Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande Talk the End of the Yellow Brick Road in Wicked: The Official Podcast —and I’m Hosting
Even so, shooting two drastically different films simultaneously was a huge challenge for everyone involved. “It actually was an extremely technical feat to go back and forth,” Chu said. “We all had to be in complete cohesion and understanding of where we were in the story emotionally.”
Each witch had a different technique for keeping everything straight. “Sense memory is something I use a lot,” Erivo told me. “So I had a perfume for Elphaba at different points of her life. There’s a scent that’s specific to Elphaba at the very beginning. Then there’s a scent for Elphaba at the end of the film.” The fragrance work helped ground Erivo, even when she was flying high as the Wicked Witch of the West. “You get that sense memory of, Oh, this is who I am today,” she said. “There’s something biological that happens when you smell something.”
To map out Glinda’s arc from popular girl to civil servant, Grande opted for a more visual approach. “I had a color-coding system,” she told me. “I had little tabs. We would tab each scene with which kind of insecurity was present or which incident was tapping on which childhood wound—things like that. It really helped me with the back-and-forth.” She also relied on a more old-fashioned technique: “Getting to know her as well as I possibly could, inside and out, was the most helpful thing,” Grande said. “Preparing in that way, a super actor-y way…. I’m a Stella Adler girl.”
For so much more on how Grande, Erivo, and the rest of the cast and crew made Wicked and Wicked: For Good, tune in to Wicked: The Official Podcast, which debuts new episodes every Thursday, beginning on October 30. In addition to appearing on the podcast, Erivo, Grande, and the cast of Wicked will star in an NBC special on November 6, Wicked: One Wonderful Night, which will see them perform songs from the stage musical alongside a full orchestra at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. I was in the audience for the filming of the show; trust me, it’s not to be missed.
