’” she said. Sukie is motivated by “revenge” and “romance.”
“I want a prequel of [Sukie and Jamie] when they were dating because the whole idea is so funny to me,” Feldstein said. “They’re both kind of hound dogs in their own way.”
Drive-Away Dolls is in theaters Feb. 23.
