One of the gems of SXSW 2026, Drag announces itself as a very fun little genre picture in the first ten minutes. With a cool premise and plenty of blood, it quickly wins you to its side. Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer craft a fun little debut. Yet with Lucy DeVito and her family back the film. Lizzy Caplan and John Stamos star. Even Patrick Stump contributes to the music. FandomWire was thrilled to talk to Ullman and Yagolnitzer about their feature.
Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer discuss Drag
FANDOMWIRE: We’re really excited to talk to you about Drag because this movie is awesome. I’m always curious how director duos come together, especially when you aren’t related. How did your collaboration start?
Raviv Ullman: Yeah, not the classic brotherhood, no, but it’s become that. We met through our girlfriends. We were both musicians and filmmakers. We both had projects in development and we had been writing projects separately. They were just taking a long time in development, and one day Greg invited me to come jam on some ideas. The idea was to write something that we could just go make ourselves.
Greg Yagolnitzer: One of my friends had just made a micro-budget film during the pandemic, and it was just very inspiring to see someone do it on their own. I was like, We should do that.
Raviv Ullman: So we set out with that in mind. And that became Drag.
FANDOMWIRE: The film has such a contained environment, a small cast, but ideas still feel really big in terms of the emotions. I love that so much about it. What was it like to just kind of trim the fat to make sure everything was as sleek as possible?
Greg Yagolnitzer: It was our main goal, at first, to write the most fun script possible. It was really important to us that it was already kind of high concept, with the thrown out back, so we had to make sure that that premise wasn’t the only thing driving the story. The characters were driving the story. So we worked really hard to make sure that the characters were fully realized, fleshed out.
Raviv Ullman: We’re huge fans of the Coen Brothers, and they have big ideas, but are always driven by characters. Basing it with the two sisters, Lucy DeVito and Lizzy Caplan’s character, made sure that every decision they made was always true to themselves. That drives the story. It always felt truthful. We had to do a big pass on it to say “does it make sense that this person is saying this thing?” That they decide to go upstairs or downstairs. That’s something that person would make, and that makes it feel lived in.
FANDOMWIRE: I also love how emotionally true your screenplay is. In one of the scenes in Act 3, between the sisters, there’s a confession about how they feel about each other. And I just thought there are so many movies that make this very sentimental, and you guys don’t. Tell us about how you approach your screenplay with that brutal honesty.
Greg Yagolnitzer: I mean, we both have siblings, and drew a lot from that.
Raviv Ullman: I think that the most truthful version of any character is always the most complicated. The idea of a straight line for a character, just saying exactly what’s on their mind, exactly how they feel, or being overly sentimental, it’s just not how people talk. It’s not how people react to each other. And most characters end up holding many things at the same time.
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I think that’s very true for our two lead characters, that you know, Lizzy Caplan’s character, some might call her emotionally stunted, some might call her overly brave. And you know, there are so many different versions of what she is and what she thinks of herself. And I think out of that comes like a weird mirror, not only on our characters, but on the viewer.
Greg Yagolnitzer: I think also we’re really proud of the script, but the actors brought so much to the character.
Raviv Ullman: My god, all four actors, Lizzy [Caplan], Lucy [DeVito], John [Stamos], Christine [Ko], just brought a truthfulness and a groundedness to what could otherwise be a crazy, zany, escape-the-night plot. And they made it feel real and heartfelt. They just brought their entire selves to the project.
Greg Yagolnitzer: And then also, there are a lot of big fun swings, but in the test screenings, a lot of the time, the audiences were most responsive to the dynamic between them. The nuance of the sibling relationship, and those we have to give a lot of props to Lizzy and Lucy.
Raviv Ullman: A lot of people said, “I have a sister. That’s exactly what would happen to us.” I hope, not exactly, but I think people see that dynamic and see it as the truth.
FANDOMWIRE: Visually, I found the movie very dynamic. You’re [gesturing to Raviv] coming from theater and TV, while you’ve [gesturing to Greg] have animation in your background. How do you guys infuse some of those ideas into the visuals of the movie? Because it’s far more engaging than you might think a smaller movie like this would be.
Greg Yagolnitzer: Well, we’ve seen a lot of movies that all take place in one house, one location. We made a very conscious effort to make it feel bigger than just a house, so you’re not 30 minutes in and checking your watch. So we really wanted to create a lot of different worlds within the rooms. There’s the “lights off house,” there’s “lights on,” there’s the basement, and all these other areas look very different. We just wanted to make it feel like we’re not just stuck in one house. And then also, I made all of the paintings for the movie that are by “the artist.”
