Little Voice: how J.J. Abrams got Sara Bareilles to create Apple TV+ show about young singer trying to make it in New York
- After seeing Bareilles’ popular Broadway musical Waitress, Abrams was determined to work with the singer, who was also a big fan of his work
- Bareilles wrote all of the songs for the show; some are old demos that never made it onto her albums, including the theme song
After launching the musical Waitress on Broadway, American singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles didn’t plan to make a TV show. But then filmmaker J.J. Abrams came calling.
That is what led to Little Voice, the romantic drama series that is now streaming on Apple TV+ and counts both Abrams and Bareilles as executive producers, and features the singer’s music.
Bareilles was a huge fan of Felicity, the Keri Russell university-set TV series that Abrams co-created. And Abrams was a big admirer of Waitress, based on the 2007 movie that also happened to star Russell.
“Apparently I have a Keri Russell thing,” Bareilles jokes. Abrams didn’t have a plan, but he wanted more of what Bareilles and co-writer Jessie Nelson did with their 2016 Broadway show about a waitress in an abusive marriage.
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“I started thinking about, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting to see that same sort of tone [as Felicity], but what if Felicity was a songwriter?’ – the idea of a young woman, a young person, finding their voice as an artist and as a person,” Bareilles says.
