Jon M. Chu appears to have pulled off a rare feat. He’s shepherded a beloved Broadway stage musical to the screen in an adaptation that actually lives up to its predecessor. Judging by critical and public reaction on opening weekend, at least, “Wicked” is now on a short list of movies including “Chicago,” “Dreamgirls,” “Hedwig and the Angry Itch” and the recent remake of “West Side Story” that have successfully made that transition this century (and if you wanna debate that “Les Miserables,” “Hairspray” and “Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” pulled that off too, well, that’s your perogative). But the movie’s biggest surprise isn’t Chu’s cinematic talent. He proved them on the already underrated “In The Heights.” It’s the jaw-dropping performance of Ariana Grande as Glinda.
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Grande’s co-star, Cynthia Erivo, was always something of a given as the story’s other protagonist, Elphaba. Erivo is a Tony Award winner for “The Color Purple” and a two-time Oscar nominee for “Harriet.” She always had the chops. Grande, a two-time Grammy Award winner and 18-time nominee, was a Disney star as a teenager, and the closet she had come close to anything like “Wicked” was with a supporting role for a live broadcast of “Hairspray” in 2016. And despite her fantastic auditions, Chu thought he was going to have to guide her performance on set. He was wrong.
“When she showed up on set, she was so Glinda. I felt like I was meeting Glinda for the first time, the actual Glinda, and that the show was based on this Glinda,” Chu reveals. “And she had done some work. Whatever she was doing, she was fully immersed. She had done all the readings and all the practice. That’s very rare that you get to work with someone in their very first movie leading it, and you get the chance to play. And Cynthia upped her game in that [department] too. Cynthia’s so good that she’s pushing Ari as well. So, the two of them are rising, and Cynthia’s finding Elphaba at the same time, and we’re forming these new versions of these characters. And I knew at that point that this was going to be a discovery movie where people are going to discover these two people that they think they know. And that was exciting.”
During our conversation earlier this month, Chu discussed the toughest musical numbers to reconceptualize for the screen, how they worked out making the musical into two movies, and – major spoiler alert – how two incredible cameos became an integral part of the movie and much more.
(Again, if you have not seen the film and do not want the cameos spoiled, stop reading now.)
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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How quickly into this development process did you realize it was going to have to be two movies?
Fairly quickly? I felt like we had to. It was either taking out a bunch of songs, which just wasn’t going to work, or we had to change the story so much that it wasn’t recognizable. It became very clear from the beginning. And either way, we had to commit to two movies. Otherwise, each movie wouldn’t be good. We had to emotionally and just say we’re going. And in a way, I sort of knew in the back of my head if it didn’t work, we could always change it. But I had to get the whole Army to say, “We’re making two movies, let’s go,” and then we’ll figure it out. And that’s what started it all.
Spoiler alert to anyone who’s going to read this interview before seeing the movie but it ends with the musical’s signature song, “Defying Gravity.” How worried was Universal about making the second movie live up to the first?
Well, we did the architecture and the plumbing very early. I mean, we mapped it out, said, “O.K., if ‘Defying Gravity’ ends this, what does this need to be?” What does it need to mean to the audience? And what scenes do you need for that to actually work? She doesn’t actually confront the wizard when she discovers it. So, if you just go straight to the song and it’s just the song, then you really have nowhere else to go, and it ends oddly, and it never felt right. O.K., so she needs to confront it. There needs to be a chase. There needs to be some stuff. And then, ultimately, it can’t be just about the wizard. It has to be about her personal journey, her self-worth journey. And so she can’t just go and fly. She needs actually to confront herself and why she’s doing this. She has to earn that. And so then you move backward from there. “O.K., then what is this girl, and what does she want? O.K., how early can we meet her? O.K., and do we know her childhood? Do we see a little bit of that stuff?” And perspective-wise, if she’s dropping in the show on stage, we’re the audience. We’re with Glinda and Oz, and then this green girl drops in, and she’s like the joke in the movie, the audience takes a second to buy into the world. So weirdly, it’s like, “O.K., you’re buying into this world, and they sing and dance in this world.” That’s crazy. And then the girl who drops in, [Elphaba], is on our side. She’s the one who’s like, “Where the hell did I just walk into? It’s like “Pleasantville” or something, and what am I walking into? And then at some point though, in “Wizard and I,” she whispers her first notes, and you’re like, “Holy s**t, she can sing. She is going to dominate this place, and she’s not quite ready.” So for us, it’s finding those little things in the medium of it, the architecture to pull through. Once we realized that was the shift, that the joke was different, then it allowed us to see this movie as one and then the next movie. If the first movie is choices, the next movie is consequences. And if Glinda isn’t able to make that choice in this one, she needs to have that sort of journey in the second one.
Cynthia Arrivo is an Oscar nominee. She is a Tony Award winner. I knew she was going to be great. What I did not expect was just how utterly fantastic Ariana would be. You can have auditions. You can get excited in rehearsals, but when did you know she was going to knock this out of the park?
