Zendaya and Robert Pattinson may lead A24’s new film The Drama, but it’s the couple’s mid-century apartment that is stealing the spotlight. Set inside a Boston brownstone, the home features Noguchi lamps, sculptural furniture, soaring bay windows and a striking white spiral staircase – and it's already been dubbed the ‘dream apartment’ by filmgoers online.
In the film, the actors play an engaged couple, Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson), whose relationship is shaken by a sudden revelation.
According to production designer Zosia Mackenzie, Charlie was imagined as the apartment’s owner. A curator at the fictional Cambridge Art Museum in Boston, his home is meticulously curated, with a Knoll sofa, Josef Albers nesting tables and pieces by Charles Pollock reinforcing its mid-century credentials.
'Charlie is quite ingrained in the local scene, so we wanted it to be both, of course, accurate to the characters and who they are, but also natural, not too perfect,' Zosia told House Beautiful US. 'The artwork was a huge one that we did a deep dive into some local artists in Boston that would make sense that he'd be interested in, and starting to collect.'
Aesthetics aside, it’s hard to imagine how Charlie, a museum curator, and Emma, a literary agent, can afford to live there. In that sense, The Drama joins the canon of implausible film apartments – from You’ve Got Mail to Bridget Jones’s SE1 flat.
But that aspirational quality is part of the draw. Among millennials – and increasingly Gen Z – mid-century modern has become the defining style, and Emma and Charlie’s apartment taps directly into that shift.
Though The Drama isn’t a rom-com, it leans on many of the genre’s familiar tropes. It opens with a charming ‘meet cute’ between Charlie and Emma, followed by quick-fire montages of the couple in their early, happier days.
The apartment, in all its unrealistic glory, is part of that rom-com tradition – but here, it comes with a more unsettling edge.
The longer you look at Charlie and Emma’s apartment, the less perfect it feels. What first appears carefully curated begins to reveal a darker edge: Tristan Unrau’s Shambolic Figure – a crying, melting blob – looms over the fireplace, while Sara Cwynar’s Peony II captures a flower mid-decay.
Like Emma and Charlie, the apartment hints at a quiet unravelling beneath its polished surface.
The film’s production designer Zosia Mackenzie told Elle Decoration that she wanted to give the property a disquieting air. ‘It’s put together, but just maybe something is a tiny bit off,’ she said, referencing the apartment’s mismatched furniture and subtle asymmetrical details.
Once Emma’s revelation is revealed, the apartment takes on a more unsettling tone. A mug printed with a gun appears in the kitchen, while a photo on the fridge reveals a darker edge (no spoilers here).
With this, viewers are left to wonder: is the apartment a reflection of Charlie’s growing unease, or a sign that something darker was always there? The Drama doesn’t offer easy answers.
What it does deliver, however, is one of the year’s most memorable movie apartments – striking not just for its mid-century cool, but for how it mirrors the couple’s slow unravelling. It’s both a millennial dream and a nightmare: a perfectly curated world beginning to slip out of reach.
The Drama Edit
