‘Wicked’ Spoiler Interview: Jon M. Chu on Expanding ‘Defying Gravity,’ Cutting Lines and Splitting the Musical in Two — Plus, Will Dorothy Pop Up in ‘Part 2’?
Jon M. Chu counted himself a fan of “Wicked” long before he was hired to direct the big-budget movie adaptation of the popular Broadway musical.
So it was a question of where, not if, he should pay homage to Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, who originated the stage roles of Elphaba and Glinda, in the two-part film, the first of which landed in theaters on Nov. 22. After much deliberation among Oz’s powers that be, it was decided they would appear in the movie as the stars of Wizomania, an expanded show within the show that plays out when Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) visit the Emerald City during the song “One Short Day.”
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“I told them, ‘I want you to experience for the first time what you gave us.’ I saw Idina and Kristin as they were workshopping the show at the Curran Theatre [in 2003]. I’ll never forget being blown away by their performances,” Chu recalls, lounging on the couch at Manhattan’s Bowery Hotel in an appropriately green sweater. “When they were on set, I think reality hit them and it was very full circle for them.”
“Wicked,” which introduced such classics as “Defying Gravity,” “Popular” and “For Good” into the Broadway pantheon, recounts everything that happens before Dorothy lands in Oz and saunters down that iconic Yellow Brick Road. The story takes place before, during and after “The Wizard of Oz” and charts the unlikely friendship of the green-skinned Elphaba (later known as the Wicked Witch of the West) and the perky, pink-loving Glinda (eventually dubbed Glinda the Good). “Part One” chronicles their time together at Shiz University, where they are forced to be roommates and eventually become besties. The second movie, which debuts on Nov. 21, 2025, picks up after Elphaba is fully in control of her powers and has been declared an enemy of the state by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh).
As “Wicked: Part One” opens on the big screen, Chu indulged Variety in a spoiler-filled chat about Menzel and Chenoweth’s cameos, sacred lines that were (and weren’t) cut from the script… and whether we’ll see more of Dorothy in “Part Two.”
“Wicked” was originally being developed as one movie. What did those earlier versions look like?
When I walked in, everyone was already in high-octane mode of debating: Do we need to do this in two movies? Other scripts that were trying to fit it into one movie were stripping many songs and changing the story in ways that didn’t quite make logical, emotional sense. You can get away with that on stage, but movie audiences are tougher. As we picked apart every script, I would ask certain questions that opened a lot of discussion. It became inevitable that we had to commit to two movies.
I imagine it didn’t take convincing to get Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel in the movie. But how did you find the right moment to include them?
They weren’t just going to come to do whatever. Our inner circle thought of all sorts of things to present to them. Does Kristin play Glinda’s mom? Are they one of the people who says “The Wizard will see you now”? It always felt underwhelming. We had to give them something big. We had this section in “Wizomania” that needed backstory that we didn’t need in the show: What is the Grimmerie? And an understanding of how the Wizard came to Oz. I was like, ‘What if we do this section as a play? It was supposed to be an amusement park ride like “It’s a Small World,” which was a fun concept. But if it’s a show, then it’s sort of meta. Idina and Kristin play the two most famous actors in Oz. They get to be glamorous and people get to applaud them. Stephen Schwartz immediately knew what to do and added Idina’s Elphaba war cry and interplay of pushing each other out of the way. It’s fun playing off the lore of two mega stars in the show.
Some quotable lines and lyrics, like “we’ll be late for Wizomania,” were cut. Were those difficult decisions given how intimately fans know the show?
When you don’t have a live audience to play off, some of the comedy doesn’t quite work. I remember when Ari read that we didn’t have the line “the Wizard will see you now!” There was a reason for it; they were more progressed in the geography. In rehearsals, we didn’t have it and every time that moment would happen, they would sing it anyway. Ari was like, “I promise you, we have to have it.” So I was like, “OK, let me figure it out. We built it in so there are two entrances now, but it was worth it.” There were debates all the time. In the beginning, when Glinda says “It’s good to see me, isn’t it?,” in the show she says, “No need to answer. That’s rhetorical.” But in the movie when she said the line, the joke didn’t land. Not because of the way she performed it. But because there’s no audience to give the feedback for it. We put fake Ozian reactions, but it was too meta, too early. That was a scary one to cut because it’s like a Bible line.
Why did you include a “The Wizard of Oz” homage with Dorothy, the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion walking down the Yellow Brick Road?
