1.
Cynthia Erivo wore prosthetic ears throughout the entire movie while playing Elphaba. Her ears are normally covered in piercings, so instead of taking them all out, she wore fitted coverings to hide everything completely.
2.
They planted and grew 9 million tulips to be part of the landscape for Munchkinland. In the musical, Munchkins are in charge of collecting color from the tulip field, so having real patches of flowers instead of CGI’ing them in afterwards was important.
3.
Both Nick and Joe Jonas auditioned to play Fiyero, but the role ultimately went to Jonathan Bailey. Nick said this about his audition: “I think it went really well. I was very happy coming out of the room. I’m a huge fan of the show, and that’s a role I always thought it would be fun to play. But I think Jonathan is going to do a great job.”
5.
It took upwards of four hours each morning to paint Cynthia’s body that signature shade of green. Depending on her costume for the day and how much of her skin needed to be visible (like, if they only needed to cover her head, neck, and hands), they could get that timing down to 2 hours and 45 minutes.
6.
The green “paint” also took about 45 minutes to wipe off at the end of each shoot, and they needed a special makeup remover to do it.
7.
According to Oscar-winner Frances Hannon, the hair and makeup supervisor for Wicked, her team’s hardest challenge was developing a shade of green that managed to look like skin rather than face paint. They went through multiple “green tests” to find the right shade, ultimately landing on something with a highlighter-yellow undertone because it read better on Cynthia’s darker skin and also “managed to reflect the light instead of absorb it.”
8.
Oscar-nominated costume designer Paul Tazewell also had an incredibly tough job. To prevent the green makeup from continuously staining all of Cynthia’s costumes, he created a colored skinsuit and also lined Cynthia’s outfits with dyed fabrics. This helped give the effect that her character was completely green without having to 1. paint her entire body, and 2. color-contaminate costumes, which would ruin the shot.
9.
Rather than relying on CGI, a ton of practical sets were built to film the movie because they wanted to make everything feel as “immersive” as possible. Here’s a closer look at what those sets actually looked like while being built, from the laying of the Yellow Brick Road to the spray-painting of the green floors.
10.
The movie sets also doubled as a recording studio, and that’s because Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo insisted on singing live while filming, rather than relying on pre-recordings. According to Ariana, sticking to a musical track would have been too limiting and wouldn’t have let them improvise or try new things. It also would have prevented more of an “emotional connection” between the characters, actors, and music. But, more importantly, they wanted to sing live “in solidarity with the women on Broadway who’ve done this eight shows a week.”
11.
And that’s especially impressive when you realize that Cynthia Erivo did her own stunts. Like, she was literally flying through the air in a corset and a harness while singing, which forced her to “shift the way she breathed” in order to sing properly.
12.
Ariana Grande’s “bubble” dress (which is worn as Glinda floats down from the sky) was a modernized interpretation of the iconic dress from The Wizard of Oz. It was originally pure pink, but the finished product ended up having rainbow undertones. Her crown is also designed as a series of circular bubbles that are stacked on top of each other. Here’s a closer look:
13.
But Elphaba’s dress was actually inspired by all the patterns and textures of different mushrooms and fungi. Instead of making it completely black, they added an underlayer of purple and lace. Here’s a close-up so you can really see all the details:
14.
The train that transports Elphaba and Glinda to the Emerald City is actually real. It was custom-built for the film, weighed 16 tons, and took two days to move.
15.
The Wicked novel came out in 1995, and within a week of its release Whoopi Goldberg tried buying the rights so she could turn it into a movie herself. Laurie Metcalf and Claire Danes were also interested at one point too.
16.
But Demi Moore ended up winning that bidding war. She and her production company secured the rights and spent a few years trying to develop the movie. They ultimately had to give up because they couldn’t find a script that worked, but Marc Platt (i.e. Ben Platt’s dad), who was in charge of Universal at the time, was pitched the idea of turning it into a musical. Flash-forward to 2003 when it premiered on Broadway, and it’s now the second-highest-grossing show of all time, bringing in nearly $1.7 billion.
17.
And finally, the horse that Jonathan Bailey rides in Wicked is the same exact one he rode in Bridgerton. Jonathan specifically requested him (his name is Jack!), and, wow, I never thought I’d be jealous of a freaking horse.