Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba gets a brand-new song inspired by Dorothy in ‘Wicked: For Good’
‘Wicked: For Good’ trailer: Elphaba defies gravity again
Oscar nominees Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande reprise their roles as Elphaba and Glinda respectively in the musical sequel “Wicked: For Good.”
- “Wicked: For Good” (in theaters Friday, Nov. 21) includes two original songs by composer Stephen Schwartz.
- “No Place Like Home,” an emotional showcase for the ostracized Elphaba, is a callback to Dorothy’s famous “Wizard of Oz” line.
- Cynthia Erivo reprises her role as the misunderstood Wicked Witch of the West.
Spoiler alert! We’re discussing minor plot details about the movie musical “Wicked: For Good” (in theaters Nov. 21).
One of the most famous lines in movie history is taking on poignant new meaning.
In “Wicked: For Good,” the green witch Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) is given a stirring new song titled “No Place Like Home,” a nod to Dorothy’s heel-clicking declaration in 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz.”
Elphaba sings the ballad early in the movie musical, after she encounters a horde of frightened animals who are fleeing Oz’s tyrannical Wizard (Jeff Goldblum). She implores them to stay and fight in her rebellion against evil.
“Why do I love this place / That’s never loved me?” Elphaba sings, reasoning that Oz is more than just a place, but “a promise” and “an idea.” And so, she pleads, “When you feel like you can’t fight anymore / Just tell yourself / There’s no place like home.”
The uplifting anthem was written by “Wicked” composer Stephen Schwartz, who consulted with Erivo to ensure that the song was not only relevant to the dejected animals, but the ostracized Elphaba as well.
“The song in its original form was really beautiful, but he and I discussed making it connect to what she was actually going through,” Erivo tells USA TODAY.
“Before, it was sort of like a grand platitude to everyone, but it needed to really connect with her and her experience as well. So there were some lyric shifts and changes just to make it feel really human, because I think in the specificity, it then connects with everybody else as well.”
In the opening scene of “Wicked: For Good,” Elphaba frees a team of yaks that have been forced into constructing the Yellow Brick Road. The high-flying action sequence is new to the musical, which couldn’t capture the scope of the Wizard’s efforts to silence the animals on a Broadway stage.
Screenwriter Winnie Holzman says she wanted to explore how “the Yellow Brick Road was built by animal slave labor, and the ways in which they were being exploited by the Wizard and his spies. Within the musical, there’s an understanding that all of those things are happening (offstage), but this felt like a really great opportunity to show how the road came to exist.”
At the end of “No Place Like Home,” Elphaba offers words of hope for Oz’s future, singing, “If we just keep fighting for it / We will win back and restore it.” That message resonates even louder in 2025.
The film was written roughly five years ago, “and in 2020, there were certain things we were aware of, obviously,” Holzman says. “But we were really describing something that has a timeless quality. The whole idea of these clearly blameless beings being othered and treated with contempt, because it was convenient for the person in power ‒ that’s not just the story of right now, but a story that’s happened over and over and over again in history.
“We’re talking about something that we as humans keep confronting.”
