Ask Eva Victor what’s the best sandwich in the world, and the star, writer, and director of new A24 dramedy Sorry, Baby has a very quick answer: the Vegitalian from the Court Street Grocery in New York.
“It’s basically a vegetarian sandwich but the butternut squash acts as the meat in the middle of the sandwich, and there’s fennel, and it’s mayo-y, and there’s a tapenade situation going on, and some arugula. It’s very good, and it’s got a Dutch crunch seeded bun to it. It’s a very special sandwich.”
If this feels like an odd direction for a conversation about one of the summer’s most striking and affecting feature debuts, it actually strikes to the heart – or rather, the belly – of Sorry, Baby. The debut feature from Victor is a #MeToo drama that concentrates on the affected character as a whole person, not a victim or survivor or whatever diminishing tag it attached to them.
Just about every time Victor’s character, literature doctoral student Agnes, eats a meal it’s usually a sandwich, and on those occasions when she is forced to dine with others it’s a deeply uncomfortable experience. There’s something about the solitary nature of a sandwich that speaks to Agnes’ isolation “and you hold it as you eat it,” Victor said. “There’s something very maternal about that.”
“It is a very sandwich film,” Victor added. “It was just like, ‘How can we add more a sandwiches? How can we pull at this sandwich thread?’” Indeed, there were even more scenes containing sandwiches in the original version of the script that got cut. However, one key scene does remain. It’s a pivotal moment of human kindness for Agnes when she sits with Paul, the sandwich store owner, played by John Carroll Lynch. “It was an attempt to bring some food joy to the film but to make the town feel a little smaller too,” Victor said. “The idea is that there is this one sandwich shop in town that’s so good that everyone gets sandwiches from there.”
Victor didn’t just cut back on the number of sandwiches. There’s a version of this story that’s much angrier, more vengeful, and Victor actually contemplated that version – and then thought better of it. There was one particular scene in which Agnes strikes a particularly vengeful blow that Victor excised that because it stood so at odds with Agnes’ attempts to find herself after trauma. “I went to bed, and I woke up and went, ‘She doesn’t do that. It isn’t what this film is.’ Because it just didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel true. It felt like an idea but not based on the emotional truth and what feels true to me.”
“There’s something very romanticized about that kind of school.”
The setting gave a certain timelessness to the narrative, since these schools pride themselves as being a part of a tradition. However, those traditions often survive by their ability to ignore challenges and changes. The filmmaker said, “I think there’s something very romanticized about that kind of school and about those kinds of building and that kind of experience of grad school. It’s something that I, as someone who hasn’t done it, have fantasies about. But the reality of an institution giving you access to creativity and learning at the end of the day being a company in a way, and being a self-protecting institution, is really devastating.”
The self-interest of the college stands in stark contrast to the film’s defining relationship between Agnes and her ride-or-die, Lydie, played by Naomi Ackie (Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Small Axe). “The second we read together, we needed to do it together,” Victor said. That chemistry made the filmmaking process easier, as Victor was very aware that Ackie was coming to this low-budget indie set after career-defining performances in Bong Joon-Ho’s Mickey 17 and Zoe Kravitz’s Blink Twice. “She’s so funny and understanding and patient with me and so trusting. Even though she’d just come off Bong’s movie and Zoe’s movie, she was so trusting of me.”
At the same time as it delves into that close bond, one aspect of academia that Sorry, Baby explores is that of rivalries, as personified in the character of Natasha. Played by Kelly McCormack (Letterkenny, Amazon’s A League of Their Own, she’s Agnes’ constant, nagging nemesis, eternally jealous of the academic star to whom everything comes so easily. “I love women when they’re being a little evil,” Victor said. “There was so much joy in creating that character, and then Kelly took her to the next level.”
“She’s a mirror to Agnes. … They have a lot of in common and have very similar strengths, but they just miss each other.”
It’s that realization that also helps further humanize Agnes, the all-too-perfect student who has been selected for academic greatness and sometimes seems to take that for granted. That’s the source of Natasha’s antagonism, and, Victor said, “That’s what Agnes is suffering with too. ‘Did I get handed this?’ and Natasha’s a reminder that, ‘yeah, maybe.’”
Sorry, Baby is in theatres now and opens at AFS Cinema July 11. Find our review and showtimes here.
This article appears in July 4 • 2025.
