Sara Bareilles: ‘Everything in my life has changed because of Waitress’

Besides sugar, butter and flour, there is so much baked into the musical Waitress. Adapted from the 2007 comedy/drama film, written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, the story is simple: Jenna, a diner waitress trapped in a small town and toxic marriage, becomes pregnant.

Even if it feels like an unusual idea for a hit musical, singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles took the mix of ingredients – motherhood, domestic abuse, infidelity, friendship, life not quite living up to your hopes… not forgetting baking – and found the recipe for a show that’s proving to be timeless and universally relatable.

Waitress has struck a chord with fans everywhere and is embarking on a new UK tour with Carrie Hope Fletcher starring as Jenna, where the smell of fresh baking greets theatregoers. It’s now over 10 years since its Broadway debut.

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

“In some ways it seems like 30 years and in some ways it seems like five minutes,” Bareilles tells Big Issue. “Everything about my life has changed because of my experience on Waitress, artistically, personally – I married an Earl [last October Bareilles married Joe Tippett, the couple met when he was playing Jenna’s cruel husband Earl in 2015] – I cannot believe how lucky we are that this show continues to reach audiences all over the world.”

Bareilles may be best known in the UK for her 2008 UK top five hit Love Song.

But composing a musical was a very different experience to performing in the spotlight wondering “are they going to clap for me at the end?” Instead, the process was about collaboration then sitting in the dark alongside an audience, experiencing the story as they do.

“I remember having so much insecurity in terms of writing this show,” she says, recalling the first time she played Waitress’s most famous number, She Used to be Mine, at a concert in Florida, worried that the soaring emotional ballad would evoke laughs at the mention of pie.

Read more:

• Matilda the Musical: Tim Minchin’s anarchic lessons for revolting times
• The Great British Bake Off Musical review: Showstopper or soggy bottom?
• Meet the Paddington actors bringing Britain’s favourite bear to life on stage: ‘We’re making history’

“I played the song and I could feel the reaction. No one was laughing. I was like, oh, there’s a resonance in this story, Jenna’s story, which became my story, which became whatever it becomes. That was a real moment of learning. Make something you love and share it with the hope that someone else might learn to love it too.

“I think the show does a really good job of balancing darkness and light,” she adds. “We are dealing with heavy subject matter, but the way life works is that it holds a lot in a little. Most things are complex and not black and white or one-dimensional.

“We’ve certainly had a lot of responses from women in particular – but also plenty of men – who have been in some kind of abusive experience and realising that they deserve more.

“We’ve had stories of people leaving a marriage that was unhealthy and making a decision to take back their own agency. That’s a miraculous thing, that a piece of musical theatre can have so much impact on someone’s life.

“But that is how it works. We’re human, it’s primal. We tell stories to remind each other of our potential.”

Balancing the darker themes is a wholly positive take on friendship and family, that everything changes with the arrival of a child and that the birth of a baby also marks the rebirth of a parent.

Bareilles says that it was never part of the plan for her to star in the lead role, but over the decade she “felt a tug”. She was leading the cast as Waitress became the first musical to open again on Broadway after the Covid lockdowns.

“I really love the tenacity of Broadway as a community,” she says. “There were a lot of people, of course, in every industry, really suffering so it felt important to get our team back together.”

Bareilles has been busy working on a new show based on Meg Wolitzer’s book The Interestings, following six teenagers at a summer arts camp in the 1970s. She’s in a different place as composer than she was when writing Waitress. That means she’s able to relate to different parts of Jenna’s journey. 

“I relate more to the ending of the show than I did when I was writing. One of the reasons I started writing Waitress was because I was in a moment of pretty extraordinary upheaval. I had just moved to New York after being in LA for 15 years, I had left a six-year relationship, a band relationship of 10 years, a manager relationship. I blew it all up. 

“And so I felt like I really related to the experience that Jenna is having, waking up inside of a life she doesn’t quite recognise. Being like, how is this me? 

“I related more to the messy part of her when I was writing the show. Now I relate more to the peaceful part of her.

Waitress is now on tour across the country

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

Change a vendor’s life.

Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week – and always take the magazine. It’s how vendors earn with dignity and move forward.

You can also support online:
Subscribe to the magazine or support our work with a monthly gift. Your support helps vendors earn, learn and thrive while strengthening our frontline services.

Thank you for standing with Big Issue vendors.