‘Drive-Away Dolls’ actor Beanie Feldstein on Ethan Coen’s new lesbian road trip film
In his first solo directing venture, “Drive-Away Dolls,” Ethan Coen goes where no Coen brothers film has gone before: the lesbian sex comedy.
In his first solo directing venture, “Drive-Away Dolls,” Ethan Coen goes where no Coen brothers film has gone before: the lesbian sex comedy. The noir-inflected road-trip flick comes from a script by Coen and his longtime editor and wife, Tricia Cooke, who have been toying with the idea of making a trilogy of lesbian B-movies for decades. To bring the first of those films to life, the couple enlisted stars Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan to play best friends Jamie and Marian, who find themselves entangled in a bizarre criminal world — and each other — after picking up the wrong rental car en route to Tallahassee, Florida.
“Drive-Away Dolls,” which arrives in theaters Feb. 23, features a stacked supporting cast that includes Coen brothers regulars alongside first-time collaborators such as Pedro Pascal, Colman Domingo, Miley Cyrus and Beanie Feldstein, who delivers a scene-stealing performance as Jamie’s hotheaded cop ex-girlfriend, Sukie.
“I think any actor who identifies as female knew that this movie was coming,” Feldstein told NBC News of the buzz around a Coen project centering on queer female characters. “There was a real energy and a wish to be a part of something like that.”
For Feldstein, whose character spends most of the film cursing her ex and eagerly taking down criminal types, getting the role meant not just being in the first queer Coen film, but also playing one of the most beloved Coen archetypes.
“I can’t even believe I get to be in the lineage of female cop characters that they’ve created over the years. When you think of Ed, you think of Marge, they are burned into your brain because they’re so specific,” Feldstein said, referring to Holly Hunter’s character in “Raising Arizona” and Francis McDormand’s in “Fargo.” “Every Coen, and in this case Coen and Cooke, character has such a specific syntax and timbre.”
Rating: 5