‘Waitress: The Musical’ Team Talks Coming to Theaters, Overcoming the Pandemic and Filming With a Real Baby
After Broadway shut down due to the pandemic, “Waitress” received an arts grant from Chuck Schumer’s office that allowed the production to reopen in 2021. Sara Bareilles, who wrote the music and lyrics, said this opportunity inspired her and the team to make the most of their time back on stage by shooting a live recording.
Bleecker Street and Fathom Events will release “Waitress: The Musical” in theaters for a five-day series of nationwide special-event screenings, starting Dec. 7. Bareilles, who also plays the lead role of Jenna Hunterson in the film production, said shooting this live-capture helped bring the audience “closer to the emotionality of the performances.”
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“The shift from just being in front of a live audience and then adding a camera is almost to just lean into the intimacy of it, to let each moment feel really truthful between two people or three people or whoever’s on stage,” she said.
Creative adviser Jessie Nelson, who also wrote the musical’s book, described how the filmed production gave them the opportunity to further highlight the characters’ feelings and motivations.
“When Sara and the doctor ultimately make love in the gynecological office, it was very important to us in the direction that Jenna’s character was leading it, in that she kissed him first. She jumped on the table. She beckoned him to come,” Nelson said. “She had agency in the scene. It was important to us in the filming of it that it really captured where her character was coming from.”
The live production was shot over the course of four days — twice in front of a live audience, with the other two days used for filming closeup shots. Some performances such as “A Soft Place to Land” — where Jenna and fellow waitresses Dawn and Becky find solidarity baking a pie together — were enhanced by having those closeup shots, while other numbers like “Never Ever Getting Rid of Me” from Christopher Fitzgerald’s character Ogie benefitted from being filmed in front of an audience.
“Chris is such a such an amazing theater actor. His comic timing is so he’s riding the audience’s reaction in how he delivers beat to beat all the comic moments for Ogie,” Diane Paulus, who directed the production for the stage, said. “The presence of the audience matters in a musical in a way that makes musical a form of theater that breaks the fourth wall … The numbers, the comedy scenes really thrive off that energy back and forth from the audience.”
The filmed production kept in the audience reactions to help mimic the feeling of live theater. “After COVID, the audiences came in so ready to laugh, so ready to connect that you would do the littlest thing and they would howl … A big part of the experience is how much the audience surrenders to the piece and becomes a part of it,” Nelson said.
One of the biggest changes implemented for the film production was using a real baby instead of a prop doll for the scene when Jenna gives birth, an idea Paulus suggested. “The whole scene kind of cracks open, and you just realize the gravity of this moment for this character,” Bareilles said of working with the baby.
Nelson added that they legally were only allowed to have the baby for 10 minutes per day. “Even when that baby started getting a little cranky, Sara just kept singing and acting and holding her concentration in the scene,” she said.
Based on Adrienne Shelly’s 2007 film, the musical debuted on Broadway in 2016, becoming one of the longest-running shows in recent Broadway history. It also had a West End run, in addition to U.S. and U.K./Ireland tours. Now returning to audiences in 2023, the story has continued to resonate with people.
“At its heart, ‘Waitress’ is about resiliency and hope and community and self-love,” Bareilles said. “It feels like comfort food right now, and I think there’s something really healing about that.”
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