With her high-end restaurant struggling to draw diners, a brilliant chef schemes to lure away the talented protégée of her former lover and mentor who opened his own restaurant across the street, a savvy business move but a ploy which spells one thing... war.
BLAZE tells the story of three insanely talented, driven chefs who share a tangled, messy past and the lengths each will go to in order to come out ahead of the others, no matter the consequences. In the posh, mostly white enclave of Lincoln Park on Chicago’s Near North side, two high-end restaurants sit directly across the street from each other. One is Le Rêve, where RUBY WELLS (27, Black), a blazingly talented young chef works in the pressure cooker of a kitchen under exacting celebrity chef GRAHAM MADISON (60). Despite the notorious brutality of his regime, aspiring chefs would kill to work in his restaurant where discerning diners wait months for a table. Across the street from Le Rêve is Trodaire, a beautiful, edgy restaurant owned by a chef every bit Graham’s equal, KATHERINE O’REILLY (55). Once Graham’s protégé, the two fell in love and Katherine became pregnant. But when the pregnancy ended without a child, their troubled relationship went up in flames, and a fierce rivalry was forged. It’s not much of a rivalry lately though – Trodaire is struggling. Nursing a drink after another disappointing night, a desperate Katherine spies something across the street which could be the answer to all her problems – Ruby in a knock-down, drag out argument with Graham. Katherine takes her shot, following a furious Ruby to a bar where she tries to seduce Ruby into defecting to her kitchen, eager to use Ruby’s star wattage to burnish Trodaire’s waning shine. The fact that Ruby’s defection would send Graham reeling? Well, that's just icing on the cake. Katherine’s timing is excellent - in addition to feeling stifled in Graham’s kitchen, Ruby is also deeply grieving the recent loss of her parents, two pillars of the community in the exclusive, historic, and historically Black, neighborhood of Kenwood on Chicago’s South Side. She really could use a change. Still, Ruby declines Katherine’s invitation at first – after all, Graham is family to her, a dear friend of her parents dating back to their college days, and a father figure now that her own is gone. Ultimately though, Ruby agrees to the move, under one crucial condition – that she be Katherine’s equal at Trodaire, her co-chef de cuisine. Katherine eventually accepts Ruby’s demands, and they get to work… But one person isn’t happy about the union: staring daggers from across the street at two women he’s deeply loved but who have, in his eyes, aligned against him in an unforgivable act of betrayal, Graham declares war.
A queer creator who moves between film, television, and theater, Deborah Puette draws on over two decades as a working actor to tell sophisticated stories centering sharply observed female and LGBTQ+ characters claiming space in places that traditionally tell them to stay the eff out. Adopted by an Irish-Catholic family of hunters who taught her to use a shotgun when she was eight, she eventually left that life of weekend crow shoots to study photography in Paris, work at a women's shelter in Alaska, and briefly deal cocaine in Chicago until a surprise pregnancy shut that shit down. Unwilling to wait for the L in sub-zero wind chills with an infant, she packed up her baby and their freaked-out cat and headed for the kinder climes of Los Angeles where the sun never stops shining and everything is a-okay. Deborah's first feature script, Cash for Gold, was a Finalist for The Black List x WIF Feature Residency, attracting the attention of Franklin Leonard who further championed the project. It was produced by Chariot Entertainment with Puette co-directing and playing the lead role opposite Farshad Farahat (Argo), David Sullivan (Argo), and JoBeth Williams (Poltergeist). Cash for Gold is slated for a limited theatrical run at the end of 2024 and will be distributed in February 2025 on streaming platforms. Deborah also wrote and directed Such A Pretty Girl, a short based on her semi-autobiographical series pilot, Play Like A Girl (Finalist, 2021 Writers Lab underwritten by Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Oprah Winfrey). The short stars Sarah Drew and will play fests in 2025. The film was Executive Produced by Robina Riccitiello (Dídi, Mutt).
Her pilot Blaze was named to the GLAAD x Blacklist and propelled her to the finals of the Warner Bros. Writers Workshop. She's repped by Austin Aronson at Stride Management.
GLAAD x Blacklist 2022
WB Writers Workshop 2022 - Finalist
Roadmap Writers Jump Start Competition 2021 - Grand Prize