Raviv Ullman: And with Greg’s background in animation, we were also able to storyboard the entire film. We had this time, and we decided that every single frame, we’re going to storyboard. That evolves as we bring on different artists and a cinematographer, and we find the location. But the story has a lot of exciting moments in this multi-floored house, with someone who is immobile. How does that person get from one floor to the next floor? And how do we make that feel like an action movie at times?
FANDOMWIRE: What was it like getting John Stamos to really show himself in a completely different light than anybody’s used to seeing from Uncle Jesse?
Raviv Ullman: Oh, exciting. John was just always down from the very beginning, from the first time we had coffee with him, talking about the script, he had ideas. He wanted to deepen the character. I think because we’re seeing him in a totally new light, it was important to him and to us that he wasn’t playing a surface character. He saw this as an opportunity, both as an actor, as a creator, and as an artist. It’s very different for him, right? He just did it so beautifully, and I think that’s because of the care that he brought to it.
Related: Drag SXSW Review: A Lean, Mean, Twisted Thriller Showcases John Stamos
Greg Yagolnitzer: I think, also, we knew going into it that the script is like pretty out there and absurd. We knew that it would only work if the actors really fully committed. John and all the other actors definitely did that, and across the board,
Raviv Ullman: I cannot wait for audiences to see John Stamos, because, yeah, you’re absolutely right. Never seen before.
FANDOMWIRE: Lucy DeVito is also a producer on the film, and obviously, she brought in her family to also produce. What was it like having the DeVito clan all involved in the movie as much as they were?
Raviv Ullman: The dream.
Greg Yagolnitzer: An absolute dream. Before they got involved, our goal was to have fun making movies with friends. And with their help, we did the most legit version of that while still maintaining that energy. They’re so tight, and they’re so supportive, they really wanted us to make our version of the movie. Never second-guessed us directing it, even though that was our first feature.
Raviv Ullman: They believed in us from the very beginning. They believed in the script, and they also brought great ideas. Jersey Films 2nd Avenue as a company, it’s amazing. It’s the legacy of Danny DeVito and all of the wisdom that he has as producer, actor, yeah, filmmaker extraordinaire, theater maker. He’s done it all, and he is brilliant. The ideas that he brought, in the script, production, and in the edit, made a huge difference to the film.
And there’s this new blood, with his son, Jake, and daughter, Lucy, and their ideas. They’ve grown up in the industry, but also have their own artistry. That merging of those three is still a family. It feels like you’re brought into the family. We feel very fortunate.
FANDOMWIRE: I was so excited to see Patrick Stump as your composer. As a hardcore Fall Out Boy fan, I was just like, whoa! And Patrick’s score is awesome. I know he’s done feature films before and TV shows, but what made you guys consider him as your composer?
Greg Yagolnitzer: I made a bunch of animated shorts for FX a few years ago, Walt, and he scored those for me. He did such a great job. He made these amazing, big orchestral scores, and then I shared them with Raviv and the rest of the team. And they’re said, absolutely, this is what we need.
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Raviv Ullman: One of the things that we did with every department head, every person that came on board, was make sure that we were all seeing the same vision. From the beginning, it was clear that Patrick had the same idea in his head. He said, If you guys make this the way that I see in my head, they were on the same page. It was so fun to work with him. He nails it. I mean, incredible musician, yeah, and also an incredible composer. The music is really out of this world, and it elevates the film to such a huge degree.
FANDOMWIRE: Lizzy Caplan, obviously an incredible actress, is just able to deliver so much dialogue with so much nuance. What was it like working with her on set?
Greg Yagolnitzer: She is one of the greatest comedic actors of all time, and in recent years, we’ve all seen a lot of her dramatic roles. We definitely needed people who could do both, and she just knocked it out of the park.
Raviv Ullman: Lizzy was our first choice. Lucy DeVito was the first person we called when we did a living room reading of it in my home. We literally got our first choice of everyone. And Lizzy, I mean, you say that the nuance that she brought to her dialogue is very present.
One of our favorite scenes, and we’re not gonna get too much away, is when she just has to do a physical maneuver, and we sit on her for like a minute and let her just do it. There’s no dialog, and Patrick’s helping with his score, but she’s just doing her thing. And it’s one of the most moving moments of the film for us, because it’s just Lizzy with a close-up on her face for as long as we could possibly stay there.
Lizzy was down. We shot 21 nights in Albany in the winter. It was cold, it was hard. But those challenges also made it really fun. There are so many crazy things that happen in this movie, and so many things that some people like, “Well, do you have to do this thing? Does this person need to do this thing? Do we need to go that far in this moment?” And Lizzy was like, “Of course, you have to do all that.” That made it clear to us that we’re all making the same thing, and I don’t think this film is possible without that attitude.
FANDOMWIRE: Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. The movie’s awesome, and I’m so excited for other people to see it.
Drag is screening at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival, which runs from March 12 – 18 in Austin, TX.
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