Elphaba and Glinda aren’t the only ones who’ve been changed for good by Wicked.
Director Jon M. Chu, who oversaw the massive production of both Wicked and Wicked: For Good over the last five years, now admits he did a bit of defying gravity of his own in adapting the hit musical for the screen.
“I took this job and I was like, well, either my career is going to end and I’ll do more wedding and Bar Mitzvah videos, or we’re gonna do something extraordinary,” he said in a Q&A moderated by Vanity Fair‘s Rebecca Ford at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival on Sunday. “And there was only one way to go.”
As luck would have it, they headed into pre-production during the pandemic lockdown, so it was a leap of faith that he asked the cast and crew to come along with him. “I looked those girls in the eyes and I said, ‘I can’t say I have all the answers, but we’ve got to do this, and we’ve got to ignore everybody else,'” he said. “They say at some point you have to turn away from the audience and face the orchestra and conduct, and that’s what we agreed to do. So I had already shut off the outside world because whether you doubted Ariana, you doubted two movies, or you doubted this or you doubted that, we ignored it all and said when they find out, they’re going to thank us.”
And indeed they did: The first film more than proved the skeptics wrong — becoming a box-office triumph to the tune of $750 million and earning 10 Oscar nominations and winning two.
But that’s not to say the yellow-brick road to success was an easy one. One of the most challenging moments in his career, which includes Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights, he said, was the filming of Wicked. “It’s scary to take on a movie and these roles that everybody owns essentially — not just the Wicked fans, but The Wizard of Oz fans, fans of the book, fans of the movies,” he said. “So we were just always there with each other to kick the tires and just find the truth in this.”
His leading ladies were a fundamental part of that exploration, Chu said. “Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are so freaking talented — we knew that before, but when they took on these roles, it changed them, I’m not gonna say for good, but it changed them,” he said.
For Erivo, he recalled, “She was very scared about how we would portray what is essentially a caricature of a witch. The joke is, this is the Wicked Witch — look how crazy she is, she has sticks in her hair, and she wears a frock, and Cynthia’s like, ‘That’s just not how I’m going to present her. That’s not how I’m going to care about her. That’s not how I would see this character.'”
So Erivo asked for changes, pointing that the character didn’t talk enough: “I want more lines. I want her to be more involved in this stuff,” Chu said. “And so it was a very delicate balance of us finding it together. I understand all those concerns, and I actually really love this version of Elphaba you’re talking about, because the audience is going to be in Elphaba’s place, so we’re gonna get really deep into her. We have to actually go there with her.”
As every set was built, Chu and Erivo would have a conversation about Elphaba’s books, her clothes — and, of course, that laugh. “She does have to have a cackle, so let’s play with that, even if she felt uncomfortable about doing that,” he said.
The same was true with Grande for Glinda. “She had very specific idea of who Glinda was, because she loves Glinda, but then she started to live Glinda, and at a certain point I would say, ‘Oh, so this thing happens, you’re going jump over the box because it spills on the floor,'” he said. “And she would correct me, like, ‘No, she feels very pissy about this thing.'”
Now Chu has to prove himself all over again with Wicked: For Good, which follows Act 2 of the musical. “It was an interesting movie too, because people had certain feelings about Act 2,” he said. “I didn’t have as many pinpoints to be, like we have to do that thing that they’re waiting for. In movie two, the leash was off, and so it was in a weird way, it was about us saying, what do we want to know? What do we need to know?”
Chu said they approached the second film by raising questions about the consequences of the first film for every character. “Elphaba, you were so strong and standing up and going into the air to defy gravity, but that’s a harder choice than just that,” he said. “You’re alone. You’re fighting for things that you think are right, when everyone’s telling you you’re wrong, you’re wicked, and they don’t even want you there. You’re defending a home that doesn’t even have a place for you. Why? I think those questions are really hard when you feel so isolated in these decisions.”
And then there’s Glinda, who let her best friend go. “Now you’re complicit, and now you live in your bubble and you don’t have to actually engage at all, because you have a great life. But how long can that last for you?” he said. “Do you know who you really are? At what point will you pop your bubble, if ever?”
Those questions prompted the film’s two new songs — one each for Elphaba and Glinda. “Those were moments where we knew that the characters felt like we had to have a single song, and [Stephen] Schwartz was like, I know how to do that,” said Chu. “And when Schwartz says that, you let him go. He then sends you a voice memo, which is great with his first version of it, and you’re like, wow. The brilliance of Steven and Winnie [Holzman] is that they are great storytellers. They could bring out what it what Elphaba was really feeling in words that I never could.”
Elphaba’s new song — as performed by Erivo — is “No Place Like Home,” which Chu calls a “very provocative title in itself.” “It felt very relevant to even now, and even though it was written three years ago,” he says. And Glinda’s new song is “The Girl in the Bubble,” performed by Grande. “I wanted to watch her turn, and what was that language of watching her turn,” says Chu. “She had no one to talk to, so what made sense was a song, of course, as she looks back on her life and what she has become.”
Asked which character he relates to the most, “I’m probably Boq,” quipped Chu. “I’ve always felt like an underdog. I’ve always felt like people doubt and don’t believe that you can do what you aspire to do. I think they never see someone that looks like you to do this. That’s too big of a dream for someone like you. And so I always feel the need to prove myself. That motivates me.”
However audiences respond to the new film, Chu isn’t ready to process his feelings quite yet, given his five-year journey into Oz. “I think the end of this movie is about the possibilities of the unknown. It’s about embracing how beautiful that can be. It’s not a separation, it is the beginning of the new chapter,” he said. “And so I’m trusting that that’s what this will lead to and but either way, this has been an amazing journey to have all the people who love Wicked, to have everybody be part of the same family, has been the best I could ever do. I never thought I could do a movie at this scale of scope and have the whole world waiting to see the next one.”
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