Wicked Director Almost Cast 'No-Namers' Before Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo: Why He Changed His Mind

Elphaba and Glinda could look very different on the big screen.

Wicked director Jon M. Chu revealed in a recent interview with SFX magazine that was before Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande landed the lead roles in the upcoming highly anticipated film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical he originally considered “no-namers.”

“I wanted to have a very clear list Wicked,” recalled Chu, 45. “It’s a big enough property in itself, so we can detect two people. I said, ‘We will find the unnamed.’ ”

“But then we got calls from all these great actresses who wanted to audition and we saw everything, and they were all really great,” he added. “Anyone could have played this role, except there were two people who were supposed to play this role, for this particular film at this particular time.”

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Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande entered Wicked (2024).

Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

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Chu said that the “songs” in the two-part film are “emotionally important…that the person doing it has to go in and out of the song so easily that it’s like butter, like they don’t even notice,” which is something they realized when they were going through the auditions.

“It means having good skills within your skill set,” he added.

Erivo, 37, and Grande, 31, bring to life the characters who first rose to fame in 2003’s The Great White Way, with Idina Menzel as the original Elphaba and Kristin Chenoweth as the original Glinda.

The cast WickedThe film adaptation also stars Jonathan Bailey as Fiyer, Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard, Marissa Bode as Nessarose, Bowen Yang as Pfannee, Keala Settle as Miss Coddle, Ethan Slater as Boq, Peter Dinklage as Dr. Dillamond and Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible.

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Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo at the Australian premiere of the film Wicked in Sydney on November 3, 2024.

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Apparently, filming the movie was an emotional experience not only for Grande but for everyone else on set, according to the two-time Grammy winner.

“I, everybody, everybody cried every day,” she recalled on the Friday, Nov. 1, episode of the Broadway Podcast Network. Sentimental men podcast.

Giving a shout-out to director Chu and actors Eriva and Bailey, 36, the “7 Rings” singer said: “Everyone was crying. It was really beautiful.”

“So that was horrible,” Grande added wryly.

Wicked will be released in two parts, the first of which will hit theaters on November 22.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education