The Cast and Creators of ‘Mare of Easttown’ Really Are That Obsessed with Wawa

Mare of Easttown is a gripping crime drama full of shocking twists and incandescent performances. It’s also drowning in Wawa coffee cups. Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) enters the local police department every morning clutching on. Evan Peters‘s Colin Zabel cheerily uses Wawa coffee as a team building tool. Even the camera occasionally lingers on the Wawa logo just for kicks. So what gives? Why is HBO’s Mare of Easttown so darn obsessed with Wawa?

First of all, you have to understand the entire Philly area’s obsession with the local convenience store chain. Wawa’s origins in the area date back to the 1890s when George Wood opened the Wawa Dairy Farm. Wood was able to get doctors to prove that his milk was safe to drink, making it popular in the years before pasteurization. But Wawa’s dominance over the mid-Atlantic didn’t start until the 1960s. As milk delivery fell out of vogue, the business pivoted to physical storefronts, aka convenience stores. Today, you can find Wawas in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, DC, Virginia, and even as far south as Florida. However, it’s most strongly associated with the Philly area, aka East PA, South Jersey, and Delaware. So much so, even First Lady Dr. Jill Biden has shouted out her love of the brand.

So Wawa is to the Philly suburbs as Dunkin is to Massachusetts. But why are there so many Wawa references in Mare of Easttown? Wawa’s branding is so ubiquitous in the show, Decider had to wonder if there was actually some sort of contract for product placement.

“There was no contract,” Mare of Easttown director and executive producer Craig Zobel told Decider, “but if we could have gotten to shoot in a Wawa, we would have.”

“[Evan Peters] and I would constantly compare Wawa stories,” Zobel told Decider. “I would get texts from the costume designer that were like, ‘What about this person?’ It was someone she had covertly taken a picture of at Wawa as a reference for the show. So yeah, that was just our kind of newfound love of Wawa.”

Zobel wasn’t the only one on the Mare of Easttown set to fall hard for the joys of Wawa. Kate Winslet proudly told journalists during the show’s Winter 2021 TCA panel, “Wawa was a big part of my life for well over a year.”

Wawa was also big for Evan Peters…

“Evan Peters, who plays Colin Zabel, he would go on and on about this sandwich. He was like, ‘Okay, you gotta try it. If you wanna put yourself into like a food coma, you have to have it.’ And I’d be like, ‘Evan, why would I wanna be in a food coma?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, it’s so great,'” Winslet said. “It was the Gobbler, right? So he kept getting this thing and I’d be like, ‘I think I’m worried for you now, Evan, you keep getting this Gobbler.’ He was like, ‘No, you’ve gotta have it.’ He was fully committing, I tell you. It was proper commitment from him, yeah.”

So, no, Wawa did not pay anyone at HBO for all the shoutouts in Mare of Easttown. The cast and creators of the series were simply that obsessed with the Philly favorite. (As well they should be.)

Where to stream Mare of Easttown