[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Prom Pact.]The Disney+ original movie Prom Pact follows high school senior Mandy Yang (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) and her best friend Ben Plunkett (Milo Manheim), during the time of year when everyone their age is waiting for their Promposals and college acceptances. When Mandy’s lifelong dream of going to Harvard falls into limbo while she’s on the waitlist, she decides to pull out all the stops to get herself accepted, getting popular jock Graham Lansing (Blake Draper) caught up in her plan before learning that there’s much more to him than she expected.
During this interview with Collider, co-stars Lee and Draper talked about why they were drawn to this project, finding cast chemistry, shooting the Promposal, singing Imagine Dragons, dancing the prom dress, getting the first kiss right in a rom-com, and how the ending came about.
Collider: When you read this script, what were the things that you most connected with? What stood out to you? Was there like a particular scene you were most excited about getting to do when you read it?
BLAKE DRAPER: What stood out most to me, while I was reading the script, was really just the heart of it. The entire time I was reading through it, I was just smiling. I couldn’t wipe it off my face. I remember that I was giggling a little bit. The first time I read it, I was like, “I have to be in this film. This is going to be fantastic.” The craziest thing to me, when I read the script, and the thing I was most excited to do, but also most terrified to do, was my Promposal. It pays homage to a very classic ‘80s film, which I happen to really, really enjoy. So, to be able to do that on screen was unbelievably amazing. It was terrifying, but I had a lot of fun.
PEYTON ELIZABETH LEE: I was really excited about the project from the very beginning and wanted to be a part of it, especially because the time period that occurs in the movie for the characters was the exact time period that I was in, in my real life. I was in my senior year of high school. I was dealing with college applications and college acceptances, and just the weird feeling that occurs when you’re finishing high school and starting the next chapter of your life, and you have no idea what that looks like, or what it’s gonna be like, or what people you’re gonna bring on that journey with you. I remember reading it and feeling like it very much authentically captured all of those feelings in a really heartfelt way. I was just really wanting to be a part of it.
Blake, to go back to the Promposal, you have to do the whole dance sequence and you have to sing a bit. How long did you work on all that for? Were there a lot of takes that you had to? Peyton, what was it like for you to have to witness all of that happening?
DRAPER: It wasn’t too crazy of a dance. It was pretty fun. I learned the dance two days before I shot it. I was lucky to work with (choreographer) Paul Becker, who’s amazing at what he does. He made my whole time feel great. He helped me out so much. Without him, I wouldn’t have been able to do the dance as I did. That was a wild experience. It was a terrifying idea to have to be that exposed in that way while doing that dance in front of two hundred high school extras in the background. But after the first take, I was like, “Okay, this is so much fun.” I got all the nerves out and just had nothing but fun. It was probably my favorite day of shooting. We did a few takes, but that was more just for the different setups. I had a ball.
LEE: It truly was so much fun to watch. I saw him practicing a little bit before, but the whole experience was actually very overwhelming. I was like, “Oh, my God!”
DRAPER: I tried to keep it somewhat hidden from her, so that her first time seeing it was on set.
LEE: My face in that whole thing is very honest.
DRAPER: It felt pretty real.
LEE: It was very real. And then, he gets down on one knee and I was like, “What am I gonna say?” It was really special.
Peyton, I’m all for a great moment where characters get to sing in a car to a song on the radio. What was it like for you and Milo Manheim to sing the Imagine Dragons song? Did you guys get to pick that song? Was it always just that song?
LEE: It was really fun. That scene is so great because it reminds me so much of my own life. There’s nothing better to me than being in the car with your friends, screaming music. It’s the best. It was really special to have that moment in the film. We did not pick the song. I don’t know what other songs they were choosing from. I’m sure, at some point, there were options, but that was the only song I ever read in the script. I think it was in the first draft that I read. Milo and I did not know that song before and we spent so much time trying to learn the words. We literally sat in Blake’s hotel room for hours, well into the night.
DRAPER: And I did nothing but watch.
LEE: Nothing but watch and video us, and then go, “No, that’s not right. Start over.”
DRAPER: “Let’s do that again, please.”
LEE: It was so much fun to shoot. The only thing that was difficult was that the song wasn’t playing out loud. They gave us these little earbuds, so we were listening to it in our ears. We heard the music, but we couldn’t hear ourselves, and everyone could only hear us screaming words that we didn’t even know that well. It was a little bit of a disaster, but it was so funny. It’s one of my favorite moments in the movie. It was good times.