There were two moments. I would say she had a higher bar only because she has to get over the image of Ariana Grande, which is a very specific feel, which is very different than Glinda. And so every time she came in, I was like, there’s no way she’s going to be able to do this. No way she can be vulnerable enough to do this. And she would come in, and she became Glinda. Of course, she was funny. She’s naturally funny. You get that. But the emotional complexity was something that she was understanding from the very beginning, even if she wasn’t quite technically there yet. Then the second time she came in, she came in without her Ariana Grande hair and the stuff, and you’re like, “Oh, I don’t even recognize her. This is interesting. Now I’m really interested.” And the third time she came in, you’re like, “Wow, she’s more interesting than all these other people we just saw who are great people and great performers, but this Glinda is different. I don’t know what it is.” And that’s when we knew like, “Wow, she’s got a chance at this.” And when she came in the last time, it was very clear she was the most interesting person. When she showed up on set, I thought, “O.K., I’m going to have to help train her. She’s never carried a movie before.” But when she showed up on set, she was so Glinda. I felt like I was meeting Glinda for the first time, the actual Glinda, and that the show was based on this Glinda. And she had done some work. Whatever she was doing, she was fully immersed. She had done all the readings and all the practice. And so now I got to play with her. And that’s very rare that you get to work with someone in their very first movie leading it, and you get the chance to play. And Cynthia upped her game in that [department] too. Cynthia’s so good that she’s pushing Ari as well. So, the two of them are rising, and Cynthia’s finding Elphaba at the same time, and we’re forming these new versions of these characters. And I knew at that point that this was going to be a discovery movie where people are going to discover these two people that they think they know. And that was exciting.
Which musical number was the toughest for you to conceptualize and pull off? What was the one that made you worry when you went to sleep?
O.K., that’s good. I mean, “Defying Gravity” for sure, because you don’t want to break that song up, but you kind of have to for it to be the end of the movie. And you have to really milk what’s happening. And there are big things happening in that. But I would say “Dancing Through Life” was the most scary in a way. Because yes, you have the Jonathan Bailey stuff, which is great and wonderful, but [that number] was uncharted territory. Again, in the show, it’s sort of a joke. She does silly moves and everybody follows, and you get it early, but with this we want it to be the center of the heart of this movie where she’s not going to just be silly when she dances. She’s going to find out how she moves. And when you try to define something by movement, that is not something you can write down. That’s not something you can plan. We had to do the work. We had to sit there and she had to be vulnerable and try things and then look silly sometimes, and then pull back. And we had to find this. And how do you do that in silence in the middle of a number? And whereas Glinda, who has to walk this very fine line, I’m not being an ***hole in [saying] that, but actually finding themselves and when they first touch hands, how do they then meld together? That was done bit by bit. Everyone had to trust each other. We were holding hands and trying to figure this out. And I’m so proud of that it actually worked out. And that is the crux of their relationship.
How many meetings and conversations to figure out how to work in the O.G. Elphaba and Glinda, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth into this? And also, apologies, I saw the stage musical a decade ago. Are they singing a song that’s already in the show, or is it a new version of a song?
Yes. So, it’s within “One Short Day,” which exists in the show, and there’s a “Wizomania” number, but the “Wizomania” number is expanded. So the actual beginning of “Wizomania” in the show is the second half of this. The show that’s on the stage of “Wizomania” is a new part of this song. So, it’s not a full new song, but it is a full new part of this song.
This is why it doesn’t qualify for the Original Song Oscar.
Correct. Yes. It’s its own thing. And it didn’t take much [convincing]. They wanted to be a part of this. It just meant that what we needed to give them was something that honored them, and I mean, they didn’t ask for this. We wanted to do that. That wasn’t just opening a door for the girls. That would be annoying. We needed them to do their thing. And also, they’re in their prime. Let’s give ’em something to chew on. And so the fact that they were the wise women of Oz and that they were telling backstory that we needed to know about and all this stuff, but that they got to be glamorous and the most famous actors in all of Emerald City! To me, that was so fun. And they could be funny, and it was really beautiful. I mean, we had them for one night. We snuck them into London, and it was raining that night, so we had to build this giant cover, and we couldn’t get out of there. But it was beautiful. It felt very healing for all of us to be together, to have these two groups of people from the original show from us. That passing of the baton happened that night, and it felt beautiful.
My last question for you is from the first movie, is there one part of the set that you just loved the most?
I mean, Shiz was amazing to see. I had watched a behind-the-scenes of “Hook” when I was a kid and saw the dock that they built and all the lost boys jumping into the water. And I thought, “How do you get to do that as your job to make a movie and have water and things?” And so when I was on Shiz, and you see these boats coming in and the hundreds of extras in their Shiz uniforms, and Glinda is on the top with all her bags, and she’s singing, and it’s Ariana Grande, and there’s a rainbow arch. It just felt like, “Wow, we’re making movies. This feels like ‘Cleopatra,’ ‘Ben Hur.‘ This is a movie.” And the audience, I think is going to feel that. And that was exciting.
“Wicked” is now in theaters nationwide.