'The Drop' co-creators Daniela Pagliarello, Aisha Evelyna found 'lightning in a bottle' with award-winning web series
"There's a difference between thinkers and doers and you kind of have to be both if you want to produce your own work," Pagliarello said
Created by Daniela Pagliarello (The Handmaid’s Tale, Luckiest Girl Alive) and Aisha Evelyna (Slo Pitch, Rabbit Hole), the success of the award-winning web series The Drop proves that current and timely stories, that are incredibly entertaining and funny, will prevail. Now Pagliarello and Evelyna are sharing their insight on how The Drop was made during the Future of Film Showcase in Toronto.
"The more we continue to go on with new projects, I think I'm just realizing more and more that The Drop felt like lightning in a bottle in a way, because everybody liked the concept and everybody liked the show," Evelyna told Yahoo Canada. "And it was ripe for the picking because the pandemic was happening and people really related to the material."
Set in Toronto The Drop, which stars Pagliarello and Evelyna, is centred around professional line-waiting. Polly (Evelyna) and Zara (Pagliarello) will do anything to score the next drop, making money from their clients who need these luxury items.
The Drop has this particularly attractive way of using satire throughout the series, which really stems from Pagliarello and Evelyna pulling from elements that exist in their own lives.
"One of the things that Daniela always says is, 'What's funny? What's entertaining?' And I really appreciated working in that way," Evelyna said. "We'd look at our own lives and then kind of go from there."
"For example, Episode 2, ... there was a huge cellular outage in Toronto and no one could pay for their coffee. I remember going outside and I was like, 'Is it the apocalypse?' It's just inherently funny. So I think like we ended up taking things from our own lives, things that we notice in this space, and extrapolating them in a wild way to really amp up the crazy of it, because it is a little bit nuts."
"It lends itself to the story because we're playing Gen Zs who are have nots, really, and hustling, and it's just reflective of our own lives as emerging filmmakers and actors," Pagliarello added.
"We see the wealth gap around us, whether you're an artist or not. Millennials and Gen Zs, we're in a different pool than the Gen X and Boomers are. And to serve them in the show, the people that we are waiting in lines for, it just kind of made sense that it would become a satire about the current state of being a young person in a big city, trying to afford life."
'You have to get out of your own way'
For anyone hoping to get a web series off the ground, like The Drop, Evelyna and Pagliarello both stressed the importance of really putting yourself out there and doing the work. For The Drop, the series creators applied for the Independent Production Fund (IPF) and got development money, even though their initial goal was to do a full half-hour series.
"There's a difference between thinkers and doers and you kind of have to be both if you want to produce your own work," Pagliarello said. "I don't think that there's really a secret. I think it's, go to the people who have been successful doing that and ask them how to do it, and then I guess just put your head down and do the work."
"Maybe advice is just, kind of get over yourself," Evelyna added. "You have to get out of your own way."
"Thinking too much, you can get in your own way. ... It's one step in front of the other. If you just keeping doing the thing, eventually you'll look back and be like, 'Oh I've done a very big thing.'"
While there have recently been several discussions about how Canadian entertainment is have a "renaissance," and Evelyna and Pagliarello see that Toronto is now a "world city," which made Toronto a great setting for The Drop, they both stressed that it's still not easy to work in the volatile industry, from festivals closing to broadcasters having significant layoffs.
"From the creative standpoint, I feel like, yeah, people are kind of like, ... we make things in Canada and it's a vibe, but from the industry standpoint I don't feel like it's a renaissance because people aren't working," Evelyna added.
"But in these kinds of times it's a way to find something new."
