Interview: Sara Bareilles Talks About the Healing Power of Comedy and ‘Girls5eva’

Actress and singer/songwriter Sara Bareilles is, to put it simply, a musical icon. Not only does she have several Grammys, but she’s also recently earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Original Music And Lyrics for the Netflix show Girls5eva for her song “The Medium Time.”

Over Zoom, we chatted with Bareilles about her work on the show and about the meaning of the song. She talked about the healing power of comedy and how her character, Dawn, just wants everyone to be OK. Bareilles shared how the song she’s nominated for came about, and she talked about her instinctual musical writing process for Girls5Eva. She even spoke about her hopes for a fourth season of the show or even a musical. Read on for the full chat.

Ayla Ruby: So I’m very excited to chat. I love Girls5eva, so I tell everyone I know to watch it.

Sara Bareilles: Thank you. Me too. I love it. I’m like a massive fan of the show. I know I’m on it. It’s not cool, but I’m just like, I love it so much. It makes me so happy.

Ayla Ruby: Congratulations. This is your fourth nomination, I think. It’s an amazing achievement.

Sara Bareilles: That’s a crazy sentence.

Ayla Ruby: It’s well-earned though.

Sara Bareilles: Thank you. Thank you.

Ayla Ruby: What can you share about it? Can you talk about what it means for you or anything you want to talk about with that?

Sara Bareilles: Yeah. I mean, I think for me, my experience with this show in particular has been a really profound human experience. Some of that being born out of the fact that we started shooting at the height of COVID in October of 2020. Deeply traumatizing time for so many reasons, but also certainly what was going on globally. But personally, I lost my best friend to cancer at that time. So I went into this job in just a very sort of broken-open state. And there was so much healing and so much joy and so much connection and sisterhood and deep friendships that came out of this experience, that my love for this show and the world that it has offered me and the comfort it has offered me has been so deep and so meaningful.

And I also think that it really taught me, I think I may have been one of those people that thought that comedy is a little frivolous before. I am a big consumer of comedy. I love comedy, but I think there was maybe a part of me that wasn’t quite awake to how essential and how healing comedy is. And that is something I saw and experienced firsthand, but also just see in its effect on people that like, oh my gosh, it’s just so important to people, to bring people joy, to bring them connection, to give them a reason to laugh. It’s just a really profoundly helpful human thing to experience. So to get an acknowledgement for my songwriting offering for this show, it couldn’t be more meaningful.

Ayla Ruby: Let’s talk about the song a little bit, because again, you’re nominated for the song, which is lovely, and it’s so different than the rest of the show too. It’s got some sadness and wistfulness and it’s beautiful.

Sara Bareilles: Thank you.

Ayla Ruby: How did it come about? What was that like for you?

Sara Bareilles: Yeah. One of the seeds for the reason this song, the Medium Time sort of sounds, the way it sounds is from a day on set where we were actually singing a four-part harmony to a song called Ann Dowd about the actress Ann Dowd. This song never made it into the show, but we were singing about her illustrious career and how she disappears into her character. And we were just singing her name over and over and over again, and we were blissed out, just the happiest set, the four of us just singing Ann Dowd and just thrilled to be singing this amazing song about Ann Dowd.

And I remember logging that moment of just being like, “What if this moment of the medium time is really a chance for them to stop and take stock and just enjoy singing with each other?” So I took a really simplistic approach to it, and I thought something sort of soulful and a little bit bluesy would fit the moment. Like you said, it has some wistfulness to it. I think there’s something about the theme of taking stock, of being somewhere in the middle and letting that be a joyful recognition that the middle is the riddle of it all, that we can take off the pressure of fixating on the next mountaintop.

What freedom does that offer you to actually stop needing to be somewhere else? I think I love that theme for these characters. I love that theme for these women, myself included. I love that theme for people in general. What if we give ourselves a break and we actually just say thank you for what’s in front of us?

Ayla Ruby: There’s such a freedom there, and that’s really, that’s beautiful.

Sara Bareilles: Yeah, agreed, agreed. I mean, I think it’s a lesson that you have to actively try to cultivate in your life. It’s hard. We’re in a culture of achieve, achieve, achieve and success and grow and more. And I just think it’s actually kind of counterintuitive to what your soul is actually asking for.

