Opening up: Sara Bareilles on life, loss and looking at what’s inside

Sara Bareilles never expected to be an actress.

Or maybe she did, but only when she was very young.

“Musical theatre was my first home,” she says, talking via Zoom from her New York apartment. One of the three-time Tony Award-nominee’s earliest theatre roles was as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, but then she explains, “My life took a left turn and songwriting became so profoundly important to me, and I really didn’t ever consider the place where that might intersect.”

The part where it did intersect was composing for a musical, and that musical was the deliciously sweet Waitress – which ended up being a recipe for success.

“Everything about my life has changed for the better because of this show, on so many levels. There’s the practicality of the actual people it brought into my orbit…” Bareilles is now engaged to co-star Joe Tippett, who played Earl, “But also just the growing up that I did as an artist, as a performer, as a business person.”

She describes the experience of creating the score, and then starring in the show itself, as a “gift” and explains how she splits her life into a before and after Waitress, adding “I’m so glad that I live in this life,” while sipping a mug of steaming tea.

These turns in her life that Bareilles describes aren’t always positive, however, she explains: “I feel grateful for every one of them – even the really tragic, terrible ones,” hinting towards grief for friend and co-star Gavin Creel. She admits: “I have a great faith in life that things are as they should be.”

Bareilles is a very empathetic person. I’ve only had ten minutes with her on a call (alongside a lifetime of being a fan, admittedly) to recognise this. It’s in the details. She’s insistent that she appears on camera (“It makes for a much more important conversation to see each other’s faces,”) and she asks about my own life in England, genuinely curious about our rainfall.

We discuss Adrienne Shelly, the original screenwriter, director, and star of the 2007 Waitress film. She sadly did not live to see its impact, as she was murdered just before its release. “I always felt as I was writing the show that I was in conversation with her… I did a lot of talking to Adrienne and our whole creative team was very reverent about wanting to carry on her legacy and write a beautiful tribute. It’s not so dissimilar to the idea of our lineage or our ancestry, that we all come from somewhere.”

Just like how in the stage show the ensemble passes Jenna the ingredients to bake her much-loved pie, and lift her up through her lowest times. Bareilles describes playing the leading role after writing the music as a “baton pass,” explaining: “I feel a sense of privilege and honour in just carrying on the story of Jenna and I love, you know, you mentioned some of the wonderful actresses that have stepped into this role, and she lives so differently on them.” We discuss Katharine McPhee, Lucie Jones, and Chelsea Halfpenny – all of whom we were lucky enough to see in the UK.

“I watched Jessie Mueller play this role for years [on Broadway] and do it seamlessly and beautifully and in a huge way, she was the only Jenna I could imagine, even though Keri Russell had done it before [in the film]. You find your own way in.”

Bareilles expresses her gratitude to Shelly for conjuring up Jenna, this pie-baking dreamer with a lot of love to share. “I don’t know anyone who can’t relate to this experience of ending up in a life that they didn’t quite imagine. Sometimes it’s better than you imagine. And sometimes it’s worse than you imagine.

“But it’s this idea that we are never who we think we’re going to be. Life just doesn’t work that way. We’re always being taught to expand our perspective and learn. Jenna is an incredible teacher to me in that in that respect.”

When writing the show, it was the first time Bareilles had ever written a song for somebody else to sing – and in particular, had written a song for a man to sing. “I call it an exercise in radical empathy,” she explains the process, “I really had to find my way into the psychology of these different characters and find the places where I could see myself in them.”

It’s why Earl, the abusive husband, has a rock ballad showing off his pride in his guitar, and why old Joe, the diner owner imparts his wisdom. “The more we can broaden our perspectives to include other people’s stories, the more we can find ourselves within those stories. I do think it is a beautiful bridge to compassion and understanding and a sense of a communal experience as human beings.”

This was important to capture in the live recording of the show on Broadway, which Bareilles leads. “We wanted to honour the proscenium version of the show, but by using the language and intimacy of film, which is the thing that we can’t give to our audience on a nightly basis in any given theatre.” Alongside book writer, Jessie Nelson and the rest of the team, they decided to use close-up shots of facial expressions and demonstrate movement in a tactile fashion.

In Shelly’s posthumously released Waitress, her real-life daughter, Sophie, appears as Lulu. In the pro-shot, a real baby is used, as opposed to the usual doll. “It was a way to let that very pivotal moment in this character’s life come to life differently,” Bareilles explains.

“Everything was deeply considered, and very hands-on. This project is such a labour of love for our whole creative team. That’s part of why I feel so proud of it and why it’s so beautiful that we get to bring this story to an even larger audience.”

Growing up in a small town with access to community theatre (“Oh my God, the greatest gift of my life,”), Bareilles shares her excitement of having a large-scale production available in people’s homes: “It is deeply important.”

Waitress is available to stream on National Theatre at Home now. A revival is supposedly “on the horizon”, too.