For Good’ Artisans Crafted a Subtle Arc

In making “Wicked” and “Wicked: For Good,” director Jon M. Chu knew he always wished to develop the tales of each Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) past the Broadway musical, and taking pictures two motion pictures at the same time allowed him to do that.

For Glinda, Chu wished to explore questions like, when does she hesitate about doing something? When does she have another alternative? When does the world shatter round her? And, most important, when is she worthy of magic?

That expansive journey was always a part of the plan, and so “Wicked: For Good” actually dives into the core of who Glinda is.

The movie, which was snubbed by the Oscars however has earned nominations from the Actor Awards (Grande) and the crafts guilds, places Elphaba and Glinda’s friendship to the check and explores how the penalties of their actions will change all of Oz.

In the movie, Elphaba is now in exile. The Yellow Brick Road is being constructed by the animals of Oz. Glinda has develop into a puppet of the Wizard’s (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible’s (Michelle Yeoh) propaganda, greeting her fellow Ozians with the music “Thank Goodness/I Couldn’t Be Happier.”

On the floor, she’s received her fiancé Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) by her facet, she’s widespread and he or she seems to be joyful.

But is she actually? Grande spent 5 years with Glinda, growing her and understanding her. Grande says that after we first meet Glinda, “she’s gotten everything that she has ever wanted, but she feels really empty, and there’s a lot of denial and performance happening.”

Everything in the movie is about the selections these characters have made. “I think my favorite thing about her is the choice and the consequence, the choice and the consequence throughout the course of both films,” says Grande. “I wanted to make sure that you could track her growth. That growth being about someone who thinks she wants power, but she really wants magic, and she really, truly does want to be good.”

Grande collaborated with Chu and the artisans of the movie to make sure the character did have an arc that confirmed her inside battle and that development. Above all, it was important to humanize Glinda.

She factors to the scene when Glinda offers Elphaba the black hat of their dorm room as considered one of many moments in “Wicked” meant to ascertain Glinda’s goodness, which is buried under layers of superficial kindness. “There’s one quick shot of me looking back, and maybe you see in my eyes a little bit of regret and a little bit of, like, ‘Why did I do that?’ And I think that’s what makes Jon such an amazing storyteller and collaborator, is that he allows for that to be there.”

In “Wicked: For Good,” a flashback to her childhood reveals younger Glinda’s want for magic, as she tries to impress her mates at her celebration. It’s her origin story, and it reveals her craving the approval of others. Flash ahead to present-day Oz. Glinda lives in her bliss, as pain and struggling occur round her. She’s liked, and he or she’s lastly going to marry Fiyero. But Elphaba discovers and releases the animals that the Wizard has been protecting in cages in his fortress — she releases them they usually stampede by the wedding ceremony venue, ruining the ceremony. When Fiyero chooses to depart with Elphaba, Glinda’s left heartbroken and indignant. She suggests how the Wizard and Madame Morrible can use Elphaba’s sister Nessa Rose (Marissa Bode) to lure the fugitive out of hiding.

Grande says that all the things from the second when Glinda decides to make use of Elphaba’s sister to the fight scene she has along with her former buddy “was really hard emotionally.” For Glinda to inform them to make use of Nessa Rose as bait, “I really needed that to make sense, that she would say that, for her to actually be that broken and get to that level of despair, that she would say something so terrible. I spent a lot of time inventing reasons for her to recount little memories of Elphaba and Fiyero together,” Grande says. “It’s just not something that I think Glinda, in her truest self, would do. I needed her to be a broken, disconnected, possessed version of herself, and I wanted her to go to a dark enough place for her to say that.”

Cinematographer Alice Brooks captured that pivotal resolution with a close-up. “She does the most wicked thing in the movie,” Brooks says. “You see her walk forward into this very tight close-up. You have the Wizard and Morrible in the background. We didn’t give [editor] Myron Kerstein an option to cut to them. There’s no footage of them. It’s completely out of focus. In the background, you can hear them talking, but we just stayed with Glinda as you watch her make that decision. It’s the choice that changes everybody’s lives.”

