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Sara Bareilles had no trouble drawing inspiration from Meg Wolitzer’s 2013 coming-of-age novel, The Interestings.
After earning a Best Original Score Tony nod for Waitress in 2016, Bareilles, 44, signed on to compose the musical adaptation of The Interestings, which is currently in the workshop phase. Pulitzer Prize finalist playwright Sarah Ruhl is writing the book.
“I read it so fast,” Bareilles exclusively told Us Weekly in November of Wolitzer’s novel. “It was just a couple of days, and I could not believe how vibrant and alive the world felt to me.”
Both Waitress and The Interestings feature characters who feel distant from younger, more ambitious versions of themselves, but Bareilles noted that the latter has a “sophistication” not present in Waitress.
“[These characters] are hyper-intellectual, whereas Waitress is about a small community, [a] down-home southern town,” she explained. “These are, like, New York intellectuals. So, I think the music [for The Interestings] reflects that a little bit.”
For Bareilles, the “biggest challenge” of the project was “trying to distill and condense” a 560-page novel into one musical.
“We’re not making a six-hour show. Those get made, but we’re not trying to make that kind of show for this book,” she said. “We’re trying to make sure that what is getting distilled are the juiciest bits of this novel, knowing that nothing [we do] is gonna really hold everything this novel holds. And I will always recommend that people — whatever you love or don’t love about the musical — go read this book. I think the book is so special.”
The Interestings follows a group of friends who meet as teenagers at an arts camp in 1974. The novel’s central character, Jules, sees herself as less sophisticated than her peers, and those insecurities follow her into adulthood as she romanticizes her longtime friends’ Ash and Ethan’s lives and marriage.
Bareilles said she “felt so close” to the characters when reading the book, specifically Jules.
“[She] has a little bit of Peter Pan syndrome. I think we often see that trope played out on men, and I don’t know that we see it as often on women, where they just have a hard time letting go of their ambition and their hopes for their younger self,” she explained. “That is a theme that lives very prominently in Waitress, and it’s something that I wrestle with in my life quite a bit, too.”
Jules’ tendency to dream of greener grasses impacts her husband, Dennis, who can’t help but wonder if their life will ever be enough for her. Bareilles explored this conflict in a song called “Enough,” written from Dennis’ perspective.
“I wrote ‘Enough’ before I had even finished the book,” Bareilles said. “I was so moved by the character of Dennis and the themes that were coming up around childhood and growing up and what is enough and when can we be content with what we have?”
The jury is still out on whether Bareilles will join the cast of The Interestings. (While Jessie Mueller originated the lead role of Jenna in Waitress, Bareilles played the part in stints on both Broadway and London’s West End.)
“Right now, I think the only hat I can wear is just composer and [try] to help put the puzzle pieces together,” the singer-songwriter said. “But I mean, I love the idea of being back on stage.”
Bareilles did, however, perform “Enough” during three career-spanning shows at The Kennedy Center in September, accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra. The performances were filmed for PBS’ Next at the Kennedy Center series, and the special — titled Sara Bareilles: New Year’s Eve With the National Symphony Orchestra & Friends — will premiere on December 31.
“It’s a brand new experience for my audience to hear my work interpreted with the extraordinary touch of a giant orchestra,” Bareilles said of the show. “It was daunting in the sense that we wanted to get the set right and choose songs that were going to speak really beautifully [with] an orchestra.”
The program features special guests Rufus Wainwright, Emily King and David Ryan Harris and touches on various periods of Bareilles’ career. Beloved songs including “Love Song,” “Gravity,” “King of Anything” and “Brave” made the setlist along with some deeper cuts and a couple of Waitress tunes.
“It’s really a luxury to get to swim around in all of the music of my lifetime so far,” Bareilles said. “It was just an unforgettable experience.”
The prolific songwriter is also adding more music to her songbook. She’s currently working on her seventh studio album.
“I’m writing a lot about grief,” said Bareilles, whose friend Gavin Creel died at age 48 in September, two months after being diagnosed with metastatic melanotic peripheral nerve sheath sarcoma, a rare form of cancer. The pair shared the stage in both Waitress and the 2022 revival of Into the Woods.
“I lost a dear friend semi-recently [and] lost another friend in 2020. I haven’t written for a record since before the pandemic,” said Bareilles. “I think in terms of my spiritual metabolism, I’m quite slow. I know a lot of people who were making a lot of music in and around the pandemic, and I just wasn’t making anything. So, I think I’m now kind of just sort of processing that chapter of my life — the isolation and the grief and loss.”
While Bareilles assured fans that the record “won’t all be desperately sad,” she believes it’s important to hold space for “uncomfortable” topics.
“It’s not something our culture supports very well. I think we do a lot of escapism — which I think we need, too; I don’t think it’s valueless at all — but I do think there is also merit in kind of going into the dark places and resting there and really processing what’s happening there,” she said. “It’s unlike any other record I’ve written. It kind of goes all over the place and it’s not formulaic. It feels like I’m just telling stories that need to get told.”
Sara Bareilles: New Year’s Eve With the National Symphony Orchestra & Friends will air on PBS, PBS.org and the PBS app Tuesday, December 31, at 8 p.m. ET.
