Little Voice, which was also the name of Bareilles’ 2007 album, follows an up-and-coming singer-songwriter Bess King (Brittany O’Grady) trying to balance family, work, and launching her music career in New York City. As Bareilles tells it, she met executive producer J.J. Abrams at an event in Washington, DC and he invited her to come in for a meeting with his company, Bad Robot, next time she was in Los Angeles. She took him up on that offer and he brought up the idea about her working in television.
“It was not something I had even considered would come up in the meeting, to be honest. It was so off my map,” she said.