For Good’ Is A Life Lesson Say Ariana Grande And Cynthia Erivo

(Left to right) Ariana Grande (as Glinda), Director Jon M. Chu, and Cynthia Erivo (as Elphaba), on the set of ‘Wicked: For Good.’

Universal Studios

Ariana Grande believes Wicked: For Good is more than just a sequel; it’s a life lesson in how we look at and treat each other.

“Did my concept of good and evil change in the process of making the film?” the singer-songwriter and actress who swells hearts once again as Glinda in the second chapter of the highly anticipated movie musical. “I don’t think my concept changed, but I love the question that this movie asks. It invites people to consider why those labels are projected so easily.”

Adapted from the Broadway show, itself adapted from Gregory Maguire’s novel, Wicked: For Good takes place a little while after the conclusion of the first film, which saw Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba ride off into the sunset on her broom as she becomes the Wicked Witch of the West. While Glinda now lives a privileged life in Emerald City, Elphaba is in exile, feared by the people of Oz. Offered a path to redemption by Glinda and Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard, it seems like she might be welcomed in from the shadows; however, when painful truths are realized, worlds are rocked and chaos reigns. Is anyone truly good or evil?

“People are the accumulation of all of their experiences and their hurt, and we live in a time where everything is erased of context,” Grande continues in a conference call with a select handful of journalists. “Things are boiled down to a quick soundbite or a quick headline, and while people can do good things, and people can do wicked things, it’s an interesting theme in the story, to ask people to look for the humanness, or what might be on the other side. You never really know the whole story. I am so thankful for the themes of this, and how it challenges people to look inwards a little bit.”

Meanwhile, Erivo has never seen Elphaba as an evil character.

“Perception is everything,” she explains. “What we see as good, and what we see as evil, can be warped and shifted, depending on who we are looking at, and through what lens we’re looking through. How you feel about a certain type of person, about the skin the person is living in, and how the person sounds or looks is the lens we look through, and it can shift perspective. Who we can actually lay the blame on, and how easy it is to push it on someone else, was demystified for me.”

Aside from being a massive hit at the box office, the world of Wicked has bonded the leads together in an intense real-life friendship that has run deep, being both admired and lampooned. That, and the connection and support she receives from fans, are things Erivo is grateful for and lucky to have.

“This has been the ride of a lifetime,” the Brit recalls. “I was doing a talk last night, and this young girl shot up out of her seat and walked up to the stage where I was talking, and she said, ‘I want to tell you that this character has changed my life.’ It’s these stories that keep coming from people who have watched this piece, and it really warms my heart. To be part of something that does that to people is a privilege, and it will remain with me 15, 20, 25, 30 years from now. To play a character like this wasn’t just an adventure. It changed things. It helped people, and that’s really special.”

Grande And Erivo Reflect On The ‘Wicked’ Fandom Love And Finding Their Characters

Grande also understands what Wicked, Glinda, and Elphaba mean to fans around the world, calling it “beautiful” and “overwhelming.”

“Nothing that you can do to prepare yourself for this kind of response,” she says, speaking as both one of the stars and as a fan of Wicked her entire life. “I loved it the way that they love it now, but you can’t assume that they are going to embrace you, your version of it, your version of this story, the way that they have. It’s incredibly daunting, and we had shut out that pressure during the process of making it. To know that like this is what was waiting on the other side, it’s impossible to imagine. The fans are the best and most loving in the world.” Wicked: For Good is currently and there is no date set for when it might be available on streaming.

When it came to finding her version of Glinda, the former Nickelodeon star looked at what she thought the character’s childhood might have been like.

“I spent a lot of time mapping her out. I thought a lot about where her beliefs came from that were projected onto her,” she shares. “I wondered if her parents ever drove her to school, or if someone else did that for her, feeling important in the way that she’s always ached to feel important versus what she was actually given, and where those traumas started. I was mapping out her insecurities and using a colour-coding system. I had sticky tabs, and I would have one for each emotional thing peeking through. It was a lot of preparation, spending a lot of time with her, and getting to a place where I didn’t even know where I ended and she began. It was like we were just one for a while.”

Erivo’s experience, although executed differently, reminded her that what she does matters.

“I’ve heard from a lot of performers and there’s something really gratifying in doing work that other performers recognize, and they can see it as hard work,” the Harriet actress says. “When you’re in it, you don’t even realize what’s going on because you’ll do whatever you need to do to tell the story as truthfully as possible. You will do crazy things like put yourself in a harness and be hoisted up into the air. You will do the training at 3 am, turn up, and sit in the chair for 2.5 hours to be green from head to toe, if needed. It has reinvigorated my knowledge of the fact that I love the work that I’m doing, and I would do anything I need to represent whichever character I’m playing to the fullest.”

As well as their love for the work and each other, both stars have an undeniable love for their director, Jon M. Chu. Grande credits him for having “an innate understanding of the human experience” and of what it feels like to be othered, or to feel like you don’t belong.

“He’s able to navigate humanness, and he leads with so much empathy that I don’t think there was really a better person to tell this story,” she enthuses. “I think it was a part of his destiny. He trusts his actors, he loves his collaborators, he’s never impatient, and he’s able to balance everything with such ease and grace and respect that everyone felt safe to give everything they had at all times.”

Erivo is also a massive fan of the filmmaker, describing him as “so playful and so curious.”

“We would always do different takes, and we would always capture things for shits and giggles,” the singer-songwriter and Wicked actress concludes. “Whatever’s left in the tank, throw it all out there. He started to realize that, if I were able to have the chance to play and do something, throw anything at the wall, we would always get what we needed. Quite often, that would be the take. There’s such joy in doing that and going on the journey. He’s a very special human being. It sounds like such a cliched thing to say, and it sounds really blasé, but it’s not; he really got me, and that’s all anyone can ask for.”