“The Wizard of Oz” is potentially a dream. It’s a world where there are no real stakes. Knowing that Elphaba and Glinda live in a world of real stakes, we had to reestablish with the audience that this was real. So we dropped everyone into the crime scene, maybe the most famous crime scene ever in cinema and literature, of the iconic hat in the puddle. We see the full landscape of Oz. It’s this living, breathing place with real cultures, so we immediately establish this is not a dream world. Seeing those four characters also triggers something in your mind; you connect those characters with this place. And we will revisit those characters in movie two.
Will Dorothy be a character in “Part Two”?
In the show, Dorothy is around. They have to intersect, and you can only tease it so much. I won’t say whether she’s a character, necessarily, in movie two. There’s a part of me that wants everyone’s Dorothy to be the whatever Dorothy they want. And yet, there is interaction and some crossover. So I’ll leave that up to “Part Two.”
Is it true that MGM has the copyright to the Yellow Brick Road and the ruby slippers? Did you need permission to reference them?
We had boundaries of what we could reference or not. We never use the ruby slippers. Nessa has on crystal slippers as in the Frank L. Baum book, Gregory Maguire book and the show. I don’t think the phrase “yellow brick road” is copywritten, but definitely the shape of the road is. We couldn’t do the spiral. We had to do a circle that continues to show it’s not where the road ends.
How did you decide where to add new characters and expand the plot?
We moved backward from “Defying Gravity.” What is Elphaba’s superpower? Her superpower is her relationship with nature and gravity. OK, so then you need to know more about her growing up. We added a scene where she’s young. Is it because she’s green or she has this power that everyone’s scared of her? It’s a bit muddy in the show. It has to be because of her power and her green. So then we had to show the power. So when she’s born, everything flies up. She expresses her frustrations and anxiety through this relationship with gravity. When she’s a kid and she’s bullied, she doesn’t know how to control it yet.
We also see that Glinda says “I know that was you down there” to Elphaba [about her powers] even though everyone believed Madame Morrible. It shows Glinda is actually smart and aware. She’s not this ditzy character. Those things were important to build characters. You also have to show passage of time, which is hard to do in the show and took space to do.
When first-look images of the film were released, people on social media were vocal about those photos being dark.
Yes. Tell them to turn up their brightness on their phone!
I was curious about your reaction, knowing the movie is bright and colorful and not necessarily reflective of those pictures.
I chose those images specifically. It was so early, and we had just started shooting. I wanted images that were evocative and provocative to show it’s not some bright, poppy story. We didn’t even have the effects done. The background was blue. I had to have VFX put in the sky. I was coloring it on my iPhone. We’re not doing this through a real process. I love playing in the shadows, but I did have my iPhone brightness very high. When I released the photos, literally from my iPhone, I realized, “Oh, everybody really doesn’t turn up their brightness that high.” I felt bad because I did that. There was no going through the studio.
How did you decide how to stage and slow down parts of “Defying Gravity”?
The nightmare of my life has been thinking about “Defying Gravity.” In the show, it’s very fast. She walks [away from] Wizard and goes into “I hope you’re happy.” It goes so fast that it doesn’t feel like the end of the movie and it doesn’t feel earned. Her whole journey leads to this. Doing it live was helpful. I didn’t know how long it would be until they acted those lines. We can’t add more words to “Defying Gravity.” So, what if when she thinks she’s ready to fly, she’s not, and she falls? That changed things for us.
It was very scary. The whole time I was like, “OK, we’ll test this and see how offended people are by this.” We definitely crunched it in to not spread it out so much. My own brain was like, “I just want to make sure the fast version isn’t actually working now.” We did those versions too, and we’re like, “No, we actually need all of this. This is much bigger than just a song. This is about the ending of a movie and journey of a character that we’ve invested in it so much.”
[Producer] Marc Platt was like, “Wow, you’re really breaking the song up….” We had those moments. We kicked the tires up all the time. There was not one stone unturned, not one thing that we did not question, because we knew how important this was. That’s why it kept me up at night.
Is there a number you felt benefitted going from stage to screen?
“Something Bad” is hard to do on stage. It’s in the classroom, and Dr. Dillamond has nothing to do. So this idea that they were having a secret meeting with all these animals, and the animals were not upright, creepy human animals, but actually animals, help us empathize with them more. There’s a community that’s being affected by this, and they’ve been keeping a secret record of all these incidents that are happening. There’s a darker underbelly to Oz.
Marketing for “Wicked” has been next level. How will you sustain the momentum for “Part Two” in November 2025?
I don’t know, but “Part Two,” I will say because I’ve cut “Part Two” together, is a doozy. You getting the meat. I did not know the context of where we’d be in society right now. It becomes eight times more relevant than before when you’re talking about truth and consequences of making the right or wrong choices. It’s intense.
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