Sara Bareilles discusses Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings and how the 2013 novel unlocked a new creative path that led her to adapt it into a stage musical.
Quick answer
Sara Bareilles, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter behind hits like “Love Song” and “Brave,” says Meg Wolitzer’s novel The Interestings inspired her next theatrical project and shaped the emotional core of her album Good Grief. She also links the book’s themes to personal experiences with anxiety, infertility, and a late-in-life mental-health pivot (she began Lexapro at age 46).
Why this interview matters
This conversation is useful for readers who follow contemporary songwriters-turned-theatre-creators, and for anyone interested in how a single novel can change an artist’s creative vocabulary. Bareilles talks candidly about artistic ambition, grief, and the way stories can help us accept ordinary lives as meaningful.
How The Interestings opened a new creative door
Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings spans decades in the lives of six friends who meet at a 1970s arts camp. Bareilles says the book’s portrait of talent, envy, and the slow accrual of life’s compromises hit a deep chord. She credits the novel with giving her an immediate musical language she hadn’t written in before, and it ultimately prompted her to write the full score for an official stage adaptation in collaboration with Wolitzer and a theatrical director.
From reader to adaptor
After Waitress—her previous major theater project—Bareilles spent years looking for the right story to adapt. She tried many submissions but felt uninspired until The Interestings. Once she read it, the piece says, the direction for a new musical became clear.
Personal notes: grief, fertility, and mental health
Bareilles connects the novel’s exploration of longing and the limits of ambition to her own life. She discusses dealing with anxiety and depression, and describes starting Lexapro at age 46 as a turning point for managing her mental health. She also says experiences with infertility influenced the emotional tone of her album Good Grief, recorded largely at Dreamland Studios in upstate New York.
Key personal moments she names
- Anxiety and empathy shaping her emotional perspective as an artist.
- Infertility and medical uncertainty informing the grieving themes in Good Grief.
- Starting Lexapro at 46 and how that change clarified presence over worry about the future.
How she sees the characters — why Jules matters
Bareilles identifies most with Jules Jacobson, the novel’s outsider who wants desperately to be “interesting.” Rather than treating Jules’s trajectory—eventually leaving acting and becoming a therapist—as defeat, Bareilles frames it as an act of acceptance: choosing a life that feels true instead of chasing a scripted notion of success.
Concise creative lessons from the conversation
- Presence over control: Facing mortality and loss can clear a path to living more fully in the present.
- Enoughness: Self-worth doesn’t require being exceptional—sometimes the “ordinary” life is the one that matters most.
- Grief and love intertwine: As Bareilles puts it, “Great love and great loss are just… they’re braided together. But they are. They are one.”
Where to watch or listen
- Full video conversations are available on the Books That Changed My Life YouTube channel.
- You can also find the episode archive at Books That Changed My Life, on Spotify, or through the podcast directory playlist.
Related links and reading
- Buy Meg Wolitzer’s novel: The Interestings (Walmart).
- Explore Bareilles’s official site: sarabmusic.com.
- Related editorial: What Is the Optimal Sleep Duration for Biological Aging? and Gen Z Dating App Burnout.
- For a parallel conversation about performance pressure, see our profile of Michael Blaustein on Inner Excellence.
About Sara Bareilles (guest summary)
Sara Bareilles is a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter known for hits like “Love Song” and “Brave.” She earned Tony and Grammy nominations for composing the score to the Broadway musical Waitress and has acted in series including Girls5eva.
FAQ
Q: Which book inspired Sara Bareilles’s upcoming stage musical?
A: The novel that sparked the project is Meg Wolitzer’s 2013 book The Interestings; Bareilles says it provided the emotional and musical direction for her adaptation.
Q: Who in The Interestings does Bareilles feel closest to?
A: She says she most closely identifies with Jules Jacobson—Jules’s mix of insecurity, wit, and yearning for meaning resonated with Bareilles on a personal level.
Q: What is the album where Bareilles explores themes of loss?
A: That album is Good Grief, which she recorded largely at Dreamland Studios in upstate New York and which channels experiences of loss and changed expectations into the songs.
Q: What practical career advice did Bareilles offer other artists?
A: Her recommendation is pragmatic: keep paying the bills—sometimes with odd jobs or side work—while you continue making the art that matters to you, rather than abandoning your creative path altogether.
Final thought: The Interestings and Bareilles’s response to it show how a single novel can reorient an artist’s work and help translate private sorrow into public art—if one is willing to sit with the discomfort and let the material change you.
Promotional link: I AM LEADER Presentation Book Set.
Related reading on magicvibes.co: The Sleep Window Linked to Healthier Biological Aging; Tolkien’s Impact on Victoria Aveyard and Tempest in 2026.