Blake, I love that your character is the guy that in these kinds of movies, we would normally write off as the jerk jock or the popular player, but he is very much not that, at all. Was it important to you that he really be against that type?
DRAPER: Yeah, for sure. Luckily for me, he was written that way, so I just had to follow what the script said. The character of the jock in a rom-com, everybody can point to one from the past. I would say it’s very integral to the high school rom-com. You should never judge a book by its cover. With someone like Graham, there’s a lot to him. I wanted to make sure that there was dimension to him and he wasn’t just a one-note caricature. Luckily for me, the script was written in a way that allowed me to act that out.
With a movie like this, chemistry is important. How did you guys get to the place where you are now? Did that come naturally?
DRAPER: For me, at least, it was pretty natural from the start. Luckily for me, after I was cast, Peyton reached out to me, immediately. Unfortunately, I took three days to get back to her.
LEE: Why do you keep telling this story? You’re so proud of it.
DRAPER: Until we arrived in Vancouver to shoot, we did nothing but chat and FaceTime. The same was true with Milo. We built a very strong connection, very early on, so as soon as we got into shooting, we were ready to go.
Peyton, one of the most fun aspects of doing a prom movie is that you get to dress up for the prom scenes. What did you think of the pink prom dress and the whole look you had going on?
LEE: It was so much fun. Bonnie [Sutherland], our amazing costume designer, worked very closely together to create the prom look. I really saw the whole thing through, from the sketches to the pieces of fabric to the skeleton of the dress. And then, we picked the colors and the different bedazzles. It was really fun to be a part of that process of bringing that look to life. And then, on the day, to put it on, with the hair and the makeup and everything, it was so much fun. It really enhanced the feeling of that point in the movie because it is so vibrant and exciting, in emotion and feeling. Seeing that manifested in the clothing itself was really special.
What was it like to have to wear that, stand outside on the street, and dance for Milo Manheim?
LEE: Honestly, I winged it. They were like, “Can you dance in this?” And I was like, “Sure! Why not?” On the day, it was a lot of, “Yeah, okay, I can make this work.” There were real people driving by and being like, “What is going on here?,” which was a little bit interesting, but it was super fun. We had a good time.
You guys get to play basketball with a bunch of kids in this. What was that like? Did they bring a bit of chaos to the set?
DRAPER: It was so much fun.
LEE: They were so much better behaved than we are.
DRAPER: They were actually probably the best behaved actors on set. There was no trouble with those kids. It was so fun and so rewarding to be able to work with them. It was such a great thing.
LEE: Blake works with kids.
DRAPER: My family business is martial arts. When I’m not acting, I’m helping out the family business, so I get to work with children.
LEE: He was very natural.
DRAPER: It reminded me of being back home.
LEE: While I was like, “Tiny people!”
Obviously, when you’re doing a rom-com, that first kiss is an important moment. Did you feel a lot of pressure to live up to that, when you were shooting the scene? Did you spend any time talking about how to shoot that?
DRAPER: Peyton and I have zero chemistry, so it took a long time to get it working.
LEE: He’s yucky, honestly.
DRAPER: There was no attraction.
LEE: No. It wasn’t something that we prepped for, other than just getting into that moment and the excitement. It was easy when we were in those fancy outfits and the lighting was very romantic. At that point, we had built this foundation of Mandy and Graham’s relationship, so it was about living in that world we had created.
DRAPER: We had to tone it down because Peyton started crying.
LEE: He kissed me and I cried. No, that’s not at all what happened, but that’s the headline now. No, there was menthol in my eyes.
I actually thought it was really cool, at the end of the movie, when Graham shows up at Harvard, that Mandy is the one that kisses him. That’s a nice moment that she takes charge of. Was that always how that scene was scripted? Was that something that was important to you, Peyton?
LEE: In the script, I think it just said, “They kiss.” I don’t think it was specific, if I remember correctly. It just made sense to me. Throughout their whole romantic relationship, Graham was always taking the lead, asking her to do things and to have dinner at his house. The first time they kiss, he goes in for it first. At the end, it’s Mandy very much deciding that Graham is what she wants. And then, like she does with everything, she goes after it.
Prom Pact is available to stream at Disney+.
