It is a strange pressure to be across from a man who wants something that you don’t want to give. It’s like standing in a forceful current, which at first you think is not too strong, but the longer you stand, the more tired you become, the harder it is to stay upright.
Sweetbitter was written many years before the #metoo movement, before issues of consent and abuse toppled the careers of powerful men. I was interested in the way that men objectify, speak over, manipulate young women. Interested, perhaps, because I had experienced decades of it. How many times in my life had I made myself likeable, easy to digest, or kept quiet in fear of being perceived as difficult? How many times had I let inappropriate comments and touches go because I didn’t want to risk embarrassing the man who made them? Countless. The question I found myself asking in my thirties was: who benefitted from my smallness? My silence? It wasn’t me. Sweetbitter explores those themes: Tess is told by everyone who she is, how she should behave. People make assumptions instead of asking questions. And while Howard seems to be the more serious predator, men like Will, who will wear a woman down while acting the part of “the nice guy,” are just as insidious.
Will really came alive in the Sweetbitter television show, thanks to the actor, Evan Jonigkeit. He never shied away from this character’s conflicts or darkness. He understood the subtlety of “nice guy coercion,” and even as Tess hurts him throughout the show, he’s never blameless. We spent a lot of time talking through the character and what we realized about Will is that he was going to make it out of restaurants. A lot of them are lifers, but you get the feeling that because of some essential naivete in him, he’s going to eventually leave the city, settle down, forget all these escapades. That’s not true for all the characters, especially Jake and Simone, who are stuck in their roles with each other and the restaurant.
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