Cynthia Erivo & Ariana Grande Break Down ‘Wicked: For Good’

Cynthia Erivo & Ariana Grande Break Down ‘Wicked: For Good’

It’s very hard to like green. It’s hard to like green. And standing next to a pink blob is terrible as well. It’s like, what do you mean it’s the most delightful off of the green? It’s like beautiful. It’s delightful. I love it. I would do it every single day of my life if you let me. Because I knew you. You’re the only friend I ever had. Because I knew you. And I’ve have so many friends. I have been changed for you, but only one that mattered. Congratulations to you all. Tell us a little bit about what the vision was for the second film and how you could have knew that even as you were shooting both of them at the same time. Well, the first movie was the fairy tale and then movie two was oh, life keeps going and now this dream is shattered in front of us and what are we going to do with these pieces? You have the knowledge, you have the book, you know the truth. Now, who are you going to be? I think that really helped us frame it throughout. You know, 15 weeks after we shot it, we had both movies so that we knew the master plan. The advantage was we were shooting um what is this feeling one day and they’re in students and the next day we could be shooting for good, which by the way happened on a rain cover day, so we didn’t even know we were about to go there and every department had to be on the same page of of how we were connecting these two stories. Um, and we had a giant war room with emotions on each scene, so we could always just go in there and figure it out. So, that’s the shortened version of how it was. But, it was a lot. I’m exhausted, Mark. As the best is when you get Cynthia to laugh, then you feel good about yourself. Laugh of recognition, maybe. Mark, as someone who’s been with this uh for as long as you have, um, and knowing that you were able to expand the material through these two films, what were some of the opportunities you saw in being able to flesh out this second act, particularly we have a couple original songs, which I will ask a little bit more in a moment, um, and just kind of deepening the story of these characters. Well, the second act of the show, you can only be on stage for so long and then you have to send folks home. And so there was a lot that wasn’t elaborated and it allowed us to sort of dig deeper into some of the characters. Particularly in the second film, we got to go a little bit back to where to begin for Glenda. Why is she living this kind of life that she is where she’s made a choice in the first film and is seemingly willing to let her friend go and uh live a lie. So one of the examples of the elaboration the second film is that Glenda could hear the mob screaming kill her kill her friend and she tries to shut it out and she no longer can. So being able to see her decisionmaking through a song is good musical storytelling. Cynthia with No Place Like Home there is this sense of loneliness that you project so beautifully through Alphaba in this movie and and that song really grounds it. So talk about getting ready to perform that and how that helped you. Yeah. Um when when the song was presented in its original form, it was really really beautiful. But there was something that I was asking Steven Schwarz for whilst we were making it. And that was just to really funnel her her inner um most feelings about how this place doesn’t want her and how she’s faced with the choice to either stay in it and keep fighting or to let it go. It’s a sort of an inflection point for her to to make another decision as to whether or not she can continue to live this lonely solo life of solitude. And I think she she’s willing to if it means that it will move this place forward and change things, then she goes on and finds that she can’t really do it by herself. Yeah. It’s interesting Glenda gets to hear the mob in this film because the song The Girl in the Bubble, I think, very much is about what it means for her to sort of face what is going on. Um, so Ariana, talk about that song and what Glenda’s going on around that and how you wanted to play it. It’s an interesting thing in this film because both Alphaba and Glenda are very alone even though it presents itself in a completely different way. You know, Glenda has so many people around her telling her that she’s important and that she’s loved. And um, the end of movie one, she’s grieving. You know, the first stage of grief is denial. So, she’s in deep denial for a lot of this um this second film in the beginning. And this is kind of the moment where we get to see her actually face the truth in the stage show. You see the before and after of this moment. You see her get there in the end, but to be able to share that moment with her and to be able to expand upon her story in this way is such an incredible gift. And I’m so grateful that um this moment is able to be seen. Myin, I’m curious as this phenomenon really started, what you can share about maybe what the discovery process of this film was even right through to the end and and what it was like to to see those final pieces come together. Um I was completely terrified because of the success of the first film. We had to deliver for the studio and the fans and Mark Platt who had entrusted it and John and then of course R and Cynthia who had just great gave this incredible performance. What I wanted to do is make sure that I connected to the characters emotionally. Even though I wanted to make, you know, No Good Deed the most badass musical number ever or, you know, the cyclone with Morable or the comedy in um the cat fight going into the melodrama. You know, I love that I get to do all this and play, but at the end of the day, I wanted to connect and deliver emotionally what these two characters um meant to each other and make it feel epic and make it worthy of these incredible performances. Let’s talk a little bit about For Good. Um you mentioned it was a rain cover, which is amaz. They were really mad at me. So, I’m going to throw that We had no idea what was happening. I just did it. I’m going to throw that to you, Alice, because I’m just curious how that made it more challenging to shoot. what you could say about yeah getting that sequence right for good was probably one of the most challenging um sequences to shoot. We chose to use real flame light to light Cynthia and Ariana to light this moment. And I sort of had an idea about using every color of the rainbow to light this movie and what they meant. And for me, orange was the color of Alphaba’s transformation. And then blue is the color of love for for Glenda and Alphaba. And you first see it in the Ozdes ballroom. And we use the same color blue in the Moonlight um in for good. And then we’re I did not know this. I loved this song more than any song in both movies. and I knew what they were going to give to it. And then John Chu wanted it to feel so simple and quiet. We kept trying to do this big crane shot to end the song and it didn’t work. We go back to our emotional intention and we realize it needs to be a 360° shot on the women. They get to be in the moment together without cutting and it is beautiful. and we circle them twice and it calls us back to define gravity where we circled them once and in the Odess ballroom and pulls at your heartstrings even more. I’ll give you the last words. I just I was going to say um yes, we we’re very happy to have been part of this to play these characters. We wanted to take care of them because we love them, but we know that they are loved by everyone here. What I was going to say um was is going in the direction of Miss Alice. I never really look at the takes. I never really go back to take a look at the screen, but I took a look this one time and I can’t tell what’s going on cuz it’s a big blue screen and then we’ve got plints everywhere and I’m doing stunts. I’m in a harness and all these things, but Alice in a quiet moment comes over to me and she sits by me. She goes, I’m going to take care of you. You know that. She said, “Don’t worry about the screens. I’m going to take care of you.” I have never forgotten that moment because every time I go back to this movie, I know I’ve been taken care of. You can’t tell what’s very hard to I’m gonna be very It’s very hard to like green. You know, it’s hard to like green. Okay. Standing next to a pink blob is terrible as well. It’s like, what do you mean? This is the most delightful off of the green. It’s like delightful. I love it. I do it every single day of my life if you let me. Every day. But it made things for Alice really hard. Yeah. But instead of making this green uh a a a task, she made it art. She made it art. She made it a part of the the palette. She made it something to look forward to lighting, something to to to She made me feel beautiful. And you were beautiful. You are beautiful. You are beautiful. Thank you. So, thank you. I think that’s the best note we can end on. Thank you all so so much. Thank you all so much. Thank you all so much.

‘Wicked: For Good’ Academy Conversation with:
Jon M. Chu (Director)
Marc Platt p.g.a. (Producer)
Cynthia Erivo (Actor)
Ariana Grande (Actor)
Myron Kerstein (Editor)
Alice Brooks (Cinematographer)

Moderated by: David Canfield

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‘Wicked: For Good’ with Cynthia Erivo, Arana Grande, Jon M. Chu & Marc Platt | Academy Conversations

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