Ayla Ruby: So the music is one part and the lyrics are one part. How did that work out? How did the music itself come and the lyrics itself come? Can you talk about that?

Sara Bareilles: Yeah. I mean, for me, the process is often quite integrated, so music and lyrics, I don’t tend to be someone who writes. I mean, I guess if anything, the lyrics come trailing in a little bit behind. But lots of times they’re coming in, I wouldn’t say in lockstep, but they’re coming in as sisters. The feeling of the tone of the words that are coming are being reflected in the musical cadence, in the chord choice. Are we talking about something optimistic or is it in a minor key because we’re feeling sad? There’s lots of ways that I think the music and lyrics end up just speaking to each other, so for me, especially with the song, my writing for Girls5eva has remained really instinctual. I try actually not to do a ton of back edit, edit, edit. I try to really listen to what’s coming through naturally. And this song, when I finally got there, it came pretty quickly, which I was grateful for.

Ayla Ruby: How does that work all with story? Because obviously, there’s a narrative of the show, and how does that work in marrying that with the music and figuring out how that works?

Sara Bareilles: Yeah. I mean, the nice thing is that Meredith Scardino our creator and showrunner, she’s an amazing resource for making the music. Not only is our music team and our music department just like badass, but Meredith is, nobody knows these characters better than she does, and she’s an amazing place to go, to be like, “Am I on track? This is what I think this song is going to be saying.” She’ll be really forthcoming if she’s like, “I think it needs more of this, or more of that.”

But for this song in particular, I mean, I remember sending it to her and saying, “I don’t think it’s that funny. It’s not a funny moment.” She’s like, “I think it’s… ” She’s like, “I’m crying in the Adidas store,” is actually what she’s she said to me. But I think that’s one of the things that I, as Sara and Dawn can bring to the group is she’s all heart. It’s like she’s neurotic as hell and has all of her anxieties, but really it’s just this ache to want everyone to be okay. And I relate to that so deeply. So I think this is a really beautiful moment for all the women to stand together and just be like, “Look at this empty fucking theater and forget it. We did this.”

Ayla Ruby: Except for Richard Kind.

Sara Bareilles: I just love that.

Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. So I talked to her and she was just lovely and her love for the show and her joy of the show was fantastic.

Sara Bareilles: I agree. Yeah.

Ayla Ruby: So backing out a little bit to the season a little bit, was there anything for you as an actress that was fun to do or challenging or that you would love to talk about?

Sara Bareilles: I got to be pregnant the whole time. I got these giant prosthetic bellies. It got old, I’m not going to lie, having a plastic thing on your belly all day and it’s sweaty and it’s hot and it’s uncomfortable. But it was really cool to sort of feel into the experience of that. And also one of the things that I thought Meredith did so beautifully, especially with my character Dawn, is that it wasn’t the only thing that Dawn was about this season. I think oftentimes we see a woman going through a pregnancy journey and it becomes, understandably, but it’s the only focal point. It’s the only point of entry for interest in their character or what they’re doing.

And I just think it was a really beautiful choice to make it just be one flavor of the things Dawn is going through this season. I thought that was really smart and really feminist and fucking cool. So yeah, that was especially fun. And are you kidding me? I love being on the road. I was having so many flashbacks to being in some disgusting green room somewhere trying to change my clothes in the corner. And just watching these girls figure it out being on tour was just really, really fun.

Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. Do you have any hopes for Dawn for the future or for the show? I know we’re starting to get close on time. Is there anything you want to share?

Sara Bareilles: My hopes for this show is that it goes on and on and on. I mean, I want the world of Girls5eva to be just no end in sight. I would love to see a fourth season. I would love to see a movie. Someone brought up, there was like, “Would you do a Girls5eva musical?” And I was like, “Oh, I hadn’t thought about that, but maybe.” I would be up for any and all of it. I just think it’s such a special show. It has so much heart and wit and intelligence. It’s a show that I really want to see have an even bigger life in the zeitgeist. So I really root for this show and not just because I’m on it, I swear.

Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for chatting, and again, congratulations on the nomination.

Sara Bareilles: Thank you so much. Thank you.