Sara Bareilles and Diane Paulus spoke to CBS Boston about Waitress the Musical, ahead of its premiere at the American Repertory Theatre. The musical, based on the 2007 film starring Keri Russell is about a pie-maker married to a controlling man. Tony award-winning director Diane Paulus leads the charge and she personally recruited singer Sara Bareilles to write all of the music.

“I love to do musicals that have emotional impact. It has a lot of humour, it’s very quirky and yet then it really does deal with, this issue of domestic violence,” said Diane.

Sara added: “I felt actually that coming to the genre felt like a homecoming for me in some ways because I think musical theatre is a part of why I write the way I do.”

Jessie Mueller, who won a Tony for playing Carole King in Beautiful, stars

“She is an actress who has the musical chops to sing Sara’s music which is very rangy and very demanding and very emotional,” said Diane.