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Now, that friendship is on display onstage.
Things have settled a little bit.
Gavin Creel: I still come offstage, and I stand in my dressing room.Where do I go now?
Everyone Ive talked to whos been inWaitresshas talked about how its such a prop-heavy show.
Its props on props, on props, on props.
Jenna touches absolutely everything.
Baking Can Do is the one where shes kind of touching the most things.
Once you get that down, you realize its possible.
[To Gavin] You handled the prop mishap last night when there were no prescription pads.
GB: I just went, Im going to write you a prescription for…
Instead of saying, This is your prescription for prenatal vitamins, da da da.
Just get on with it.
We have three productions, with London and our touring company.
Its my third time in the show.
Gavin was the first call to see if you would be, first of all, even available.
Then he said, Yes.
And all of the angels started singing in my head.
GC: Im a fan of the show, and a fan of hers and the music.
I have seeds to plant.
A garden to grow.
Actually, an actual garden.
She cant do more than a month, and Im busy in the spring, so its perfect.
Id read that you met performing at aTrue Colors Fund benefit concerta few years ago.
The cast was flipping out.
I didnt know a lot of her music.
So I went and said, I listened to the rest of this record and I loved it.
We were doing a pop star and a Broadway star coming and doing a show together.
She was one of the first people to jump in.
SB: I remember I did Rainbow Connection.
Thats one thing I remember singing, because I was wearing a rainbow dress.
I was watching Gavin from offstage.
What a unique and singular talent you have.
His voice is just one of my favorites.
We stayed friendly, then we became friends.
So that was before Sara had started working the music forWaitress.
And she would play me little bits.
When you were deciding what was going to be the opening number, she was going back and forth.
I remember being in her apartment.
Everyone else was like, No, it sounds too much like a Billy Joel song.
Which, theyre not wrong about that.
GC: She played me Down at the Diner.
I was like, Its an awesome song!
It was just neat to watch it develop.
Sara, there must have been some sense of intimidation coming from a pop world to theater.
GC: I want to know what changed.
Thats something I had to be taught.
GC: Thats exactly what I was talking about last night.
Ive been singing You Matter to Me for five years now, because I love that song.
Kate Baldwin always talks about that.
She says to students, You just gotta discover it.
You dont know it.
You gotta discover it.
Drew Gehling, who originated the role, is a master, and incredible performer partner.
Everything Im about to say about Gavin takes nothing away from how much I love him.
It does nobody any good for Gavin to step onstage and attempt to do something Drew does.
It only sings when Gavin gets to find his own individual component.
GC: What about Jessie Mueller, such a little theater goddess?
Everybodys gonna find their own version of it.
To me, thats really liberating.
GC: Did you find it, when you started the very first time?
SB: No, I think I did a lot of mimicking, initially.
I had seen the show hundreds of times.
Now I think Im finding my own path a little bit more.
GC: Its all her.
We dont have a good excuse not to be imaginative about who gets to be represented onstage.
GC: I grew up in Ohio, and Im like, Where is this diner in southern Indiana?
I grew up in white whitey-ville with mayonnaise on our bread.
Beautiful, wonderful people, but lack of diversity.
We have to entertain that we have the opportunity to represent a world that we want to see.
We have got to see different ages, and different sizes.
Sara, three years in, youvehosted the Tonys, you come into the show three times.
Gavin, would you like to do more theater projects?
GC: With her!
[More seriously] I mean it.
Youre hungry for voices like hers.
Whats the context for that?SB: He went to Hawaii, and I crashed his party.
Is this weird if I came to Hawaii?
And I was like, Not at all!
It could have been a fucking train wreck, and it was hilarious.
SB: He drove around and showed me his favorite beaches.
We went scuba diving, and on the way back they were like, Well stop at Turtle Town!
Im like, Great!
and swim out with 40 people.
Sarah was like, Im just gonna hang for a moment.
SB: Yeah, because my back was hurting.
I couldnt breathe, and he was like, Oh, shit!
Everyone made it back to the boat.
GC: She saved my life!
If you hadnt seen it, we probably would have been chum.
GC: And now were chums.
[They high-five.]
