Trailer
Plot summary
At Joe's Pie Diner in the American South, Jenna Hunterson invents pies named for whatever is going on in her life. Her marriage to Earl is another matter: he is controlling and abusive, keeps the household money including her wages and tips, and treats her as his property. Fellow waitresses Becky and Dawn and Joe, the diner's elderly owner, are her friends. She is quietly saving for a pie contest with a $25,000 prize, which Earl would never let her enter, when she learns she is pregnant. At her prenatal appointments she meets Dr. Jim Pomatter, and the two are drawn to each other.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Waitress (2007)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival was bittersweet: writer-director Adrienne Shelly, who also played Dawn in the film, was murdered on 1 November 2006, less than three months before its debut and just before she was to learn it had been accepted.
- Festival custom is for the director to say a few words before the film begins, and it was painful from the beginning that there was no director to introduce Waitress; the producer and Adrienne Shelly's husband talked about how having a film at Sundance had been her dream.
- The film's success at the festival led Fox Searchlight Pictures to acquire the distribution rights for $4-5 million, and it went on to open the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival.
- 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.
- A Broadway remounting starred Sara Bareilles from 2 September to 17 October and Jennifer Nettles from 29 October to 22 December as Jenna, with most of the principal cast reprising their roles, and it was recorded by STEAM Motion + Sound for a future public release.