Chu explains this is whenever you see the wheels delivering Glinda. “The resentment, the betrayal, the reaction to the shame of saying something out loud, and her covering that, saying, ‘No, I’m allowed to say that’ and then her walking away.”

No stone was left unturned when it got here to growing Glinda’s arc by make-up and costume. The particulars have been refined however helped Grande disappear into the function and create the character.

Makeup head Frances Hannon (nominated for a Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild award) and Grande collaborated on Glinda’s look, embedding refined adjustments to replicate the passage of time, such as making her hair longer and blonder. “You’re also looking in the mirror and seeing someone who’s visibly older,” Grande says. “It’s tiny little things like the shape of the eyeshadow and the amount that helps to feel the difference.”

Grande notes that undereye concealer was a concern. “I remember when the conversation came up about whether or not [to use it], after a certain point, in the second movie, and concealer just exits the chat.”

Grande goes on to say, “I’ve been through it and have these eye bags … I remember that being a decision Frances and I made together. We wanted it to seem real and truthful.” Costume designer Paul Tazewell (who received the Costume Designers Guild award for each “Wicked” movies) also adopted Glinda’s arc in his work. “When we’re introduced to her character, we see that she indeed has fully immersed herself in the Wizard’s world. It’s a princess in a tower, and she is wearing clothes that are true to that,” he says. “Her choice of clothing provides this idea of a person that is privileged and has great style.”

Tazewell’s appears are a nod to Audrey Hepburn’s glamorous and stylish garments. “When she does indeed take hold of her personal power, and she goes into the pink bubble dress that we are very familiar with from the original film [1939’s “The Wizard of Oz”], there’s a persevering with transformation for her.”

An enormous turning point for Glinda comes as the Tin Man (Ethan Slater) leads an indignant mob chanting “kill the witch.” Glinda hears it from her house and shuts her doorways.

Until this point, Glinda has always been surrounded by people. “I always say that she’s never been more alone. She’s surrounded by lots of voices telling her how good she is and how needed and important she is, and yet she’s never been more vacant. So when she closes the doors and silences the angry mob outside the window, it’s just silent,” she says. “All you can hear is Glinda taking a deep breath and shutting out the noise and making the decision to actually take a look at herself,” Grande provides. That resolution, she says, got here from each Chu and editor Kerstein, who landed an ACE Eddie nomination. As Glinda walks by her house high above Emerald City, she catches her reflection in the mirror, singing “The Girl in the Bubble,” a musical quantity that heralds her turning point, as she realizes she wants to alter.

Composer Stephen Schwartz says of the ballad, it’s “the moment where Glinda gets real. She drops all the artifice that she has carried as a character through her entire life, both as the popular girl, and then also as Glinda the Good, who floats around in this bubble and sings to people in soprano.”

Grande says the quantity took months of planning on the technical facet, so all the things may align. It also displays a visible illustration of what’s occurring inside her.

Looking again, Grande says, “I think that she was a good person and a good kid who got lost along
the way. So many of us are just a product of the environment that we grew up in, and I think she’s one of those, but she’s able to break through and burst the bubble and really make Oz a good place, truly a good place.”

Grande provides, “It’s complicated, because her choices aren’t always seemingly the right ones but they ultimately lead her to being the one that’s able to save Oz and save the animals.”

With each movies, Grande says, “I really do love Glinda, even when I disagree with her. I have to love her in order to do the work justice.”

She remembers moments when she and Chu would sit on the ground discussing Glinda and “those things that I wanted them to see in her, the goodness that I wanted to peek through a little bit, even
when she’s at her worst, as the films progress.”

She provides, “I don’t know that anyone else would have given a character like Glinda the time and space to be known in this way. And I think that it’s important, because I do think she’s quietly a bit of a hero. She’s more than meets the eye.”