Margaret Qualley on her new lesbian sex comedy, Drive-Away Dolls

In the first 10 minutes of Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls, there’s more sex than in the entire Coen brothers’ filmography as a duo. Jamie (Margaret Qualley), a loquacious firecracker, is introduced on-screen giving, and then pausing, cunnilingus when she answers the phone; on the line is Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), a worrywart checking if Jamie’s still joining her at a gay club. When comic complications lead to the duo smuggling a mysterious suitcase that’s pursued by homicidal gangsters and blackmailers, it’s apparent that Drive-Away Dolls is like a raunchy, lesbian Fargo with a love story at its heart.

“I feel like what starts off as comic chemistry develops into romantic chemistry,” says Qualley, 29. “Such as the way in life, right? The guys that I like – my husband [Jack Antonoff], for example, he’s very funny.”

“Back-and-forth banter is important,” says Viswanathan, 28.

“It’s also about being seen,” says Qualley. “Comedy is a way of saying, ‘I see you.’”

Drive-Away Dolls, then, is a comedy, and it certainly has punchy one-liners redolent of The Hudsucker Proxy and Barton Fink. However, Ethan Coen, who directed it without Joel, co-wrote the script with his wife, Tricia Cooke, a woman who evidently steers the Coen-esque tone in new, naughtier directions. While Cooke was an editor on Coen classics such as The Big Lebowski and Miller’s Crossing, Drive-Away Dolls is the first Coen-related feature that pays as much attention to masturbation as to murder. At least, it couldn’t be further from Joel Coen’s own solo debut, 2021’s black-and-white adaptation of Macbeth.

Of course, Drive-Away Dolls wouldn’t work without its star duo, Qualley and Viswanathan, who, aptly, are speaking to me on Valentine’s Day. Qualley’s comic chops were already evident from Poor Things and The Nice Guys, while Viswanathan has steadily been one of Hollywood’s funniest scene-stealers since Blockers. Together, their odd-couple dynamic – bookish Marian hasn’t had sex in four years, Jamie seemingly gets laid whenever she has a spare moment – culminates in a bickering onscreen partnership that ensure the movie’s brisk 84 minutes rush past.

“Geraldine and I…” says Qualley, before covering her face and bursting into hysterics. “I’m blushing! I love Geraldine. She’s an easy gal to fall for.”

“It’s hard not to fall in love with Margaret,” Viswanathan responds. “When you can laugh with someone and feel free, you can also feel comfortable. You have to be willing to make a fool of yourself, and I think that’s conducive to…”

“Intimacy!” says Qualley.

“Yes, intimacy,” says Viswanathan.

If Drive-Away Dolls feels like the kind of film Hollywood rarely makes anymore, it might be because it was written more than two decades ago. A leaked draft of the script has been online for as long as I can remember; compared to the finished product, it’s remarkably similar, just tighter and with a few adjustments (a Chinese character is now Pedro Pascal’s Santos; the title is no longer, to Coen and Cooke’s dismay, Drive-Away Dykes). So much so, the film is set in 1999 and has quips about Al Gore.

“They were telling us about when they tried to make this movie before, and who they were casting,” says Viswanathan. “I was like, ‘That would have been great.’”

“Who was that?” says Qualley.

With Viswanathan not wanting to name names, I refer to an LA Times report from 2007 that claimed Allison Anders was going to direct a version starring Selma Blair and Holly Hunter. Once Viswanathan confirms that’s who she heard, Qualley gasps and marvels that she was originally Hunter and Viswanathan was Blair.

“I see it!” says Qualley.

“It’s so cool,” says Viswanathan.

I mention that, according to internet rumours, it’s actually the other way around: Blair became Qualley, Hunter gave way to Viswanathan.

“Really?!” says Qualley.

“No!” says Viswanathan. “That’s what’s so cool. Initially, Margaret read for Marian, and, in my first read, I was feeling like I was Jamie. It could have gone either way.”

Why the switch?

“I thought I was more like Marian,” says Qualley. “And then I got an email from Ethan saying, ‘I wish you had auditioned for Jamie.’ And I was like, ‘Wish no longer, my friend. I am on it.’”

“I liked Jamie and the southern accent of it all,” says Viswanathan. “But I didn’t think I’d be cast as a southern belle.”

“Comedy is about being seen. It‘s a way of saying, ‘I see you’” – Margaret Qualley

In interviews, Ethan Coen has claimed that Drive-Away Dolls was co-directed by Cooke, just not officially in the credits due to DGA regulations. (Likewise, Joel is credited as the sole director for the Coens’ first 10 films.) Qualley also informs me that the character of Marian was modelled on Cooke. Speaking to Moviemaker, Cooke describes herself as a lesbian, and reveals that she and Ethan, to whom she married in 1993, have a “non-traditional marriage” with separate partners. “We wrote Drive-Away Dykes together many, many years ago as a way for us to spend time together,” says Cooke in that same interview.

Unsurprisingly, Drive-Away Dolls, whether it’s a Dutch angle or an angled dildo, feels like a film written and made purely for pleasure. It helps, too, that the very game supporting cast includes Matt Damon, Beanie Feldstein, and – yes, this isn’t No Country For Old Men – Miley Cyrus. “They told us in the middle of filming that this was a B-movie,” says Viswanathan. “I was like, ‘What, we’re not going to the Oscars?’”

As there are so many sex scenes in Drive-Away Dolls, I ask if there was an intimacy coordinator.

“We had a great intimacy coordinator,” says Viswanathan. “It’s nice to have support in those vulnerable moments.”

“Ethan and Tricia were so respectful, I think we would have been fine either way,” says Qualley. “It was a nice cherry on top of an already delicious sundae.”

I reveal the question is really because I spoke to Claire Denis shortly after she shot Stars at Noon with Qualley; Denis, in utter disgust, learned from me what an intimacy coordinator is, and insisted that Qualley and Joe Alwyn would never dare ask for one.

“She’s a goddamn legend, Claire,” says Qualley, laughing. “But, you know, you don’t need an intimacy coordinator with Claire Denis. You don’t. She’s old-school. She’s doing it her own way.”

Up next for Coen and Cooke is Honey Don’t, the second instalment of what’s been touted as a trilogy of queer B-movies. Qualley will star alongside Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans. “Geraldine started doing a Marvel movie last week, so she’s unavailable,” sighs Qualley. “I play a detective. It’s a lesbian film noir. A different genre, a different feel.”

As for the ultimate message of Drive-Away Dolls – well, there isn’t one, and that’s the point. In a landscape where queer movies often strive to be socially or politically significant, it’s refreshing that Drive-Away Dolls can offer the kind of tossed-off fun that’s typically reserved for straight narratives.

“Marian’s sex scene is important for her character in the story,” says Viswanathan. “It’s less about a larger context. It’s just getting the treatment that straight love stories get as well. There’s not this heaviness. It’s light and pure. This movie is very unimportant in a way that I think is important.”

Drive-Away Dolls is out in UK cinemas on March 15