Jenna Hunterson is a waitress living in the American South, trapped in an unhappy marriage with her controlling and abusive husband, Earl. She works in Joe's Pie Diner, where her job includes creating inventive pies with unusual titles inspired by her life, such as the "Bad Baby Pie" she invents after her unintended pregnancy is confirmed. Jenna longs to run away from her dismal marriage and is slowly accumulating money to do so. She pins her hopes for escape on a pie contest in a nearby town, which offers a $25,000 grand prize, but her husband won't let her go.
Jenna's only friends are her co-workers, Becky and Dawn, and Joe, the curmudgeonly owner of the diner and several other local businesses, who is a regular customer of Jenna's at the diner and encourages her to begin a new life elsewhere.
Jenna's life changes after she meets her new obstetrician, Jim Pomatter. He has moved to the small town to accommodate his wife, who is completing her residency at the local hospital, and is filling in for the woman who has been Jenna's doctor since childhood. The two are attracted to each other, and over the course of several prenatal appointments the attraction grows. After Dr. Pomatter invites her into the office under a quickly exposed pretext, she impulsively initiates a passionate affair.
Prompted by her co-workers' gift of a baby journal, Jenna begins to keep a diary, ostensibly as letters to her unborn child, revealing her inner thoughts and plans. Upon learning she is pregnant, Earl demands Jenna promise never to love the baby more than him. Jenna also bonds unexpectedly with her gruff bossy manager, Cal the cook, when she fearfully informs him of her pregnancy, only to discover he already knows and always planned to keep her employed.
At Dawn's wedding at the diner, Earl interrupts the celebration and demands Jenna leave at once. Earl drives Jenna home and confronts her, having found Jenna's multiple stashes of cash throughout the house. Reluctantly, Jenna tells Earl that the money was for the baby, which forces her to spend the money to conceal the true purpose of the funds. In despair, she flees to Dr. Pomatter, who provides much-needed comfort; as they fantasize about running away together, Jenna's water breaks.
At the hospital, Jenna discovers Joe is also a patient undergoing an elective procedure; he hands her an envelope with instructions not to open it until after the baby is born. Much to her dismay, she is also greeted warmly by Dr. Pomatter's wife, who is rounding with other residents. Jenna then begs Dr. Pomatter to administer as many drugs as possible so she won't feel a thing.
Jenna soon gives birth to a baby girl. When she holds and sees her newborn for the first time, Jenna's profound ambivalence melts into a full-blown bond with her daughter, whom she names Lulu. Earl, clearly disappointed that it's a girl, reminds Jenna of her coerced promise not to love the baby more than she does him. She bluntly tells him that she hasn't loved him in years, will no longer put up with his possessiveness and abuse, and will not let Lulu grow up with his mistreating her, and wants a divorce. Enraged, Earl attempts to assault Jenna, but is escorted out of the hospital by security staff.
Later, as Jenna prepares to leave the hospital, due to Earl refusing to pay her medical bills as retaliation for being kicked out, Becky and Dawn inform her Joe collapsed into a coma during his procedure. Jenna then remembers the envelope Joe brought her before the birth. In the envelope she finds a handmade card with a sketch of her, inscribed "To my only friend, start fresh", along with a check for $270,450.
While leaving the hospital, Dr. Pomatter requests a word with her in private, inquiring about their future. Grateful for his profound kindness, she nonetheless promptly breaks it off, informing him of the enormous trust she sensed from his wife. She then hands him a chocolate Moon Pie and asks her friends to wheel her out.
In an epilogue, Earl is not shown, Jenna is shown winning the pie contest, as well as turning the diner into a new restaurant named "Lulu's Pies", and she and Lulu walk home happily.
"Seeing Waitress at Sundance was a really emotional experience. The typical format for the festival is that the director is introduced to say a few words before the film begins. It was painful from the beginning to see that there was no director to introduce the film since Adrienne had died. So the producer and Adrienne's husband Andy talked about how it had been Adrienne's dream to have a film at Sundance. It was very poignant".
The film was accepted into the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, though its premiere was "bittersweet" because writer/director Adrienne Shelly, who also played Dawn in the film, was murdered on November 1, 2006, less than three months before its debut[4] and just before she was about to learn the film had been accepted into the festival.[3] Its success there led Fox Searchlight Pictures to acquire the distribution rights for $4–5 million.[5] It opened the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival.[5]
Reception
The film received mostly positive reviews, with a 89% "Fresh" rating among the 174 critic reviews tracked by Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 7.30/10. The consensus reads: "Sweet, smart, and quirky, Waitress hits the right, bittersweet notes through this romantic comedy through its witty script and a superb performance by Keri Russell".[6] The film also made the site's list of Top 100 films for 2007.[7] It got rated 75 out of 100 at Metacritic.[8]Waitress was called a "good-hearted, well-made comedy"[9] brimming with "quality star wattage".[10]
Mick LaSalle called it a "great American film" that transcends its "air of whimsicality and its emphasis on small-town characters and humble locations".[11]
Keri Russell's performance in the film partly inspired casting director Andrea Romano to cast her as the voice of Wonder Woman in the 2009 animated film Wonder Woman.[12]
In 2024, IndieWire included it on its list of the "Best American Independent Films of the 21st Century," with Sarah Shachat calling it a "pretty simple story with big emotions, told with a camera that finds just the right perspective to make it funny, winsome, and sincere all at once. It’s proof that small-scale filmmaking has nothing to do with how good something can taste."[13]
The musical opened on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, with previews starting on March 25, 2016, and the show officially opening on April 24 and closing on January 5, 2020. Mueller, Gehling, Matthews, Settle, and Anderson all returned from the A.R.T production, as well as Glenn as Dawn, Fitzgerald as Ogie, and Cordero as Earl.[31] It returned for a limited engagement at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre from September 2-December 22, 2021 as part of the efforts to slowly reopen Broadway after it was shutdown for over a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This remounting starred Bareilles as Jenna, with most of the principal cast reprising their roles. It was also done to record the production for a future public release, with STEAM Motion + Sound producing the film. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2023,[32][33][34][35] ahead of a limited theatrical release on December 7 of the same year.
