Goodbye, yellow brick road. On November 21, Jon M. Chu’s second Wicked film premieres, bringing back Oscar nominees Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande as Elphaba and Glinda—who have gone from accidental roommates at Shiz University to Oz’s most feared and most beloved witches, respectively. Vanity Fair has teamed up with Universal Pictures for Wicked: The Official Podcast, an all-access pass into the land of Oz, with Chu, Erivo, Grande, and more closing the book on their adaptation of the Broadway musical.
Oh, and I’m hosting it.
“I’m quite excited for people to see how far these characters have come and what the progress has been between the time you left them and where they are now,” Erivo told me on the podcast. “It’s a big journey.”
“It feels beautiful,” Grande said in a separate interview. “It feels really special to finally be able to share this with the world, because for us it was simultaneous. We’ve had so many secrets for such a long time—to finally be able to share the full story with everyone is so exciting.”
For me, Wicked has always been more than just a musical. As you’ll hear many times on the podcast, I first saw Wicked on Broadway for my 11th birthday way back in 2004, and it’s stuck with me—like a handprint on my heart—ever since. I’ve been lucky enough to have covered Wicked for Vanity Fair multiple times—from the 2021 announcement that Erivo and Grande would be playing Elphaba and Glinda to their iconic performance opening the 2025 Oscar ceremony. Along the way, I suggested that Grande and Erivo switch roles (thank goodness that didn’t happen), gave the first looks at Wicked and the Wicked: For Good trailer, and got to spend quality time with both Erivo and Grande for Vanity Fair’s November 2024 cover story, “Friends in High Places.” Not bad for a kid who’s been belting “Defying Gravity” in his shower for more than 20 years.
But now I’m going more in depth with our favorite witches for an eight-episode podcast about all things Wicked: For Good, which concludes the story that began in the first film. “We wanted to make sure everyone knew this was always supposed to be a bigger piece,” Chu told me on the podcast. “This was the vision from the very beginning. It is what we intended from the first frame of movie one—that we leave Oz more full than maybe it’s ever been.” I interviewed the cast and crew responsible for bringing Wicked to life, including actors like Jonathan Bailey and Jeff Goldblum; members of the creative team, such as Oscar winners Paul Tazewell and Nathan Crowley; and the duo responsible for the stage musical, Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz—plus many, many more.
It quickly became clear that no one was prepared for how big the first Wicked would be when it premiered on November 22, 2024—least of all its two stars, featured here in exclusive photos with Chu and the rest of the Wicked cast. “It was really overwhelming,” Erivo said of the reception to the movie, which scored 10 Oscar nominations and now reigns as the highest-grossing film adaptation of a Broadway musical. “You kind of know when something is special. You know when something feels good. But you don’t know how other people will take it. You don’t know what the reaction will be until the reaction happens.”
The Emmy, Grammy, and Tony winner scored her third Oscar nomination and second best-actress nod for her barn-burning portrayal of Elphaba Thropp, a green girl who dreams of meeting Goldblum’s Wizard. “As it was happening, even I was like, Wow, this is really something. This is actually taking on a life of its own. That’s not something you can really orchestrate. It just sort of happened.”
“It’s extraordinary,” Grande said. “We just had to focus on the work and not worry about what was on the other side of it. We had to focus on honoring these characters and the story, and not let the monsters of ‘What are people gonna think?’ or ‘Is it gonna be good enough? Is it gonna be what the fans want?’—not let that in the room while we were creating it.”
That massive response was drummed up in no small part by Erivo and Grande’s sensational press tour. You remember it: Erivo and Grande wearing matching green and pink jerseys at Super Bowl LVIII. The duo posing in front of the Eiffel Tower to kick off the Paris Olympics, decked out in their signature colors—green and pink, of course. Everywhere you looked, there they were: Erivo, delivering a truly impeccable vocal performance in tribute to Quincy Jones at the Grammys, proving her Elphaba bona fides; Grande, showcasing her natural comedic chops while hosting an episode of the 50th season of Saturday Night Live, proving she was the only choice to play Glinda. And oh, look at them both, baffled, bewildered, and attempting to “hold space” for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity.”
But that was all in service of part one of a two-part extravaganza. When I interviewed Grande and Erivo for my cover story more than a year ago, they had opposite reactions to the prospect of Wicked: For Good hitting theaters. “I keep having to remind myself, Wait a minute, we have another movie to do next,” Erivo said. “I remember it every day,” Grande quipped.
Now that day has come. Anticipation is high for the second film, which is based on act two of the Wicked stage musical. Luckily, Erivo and Grande could put their trust in Chu. “[Jon] has a grand vision, but is also so open to the intimacy of creating with the person who’s playing a character,” Erivo said of Chu’s collaborative spirit. “It feels like you’re back at drama school, discovering things, creating things from scratch, because it does become that detailed, crystallized moment between the two of you—about who you are playing and what you want to get from them and the story you want to tell.”
In Grande’s opinion, Chu is “the most empathetic person on this planet.” “There’s no one more specific and there’s no one more loving,” she said. “He approaches every single beat with such thoughtfulness and integrity. Everything means something.”
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.
And then, on November 21, the second film officially hits theaters, bringing closure to a project that has ruled Erivo’s and Grande’s worlds for the past half decade. “I feel that the time went by really quickly,” Erivo told me in disbelief. “I blinked and we were here. So much has happened between then and now—so many wonderful things, so many wonderful experiences. That we’re coming to the end, literally, of the yellow brick road is just insane.”
“It’s about damn time,” Grande said wryly. “I feel so grateful. I feel so excited. This second half has been a huge secret for years now, and yet the first part was happening at the same time as the second part. So for us, they’re intertwined irrevocably—one doesn’t exist without the other.”
But while their Wicked journey may be winding down, they know—we all know—that it will never really be over. “I honestly don’t think that this is going to leave our lives for a very long time,” Erivo said. “I think this might be stuck with us for quite some time.” She smiled. “But it’s a wonderful thing to be stuck with.”
The post Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande Talk the End of the Yellow Brick Road in ‘Wicked: The Official Podcast’—And I’m Hosting appeared first on Vanity Fair.
