Wicked Star Marissa Bode Teases How Part 2 Will Depart Dramatically from Stage Musical: 'Less Like a Fixing Moment'

Wicked star Marissa Bode teases a big moment that audiences have yet to look forward to.

Bode, 24, stars as Nessarose in the Jon M. Chu-directed adaptation of the hit Broadway hit. The sister of Elphaba, the potential villain of Cynthia Erivo, the character uses a wheelchair and, in Wicked: Part Two (in theaters November 26, 2025), becomes the Wicked Witch of the East terrorizing Munchkinland.

“One of the first conversations I had with Jon,” Bode tells PEOPLE, was about a pivotal scene in the second act of the show. Spoiler alert: the bejeweled silver slippers that Nessarose inherited from her mother are enchanted with magic that allows the wearer to stand and walk. When the character realizes that Elphaba and her Grimmerie spellbook can affect her disability, she begs her sister to do so.

Marissa Bode fell in her wheelchair during filming Wicked Dance point “Dance through life”

“I wasn’t there for the actual script change,” the actress teases, but Chu told her, “‘Hey, we changed this part this way just so it feels less like a make-up moment.'”

Instead of Nessarose “begging to fix the disability,” she says, Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox’s script instead “just focuses on magic in general and the magic of the story.”

Marissa Bode Nov 18

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Bode adds, “And that’s all I can say, I think!”

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By Stephen Schwartz Wicked debuted on Broadway in 2003, Nessarose has never been played by a wheelchair user. Bode broke that trend in her feature film debut. Chu, 45, and his team created a “safe space” to allow her to “be vulnerable” on camera, she tells PEOPLE.

“I know there is a way to make, maybe not everything, but a hell of a lot of things accessible if you really want to and if you really ask the right questions of people with disabilities,” says Bode. “The national team is not the only thing that will save us as people with disabilities. We need a community. We need people without disabilities to make our spaces accessible.”

(L-R:) Jonathan Bailey, Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode, Ethan Slater and Jon M. Chu at the NYC premiere of ‘Wicked: Part One’ on November 14.

Taylor Hill/FilmMagic

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“If the first part is about the election, the second part is about the consequences,” Chu said Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview teasing the next installment. The characters—probably including Nessarose and Elphaba—will “wonder, ‘Is this the right decision you’ve made?’

Wicked: Part One it’s in theaters now, with The second part scheduled for November 26, 2025. Take a look behind the scenes Wicked with a new special issue of PEOPLE, available here.

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Source: HIS Education