Colleen Ballinger, best known for her awkward and weird YouTube-famous character Miranda Sings, will make her Broadway debut in “Waitress” this summer.
Ballinger will appear in the musical starting Aug. 20, in a limited four-week engagement through Sept. 15.
“Waitress,” based on the 2007 movie written by Adrienne Shelly, is scored by singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles. It tells the story of Jenna, a waitress and expert pie-maker who dreams of a way out of her small town and rocky marriage. Ballinger will play Dawn, a fellow waitress who’s one of Jenna’s only friends.
For Ballinger, who’s a classically trained singer, coming to Broadway has been a lifelong dream. She first began posting videos as Miranda Sings — a woman-child who’s a terrible singer — on YouTube way back in 2008 as a joke for her theater friends. She tweeted the “Waitress” news Friday, saying in a video, “You don’t understand how exciting this is for me… This has literally been my dream since I could speak.”
Ballinger’s Miranda Sings channel has over 20 million followers on YouTube and over 3.5 billion views on her videos. She starred in two seasons Netflix original series “Haters Back Off” (as Miranda) and appears in the streaming service’s one-hour special, “Miranda Sings Live… You’re Welcome.”
In addition, Ballinger has appeared in Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” “Angry Birds 2,” and “Escape The Night With Joey Graceffa.” Ballinger is currently touring with her new one-woman show, “Who Wants My Kid?”
“Waitress” currently stars Shoshana Bean, Charity Angel Dawson, Caitlin Houlahan, Erich Bergen, Ben Thompson, Larry Marshall, Benny Elledge, Noah Galvin, Melody A. Betts, Tyrone Davis Jr., Andrew Fitch, Molly Hager, Jessie Hooker-Bailey, Arica Jackson, Molly Jobe, Brandon Kalm, Emily Koch, Matt Kumangai, Tess Murphy, Everleigh Rotunno, Stephanie Torns and Dan Tracy.
The musical opened April 24, 2016, at Broadway’s Brooks Atkinson Theatre. “Waitress” is the first Broadway musical to have all women in the four top creative-team spots, with a book by Jessie Nelson, a score by Bareilles, choreography by Lorin Latarro and direction by Tony Award-winner Diane Paulus.