Related Research Articles
Keri Lynn Russell is an American actress. She played the title role in the drama series Felicity (1998–2002), which won her a Golden Globe Award, and later portrayed Elizabeth Jennings in the spy thriller series The Americans (2013–2018), which earned her nominations for several Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe Awards. For playing the lead role in the political drama series The Diplomat (2023), she received further Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
Adrienne Levine, usually known by the stage name Adrienne Shelly, was an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She became known from acting in independent films such as Hal Hartley's The Unbelievable Truth (1989) and Trust (1990). She wrote, directed, and co-starred in the 2007 Waitress, a posthumous film that later became a Broadway show.
Sara Beth Bareilles is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She has sold over three million albums and over 15 million singles in the United States. Bareilles has earned various accolades, including two Grammy Awards, as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Tony Awards. In 2012, VH1 named her one of the Top 100 Greatest Women in Music.
Eric Anderson is an American actor and singer. On Broadway, he has originated roles in Waitress, Kinky Boots, The Last Ship, Rocky, and Soul Doctor, and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. He portrayed Mr. O’Malley in The Greatest Showman (2017).
Serious Moonlight is a 2009 American black comedy film directed by Cheryl Hines and starring Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton, Kristen Bell, and Justin Long. It was released by Magnolia Pictures on 4 December 2009.
Teeth is a 2007 American comedy horror film written and directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein. The film stars Jess Weixler and was produced by Lichtenstein on a budget of $2 million. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2007, and received a limited release in the United States on January 18, 2008, by Roadside Attractions. Its title refers to the ancient trope of vagina dentata.
Jenna Noelle Ushkowitz is an American actress, singer, producer and podcast host. She is known for her performances in Broadway musicals such as The King and I and Waitress and in the role of Tina Cohen-Chang on the Fox musical comedy-drama series Glee, for which she received a Grammy Award nomination. She is a two-time Tony Award winner for her work as a producer of the Broadway musical Once on This Island and the Broadway play The Inheritance.
Nobody's Baby is a 2001 comedy film written and directed by David Seltzer and starring Gary Oldman and Skeet Ulrich.
Evelyn Hoskins is an English actress best known for her role as Shona Wark in the British BBC1 hospital drama series Casualty.
Joshua Anthony Charlton Henry is a Canadian-American actor and singer of stage and screen.
Jessica Ruth Mueller is an American actress and singer. She started her acting career in Chicago and won two Joseph Jefferson Awards in 2008 and 2011 for her roles as Carrie Pipperidge in Carousel and Amalia Balash in She Loves Me. In 2011, she moved to New York City to star in a Broadway revival of musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She won the 2014 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for her performance as Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. She went on to receive two additional Best Actress in a Musical Tony Award nominations for her leading roles in Waitress (2016) and the Broadway revival of Carousel (2018).
Jessie Nelson is an American film producer, director, actress and writer.
I Origins is a 2014 American science fiction romantic drama film written and directed by Mike Cahill. The independent production premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2014. It is distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, and opened in limited release on July 18, 2014. It won the Best Feature Length Film Award at the Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya on October 11, 2014.
What's Inside: Songs from Waitress is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, released on November 6, 2015, through Epic Records. The lead single from the album, "She Used to Be Mine", was released digitally on September 25, 2015. It features songs from the musical Waitress, for which Bareilles wrote the music and lyrics.
"She Used to Be Mine" is a song written by American singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles for Waitress, her musical stage adaptation of the 2007 film of the same name. It was recorded by Bareilles for her fifth studio album, What's Inside: Songs from Waitress (2015), and was released to digital retailers as its lead single on September 25, 2015.
Waitress is a musical with music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles and a book by Jessie Nelson. The musical is based on the 2007 film of the same name, written and directed by Adrienne Shelly. It tells the story of Jenna Hunterson, a baker and waitress in an abusive relationship with her husband, Earl. After Jenna unexpectedly becomes pregnant, she begins an affair with her doctor, Dr. James (Jim) Pomatter. Looking for ways out of her troubles, she sees a pie baking contest and its grand prize as her chance.
Betsy Wolfe is an American actress, singer, and entrepreneur.
Joe Tippett is an American actor. He is known for playing Sam Strickland in the NBC drama series Rise and John Ross in the HBO crime drama miniseries Mare of Easttown.
Waitress is a 2023 American musical comedy-drama film consisting of a live stage recording of Sara Bareilles and Jessie Nelson's 2015 musical of the same name, based on the 2007 film of the same name written by Adrienne Shelly.
Jeanna de Waal is a British stage actress and singer. She is known for playing the title role of Princess Diana in the 2021 Broadway show Diana: The Musical, which was also released on Netflix. The musical received negative reviews from critics and widespread notoriety, winning five Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Actress for de Waal. De Waal was also nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical for the same role.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
