Like a good portion of the Jezebel staff, I am currently hooked on Mare of Easttown, the latest prestige crime drama from HBO starring an Oscar-winning white woman. The show stars Kate Winslet as Mare (yes her name is Mare, no she’s not the mayor) an extremely rough-around-the-edges detective in small-town Pennsylvania who is trying to solve the murder of a local, can you guess… dead girl, ding ding ding! She is also aided by a county detective played brilliantly against type by Evan Peters, because Mare isn’t actually very good at her job.
The show has gotten a lot of attention for being good, but it’s also gotten a lot of attention for being set in Pennsylvania and for its astonishing commitment to showing off the state’s culture. There is extraordinary attention to detail in the show’s realism, with Winslet sporting a hard to master PA accent, swinging back hoagies and Rolling Rock beers (although I’m surprised she isn’t drinking Yuengling, as Eater also pointed out). And, of course, there is Wawa, specifically lots of Wawa coffee.
To the delight of Wawa evangelists everywhere (me included, as a native South Jerseyan) Winslet recently talked about how great the chain is on the podcast The Envelope, saying she discovered the chain by reading a copy of the Delaware County Daily Times and seeing Wawa mentioned frequently. “To me it almost felt like a mythical place, Wawa,” she says. “By the time I got there, I was like, ‘It’s real!’ Walking into a Wawa ultimately felt like… it was kind of an honor, in a funny way, because to me that was the heart of Delco,” she said. “So to finally walk through the door of a Wawa, I don’t know why I felt like, ‘Oh, yes, I’m here, I belong. This is where it’s at. Wawa.”
Incredible. But when Winslet is asked what her “must-gets” are when she goes to a Wawa, she says she mostly sticks to coffee. It turns out Peters is the one really committing to the role. “He would say, you gotta try the Gobbler,” Winslet says. “It was this gigantic sub, or hoagie, this huge hoagie,” she says, dipping back into her PA accent. “It’s basically a Thanksgiving meal in a hoagie. He was like, ‘I just eat that thing and I pass out’ and I’m like, ‘I’m not surprised! I’m not surprised.’”
Winslet, I love that you’ve joined the ranks of Wawa fans, but there is way more to eat there than coffee. Pastries! Breakfast sandwiches! Iced tea! An infinite combination of hoagies you can make with their futuristic ordering system! Coffee is simply not good enough.