Despite the lackluster reviews and box office performance of last year’s Drive-Away Dolls, Margaret Qualley is re-teaming with Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke.
As the 2x Golden Globe nominee reunites with the filmmaking couple on Honey Don’t!, she recently teased her role as the titular gay private detective Honey required her “to be a little more suave than I am, more mysterious,” in the upcoming second installment in their lesbian B-movie trilogy.
“I tend to want to diffuse things before they even happen. [Whereas] Honey, she’s like honey — she’s skillful, she’s smooth, she is slipping in and out undetected,” Qualley told i-D, explaining that she had to deny her “natural Scooby-Doo” instincts in bringing the detective role to life.
“No girl needs to be taught how to be a detective,” she added. “Women know what’s happening even when they don’t know what’s happening. I remember in my early twenties, especially, my investigative skills on Instagram were really out of control. It’s a combination of tools, craft, and gut instinct.”
Qualley praised Coen and Cooke, noting that their time collaborating has been “unlike anything else I’ve ever known. They respect and love each other so much. I love the world that they’re living in.”
Geraldine Viswanathan and Margaret Qualley in ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ (2024) (Wilson Webb/Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection)
After the couple revealed that they were making a queer spiritual trilogy that includes both films, Qualley said of the potential third and final installment, “I have not read a script and I haven’t been contacted. But let the record show that if I’m not in [the third film], I will be offended and I will be upset.”
Ahead of Drive-Away Dolls‘ February 2024 release, Deadline exclusively revealed that the trio would next team up for Honey Don’t! at Focus Features. Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans are also set to star. According to i-D, Evans plays a questionable church leader at the center of Honey’s investigation.
