THE DRAMA: INTERIOR DECOR BREAKDOWN
The apartment in The Drama basically broke the internet. Every major interior publication featured it, and it landed almost instantly in Pinterest’s unofficial hall of fame. So what makes this apartment so good? Let’s take a closer look.
As always, I’m going much deeper than the usual “here’s the sofa, here’s the lamp” roundup. If you want the full interior breakdown without the fluff, you’re in the right place.
There are no real plot spoilers here. I’ll just say this: The Drama is a very good demonstration of why it is sometimes better not to think out loud during a conflict. Charlie (Robert Pattinson) learns something pretty horrifying about his fiancée Emma (Zendaya) just days before their wedding. And instead of sitting with it for a minute, he keeps talking. He invents explanations for her, rewrites the story in his head so she looks better to everyone around him, and eventually winds himself up so badly that he does something truly unhinged — and somehow ends up being the one who has to apologize. Anyway.
Let’s talk about their apartment.
The Boston Apartment
In the film, Charlie and Emma live in a historic brownstone in Boston’s South End. The real apartment is a late-Victorian, 19th-century townhome, and the production actually filmed on location rather than building the apartment on a soundstage.
And honestly, the interior looks like a hybrid of The Intern and Imagine Me & You.
Just look at those two movies. It’s as if they got married, and The Drama was their child.
The design is rooted in mid-century modern, one of those styles that has become especially popular with younger generations in big American cities. But this is definitely not pure MCM. It’s eclectic — and that’s where the magic happens.
Let’s look at the furniture.
The Dining Table and the Chairs
The dining table in the living room is the Cross Extension Table by Matthew Hilton. It’s made from solid wood, extends to seat anywhere from six to fourteen people, and has picked up several design awards over the years, including an ELLE Decoration Award for Best Furniture and a Homes & Gardens Classic Design Award.
It’s paired with Cesca Chairs by Marcel Breuer — the same iconic chairs we saw in the townhouse in The Intern, whose interior went viral almost instantly.
The original design dates back to 1928 and has been reinterpreted endlessly ever since: different colors, versions with and without arms, decorative variations, you name it. There are also plenty of Cesca-style dupes at almost every price point.
And look at what happens next. These modern chairs are mixed with vintage Windsor chairs.
You can still find versions like these pretty easily on eBay and Etsy, searching for “ladder-back rush chairs” or “vintage Windsor chairs” — like the one sitting to the left of the fireplace.
That little mix of polished modern design and slightly wonky vintage furniture is exactly what keeps the room from feeling like a showroom.
The wall Art
The painting above the fireplace is Shambolic Figure by artist Tristan Unrau.
To the left is a poster featuring an illustration called Untitled by the famous book illustrator John Gall, whose work is often used as wall art.
And there is a lot more interesting art and decoration throughout the apartment. Charlie is a museum curator, after all, so the walls deserve their own breakdown. I’ll save that for another article.
The Little Things That Make the Room
There are so many little objects in this apartment that immediately catch your eye, so let’s pick out
a few.
On the dining table is the Alessi MP0210 Salt and Pepper Grinder by Ettore Sottsass.
Sottsass designed quite a few kitchen objects in this same spirit — salt and pepper shakers, corkscrews, coffee makers and other everyday things that look much more like small sculptures than kitchenware.
That’s one of my favorite tricks in this apartment: putting something slightly unexpected and sculptural right next to something completely ordinary.
On the other side of the dining table, against the wall, are Charles Pollock Armchairs.
Designed for Knoll in the 1960s, they combine a tubular steel frame with a single piece of leather forming the seat and back. They were produced in several colors and still show up fairly often in American vintage furniture stores.
The Noguchi Lamps
And here we have not one but two lamps by Japanese-American designer Isamu Noguchi.
The pendant is the Akari D Series Pendant Lamp Vin-CH02501. And despite how fancy it looks, it’s actually not outrageously expensive — around $200.
In the corner by the window is the Akari 33N Light Sculpture.
Noguchi is famous for these sculptural lamps made from washi paper, which gives them that wonderfully soft, almost weightless quality.
We actually saw one of his lamps recently in Carrie Bradshaw’s new apartment in And Just Like That…. And the couple in The Drama have several of them.
There’s another one in the bedroom: the Isamu Noguchi Akari Model 2A Ukai Table Lamp.
So yes, if you were wondering what the production designers are using to make this apartment feel warm without covering every surface in stuff: Noguchi lamps are doing a lot of the work.
Gray Bedding, Again
And speaking of the bedroom: notice that the bedding is gray. Again.
I’ve already written about why movie set designers love gray bedding so much and how this particular kind of textile can instantly give a bedroom that slightly sophisticated, slightly melancholy rom-com feeling. You can read that breakdown here.
More Lamps
The apartment is packed with designer lighting. On the living room side table is the Matin Table Lamp by Danish brand HAY, which has become something of a cult favorite among milleniual hipsters.
This version has a blue pleated shade, but the lamp comes in a whole range of bright colors. Some versions even have tiny prints, which are particularly cute. They come in different sizes and have
built-in dimmers.
Then there’s this little dopamine hit: the Snoopy Table Lamp by Achille Castiglioni for FLOS, with its marble base and bright shade.
The lamp is echoed by the color of the poster for Ingmar Bergman’s The Passion of Anna hanging above it.
We already looked at using movie posters as wall decor in my breakdown of the walls in The Holiday. It’s one of those decorating tricks that is incredibly easy to recreate because you can almost always find film posters for sale. And I love the fact that the characters’ home is full of references to other movies while we are, in fact, watching a movie. Very meta.
One More Lamp on the Mantel
There’s another beautiful lamp on the fireplace mantel: the Marset Dipping Portable Rechargeable Lamp.
It’s portable and rechargeable as promised, but honestly, I’m mostly here for that striped, caramel-colored glass. Look at that thing! Even when it’s turned off, it pulls your eye across the room. The glass is hand-blown and painted, which gives the light a soft, warm color when it’s switched on.
It comes with either a graphite or gold-colored base, and the glass itself comes in several color variations. This is exactly the kind of small object that makes an eclectic interior feel collected rather than decorated.
The Unexpected Mass-Market Find
And then, somewhat hilariously, there’s the rocking chair. It looks like something you’d expect to find in a very expensive vintage furniture store, but it’s actually a contemporary mass-market piece.
You can find versions under different names at retailers like Wayfair, Amazon and Bed Bath & Beyond, generally in the $200–$300 range. Try searching for “Wickerix Java Lounge Swivel Rocking Chair.”
The Roman Shades
I’ve written about these curtains quite a few times before. You see this kind of natural, understated window treatment in Last Night, It’s Complicated, and in so many of Nancy Meyers’s interiors that I’m pretty sure the designers of The Drama had her somewhere in the back of their minds.
The easiest way to recreate the look is to search for “natural fine weave roman shades.”
Versions that look very much like the ones in the film are easy to find at West Elm.
And if you liked the little coat hook, that’s the Bamboo Style Coat Hook by M-Y Home.
That’s it for today.
And P.S. — watch the movie for more than just the apartment. There is a lot of visual material in this film. So much, in fact, that this interior breakdown is going to have a sequel.
