Sitting in Bars With Cake director calls film 'a risky move': 'We have bitten off a giant mouthful'
The recipe for Sitting in Bars With Cake calls for a cup of heartwarming female friendships, a tablespoon of romantic-comedy meet-cutes, more teaspoons of heartbreak than you'd expect, and a pinch of an uplifting message (to taste). Let it bake for about 120 minutes in the oven, and voila! You've got a sweet, surprising story.
Inspired by true events, Prime Video's upcoming movie, adapted from author Audrey Shulman's book of the same name, stars Yara Shahidi as Jane, a shy but extremely talented baker. As seen in EW's exclusive look at the trailer, Jane is convinced by her extrovert best friend Corinne (Odessa A'zion) to commit to a year of baking cakes and bringing them to bars with the goal of meeting guys, as well as developing confidence — also known as "cakebarring." But when Corrine receives a life-altering diagnosis, the pair face a challenge unlike anything they've experienced before, resulting in a moving celebration of female friendship, forging identity, and finding joy in the most unexpected places.
"When I first read the script, I thought I was reading one movie, and then about 20 pages in, I realized it's so much more than that," director Trish Sie tells EW in an exclusive interview. "I really liked that rug being pulled out from under me. It's a risky move to lure people into what looks like a really frothy comedy about young people getting laid, essentially, and turn it into something pretty heavy, and then try to turn it back around and give people a sense of joy and optimism at the end, as well. I realize that we have bitten off a giant mouthful. Can we chew it? I don't know if we managed, but it was a really lovely challenge, I'll say that." Her on-brand pun isn't lost on Sie either.
When the filmmaker was first approached about joining the movie, Sie wasn't sure she wanted to take it on. But once she read Shulman's script, she knew she couldn't say no. "What I love the most about it is the most obvious theme in the movie which is that bold, unstoppable, unflinching friendship between women," she says. "I'm all for romance and love, but I wasn't particularly interested in making a romantic movie. I was pleasantly surprised that that's really not the theme. Besides the friendship, it's the tenacity and the courage and overall collaborating with life to the fullest while we're here and helping each other do that."
Saeed Adyani/Prime Video Odessa A’zion and Yara Shahidi star in 'Sitting in Bars with Cake'
It's a message Sie knows is now more important than it ever has been before, given what she calls "a few really rough years." She says, "The world is looking for things to watch that give us hope and inspiration but also aren't too fluffy, because we've all seen some serious stuff go down. We're not looking for empty fluff right now, but we are looking to be cheered up, and that's a tough needle to thread."
As it turns out, cake helps. Throughout the movie, viewers will see Jane bake a total of 50. (The girls take a break from cakebarring for Thanksgiving and Christmas, of course.) Sie wanted to show that on screen as authentically as possible. While the director herself is not a cook or baker by any means — "It's astonishing how bad I am," Sie admits — her husband is a bread baker and her son's best friend is a cake artist. "I have a healthy respect for the amount of artistry and science and rigor and attention to detail it requires to be a good baker," the director adds.
Saeed Adyani/Prime Video Yara Shahidi and Odessa A’zion in 'Sitting in Bars with Cake'
Having a self-described sweet tooth, Sie says working on a movie set with a seemingly unlimited amount of cake sounded like a dream come true... at first. "Oh my gosh, there was so much cake," Sie recalls. "There was a fair amount eaten onscreen, but the cakes were seriously delicious in real life. We also had to have so many of them, not just because we had to cut into them, but because some actors couldn't eat gluten and some couldn't eat dairy. So, we had different versions of all of them. It was just cake from dusk til dawn."
Fridays were the big taste-testing days. While the crew prepped the movie, tasty treats would arrive at the production offices. "Hundreds, truly hundreds of cakes were eaten on this movie," Sie notes. "Cake kind of was ruined for me for a while after."
Sitting in Bars With Cake premieres Friday, Sept. 8 on Prime Video. Watch the first trailer above.
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