On paper, a fancy girl’s trip to Croatia sounds like a dream. Who wouldn’t want to spend a weekend sipping Champagne on rooftop terraces overlooking the Adriatic? But for new mom Beth (Leighton Meester) in The Weekend Away, the vacation getaway starts to feel more like a nightmare when her best friend Kate (Christina Wolfe) suddenly goes missing and local police name her as the prime suspect. Even before all that, Beth’s trip hadn’t quite been going as planned. Rather than provide relaxation or respite, her reunion with Kate only seems to highlight everything that’s been keeping her up at night: the constant pressure to be a perfect mom, that year-long dry spell with her husband and the nagging feeling that she may have given up on her career dreams too easily. 

Those conflicted emotions immediately struck a chord with Meester, who gave birth to her second child in September 2020. “When I got the script initially, it was like, ‘This is a 35-year-old woman with a 10-month old baby,’ she tells Tudum. “I thought, ‘That is exactly me at this very moment.’ ”

Best-known for playing Upper East Side legend Blair Waldorf in Gossip Girl, Meester has dabbled in everything from drama (Country Strong) to comedy (Making History), and one very memorable thriller (2011’s The Roommate) over the years. Still, The Weekend Away, directed by Kim Farrant from a script by Sarah Alderson (who also wrote the 2020 novel of the same name), felt like an exciting challenge, allowing her to stretch her acting muscles in new ways. 

“The interrogation scenes were probably the hardest, because there was truly no movement,” Meester says. “I was supposed to be sitting at a table and literally pleading my case, being like, ‘I didn’t do this.’ Only being able to use words and not my body and really relying on myself in that room, just sitting, and the words — that was all I could do. I thought that was really challenging.”

Above all, Meester loved the idea of playing a new mother who gets caught up in a bigger mystery, while also grappling with relatable postpartum struggles. “It adds so much heightened stakes,” she says. “[Beth] has so much riding on getting home to her baby.”

She would know. While filming, Meester spent an entire month away from husband Adam Brody and then-5-year-old daughter Arlo, a separation that made her feel uncomfortably close to Beth’s angst. “I had to be away from my daughter, and I’m never doing that again,” she says. “That was too much time. It was for the best, but it was very emotional, so [those feelings] really rang true to me every day.”

Ivan Šardi/Netflix 

Still, Meester’s attachment to the story didn’t stop there. In the movie, Beth’s anxiety at being away from her child for the first time is heightened by a sense of alienation at being in an uncomfortable situation in an unfamiliar city. After Kate disappears, she’s left without a place to stay and forced to rely on a very creepy vacation rental host for hospitality as her life unravels before her eyes. The police won’t believe her story, she may or may not have been drugged during the previous night’s outing at a club, and, oh yeah, she still doesn’t know what happened to her best friend. That loss of control, the feeling that she can’t really predict the next step, all adds to the general feeling of unease that permeates the thriller. 

“I feel that way a lot,” Meester says. “It’s my hell. I need to know that everyone is on the same page with what the plan is. I think the fantasy of being somewhere new, in this case [the city] Split, this beautiful location where people go for the food and the beaches, makes you feel invincible, and that’s just not the case. There’s a real dark underbelly.”

Unlike her character, Meester was able to keep that darkness within the confines of the scene. The actor stresses that her connection to the material made her extra aware of the need to prioritize her mental health and take steps to make sure she didn’t get stuck in a negative headspace. 

“It comes in small ways,” she explains. “Mostly, having good meals and getting enough sleep and not really trying to last in that headspace. And in other ways, being able to have nice, funny banter, and talking to fellow actors and crewmates makes the set more fun and alive, even when it’s a really emotional scene. That’s really helpful for me, so that I don’t sort of just stay there.”

It helped that the environment on-set was particularly convivial and supportive, she adds, especially for someone juggling a young son on top of a grueling work schedule. “Off-screen, I will say that it was the best place to have a new baby,” Meester says. “Not only was I in Croatia, but people were very supportive of having my baby around, pumping, and feeling mom- and family-friendly and compassionate to that time in my life.”

In many ways, that kind of warm and understanding environment is what Beth lacks in The Weekend Away. Back home, her husband and friends expect her to jump into motherhood headfirst; but she’s also expected to magically set those feelings aside when she’s not with her child. Beth’s inability to flip a switch to transform back into her college self — the person who would absolutely say yes to that second bottle of Champagne and happily stay out all night — is a source of tension between her and Kate right from the beginning, and even explains why Beth becomes a prime suspect in her disappearance. 

“It’s a really interesting dynamic between Kate and Beth,” Meester says. “They’re best friends and they’ve gone on really different paths, almost like, ‘That’s who I could have been.’ [This trip] is a reminder of who Beth once was and what she’s sacrificed, for better or worse, for her relationship and her child.”

Still, does Meester ever wish she could switch off for a wild girl’s trip? (Minus the drama, of course.) “That’s the last thing you wanna do when you have a new baby,” she laughs. “A vacation is not going out. A vacation is laying in bed and getting some sleep.” 

This interview was edited for clarity.

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