Waitress: stage vs screen

Waitress began as Adrienne Shelly's 2007 film, a comedy-drama starring Keri Russell as Jenna, a small-town pie maker, with Nathan Fillion as her doctor. The stage musical, with music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles and a book by Jessie Nelson, opened on Broadway in 2016. It keeps the diner, the pies, and the affair, but turns the story into a show with a full pop score. Here is how the two compare.

Stage

Broadway musical (2016)

Screen

Waitress (2007), written and directed by Adrienne Shelly

1. The film has no songs, the musical has a full score

Shelly's 2007 film is a straight comedy-drama, so nobody sings their feelings. Bareilles wrote an original score for the stage, from the opening "What's Inside" to the finale, "Opening Up." Jenna gets the big ballad "She Used to Be Mine" in Act Two, and the diner staff sing about everything from baking to dating.

2. The affair with Dr. Pomatter gets its own songs

Both versions pair Jenna with Dr. Jim Pomatter, her new obstetrician, and both let the affair begin during her pregnancy. On stage, the relationship plays out in song: "Bad Idea" (Jenna, Pomatter, and the ensemble) closes Act One as the affair begins, and Pomatter and Jenna share "You Matter to Me" in Act Two. The film tells the same story through scenes and dialogue.

3. Dawn and Ogie get a comic courtship

In the film, Shelly herself played Dawn, the anxious waitress, and Eddie Jemison played Ogie Anhorn. The musical turns their romance into one of its comic centers. Dawn gets a solo, "When He Sees Me," and Ogie and Dawn lead "I Love You Like a Table" at their wedding. Christopher Fitzgerald's Ogie earned a 2016 Tony nomination. The wedding at the diner happens in both versions.

4. Earl is sung as well as seen

Jeremy Sisto plays Earl, Jenna's controlling husband, in the film, and Nick Cordero played him in the 2016 Broadway cast. Both versions include his demand that Jenna promise never to love the baby more than him. The musical gives that moment a song, "You Will Still Be Mine," for Earl and Jenna. In both, Jenna tells him after the birth that she wants a divorce.

5. Joe's envelope holds different news

Joe, the diner's elderly owner, hands Jenna an envelope at the hospital and tells her to wait before opening it. In the film, where Andy Griffith plays him, it holds a sketch of her on a card reading "To my only friend, start fresh" and a check for $270,450. In the musical, the envelope reveals that Joe has left her the diner in his will, along with a request that she name a pie after him.

6. The pie contest pays off only in the film

In both versions Jenna pins her hopes of escape on a pie contest, and Earl finds the money she has been hiding. The film then has Jenna win the contest and turn the diner into a restaurant called Lulu's Pies, named for her daughter. On stage, Earl takes the savings and the contest plan falls away. Joe's will gives Jenna the diner instead, and the show jumps ahead five years to her as owner and head chef of Lulu's Pies.

7. Adrienne Shelly's voice carries over

Shelly was murdered in November 2006, less than three months before the film's Sundance premiere, and Dawn was her last film role. When Nelson wrote the stage book, she used some of Shelly's unfinished scripts to keep her voice in the show. The 2016 Broadway production also made history by putting women in all four top creative roles.

8. A filmed version of the stage show also exists

If you saw Waitress at a cinema in 2023, you may have seen the stage musical, not the 2007 film. Waitress: The Musical is a recording of the 2021 Broadway run starring Sara Bareilles as Jenna and Drew Gehling as Dr. Pomatter. It premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June 2023 and reached cinemas on December 7, 2023.

Waitress movie vs musical: FAQs