As “Wicked: For Good” dominates the box office, screenwriter Winnie Holzman feels incredible gratitude.
“We all joined together and did these incredible movies,” Holzman says over Zoom. “People were feeling fulfilled and seeing it, and that means a lot to me. It’s meaningful.”
Holzman says she and Fox feel proud to see audiences come together and experience the film.
“Wicked” is near and dear to Holzman’s heart. She wrote the Broadway musical over 25 years ago with lyricist Stephen Schwartz and teamed with Dana Fox to reimagine it for the film adaptation. “Wicked: For Good” brings the two-part film to its conclusion and follows Act 2 of the Broadway musical.
However, with the second act at a mere 45 minutes, Holzman and Fox had to go beyond the show and expand the story, all while keeping the DNA of the musical and taking creative liberties in certain places.
One scene that has audiences excited is “As Long As You’re Mine.” It’s when Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) declare their love for one another.
In bringing it to the screen, Holzman wrote something different from the musical. On stage, Elphaba and Fiyero are very close almost immediately and intertwined as they sing the lyrics. She wrote a slower build up between the two. Holzman says, “What’s sexy to me is anticipation, to quote Carly Simon. And that’s what that is, that’s the build up. It’s really going to happen.”
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With such hunger for all things “Wicked,” Holzman might not be done with Glinda and Elphaba. As Universal figures out sequels, Holzman jokes, “Have some pity. I just reached a point where I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m done. We did it.’”
Is there more room for her to expand the story?
The author of “Wicked,” Gregory Maguire, has announced his new book, “Glinda, A Charmed Childhood.” Holzman says, “Without the novel, there would be no ‘Wicked.’ Stephen Schwartz would never have gotten the idea.” While it all stemmed from Maguire’s books, Holzman says it served as their seminal inspiration. “We departed from his story,” she says. “I’m just not sure that translates into… what that means for us.”
Holzman spoke with Variety about how “Wicked: For Good” came together and the creative process behind expanding the story, and the sexiness of “As Long As You’re Mine.”
Can you talk about working with Dana Fox on the script and the conversations you had around expanding the story without upsetting the fans of the musical?
Everything grew from within the characters and the story that already existed. It was more like letting things blossom, bigger than we were allowed to do on stage. Artistically, because it’s a musical on stage, there are just ways in which we needed to tell the story. We did have to fly by — no pun intended —some aspects of the story. Stephen and I knew that this was our opportunity, even before we met Jon, even before I met Dana, to show the world what led the two girls to find themselves after they made these momentous decisions.
When I was writing the movies, I wanted to show the yellow brick road being constructed because it occurred to me that it was slave labor when the animals were building the yellow brick road. In the DNA of our story is this idea that the animals are being relentlessly and inhumanely targeted, silenced, taken, and forced to be second-class citizens. Those who speak out, goodness knows what happens to them. With Jon M. Chu at the helm, there is so much opportunity to show what that looks like. And that looks scary and upsetting. I was thinking of things like Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad — this was way before Cynthia was cast. [Erivo played Tubman in the 2019 feature “Harriet”.] Jon came and started to be the leader. There were certain things that he was already sparking to. One of those things was the idea of Glinda being important in the “Wonderful” scene. That came out of conversations between the four of us.
If Glinda gets involved and refuses to let Elphaba meet with the Wizard on her own, if she inserts herself in there, it makes a lot more sense emotionally and explains why Elphaba weakens at one point. She knows he’s a manipulative con man. A part of her still feels this strange kinship with him, even though he treated her so badly. But when Glinda gets involved and starts convincing her, my goodness, you can understand why she might weaken. We were all noticing things in the story that were right there, but we thought, “Oh, wait a second, maybe this could make it even stronger. ” Like the fact that she’s getting married instead of just being engaged — it ups the ante.
You talked about things we couldn’t see on stage; the door sequence is another example of that, and that was improvised. What was it like seeing something that wasn’t scripted come together during filming to anchor the emotions?
Thrilling. That’s when you go, “Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you, Ariana. Thank you, Jon. Thank you, Alice Brooks.” To me, it’s the essence of collaboration, where people come in and something is brought to a whole other level. The moment before they sing, when they both start talking at the same time, I didn’t script that. Dana didn’t script that. That just happened while they were shooting because those two brilliant women are the women and artists that they are, and they just went with that moment.
We got two new songs with ‘Wicked: For Good’: ‘There’s No Place Like Home’ and ‘Girl in the Bubble.’ Can you talk about finding them and working with everyone to place them in the story and knowing they were right for the film?
We always knew they could fit into the second act because there was room. This is one of the big reasons we all felt good about saying, “Let’s make it two movies.” It eliminated the worry of having to cut any of Stephen’s songs or numbers. In Elphaba’s case, she ends up having to leave Oz forever, not for her own selfish reasons, but for the good of Oz. And it’s a huge sacrifice. So we wanted to make that sacrifice count even more. One way to do that was to depict how much Oz means to her, and that’s where it all started.
Stephen and I thought what a great title for a song “No Place Like Home” would be because it’s such an iconic line from the movie. Obviously, we’re playing with the movie and referencing it in different, delicate ways. We wanted to talk about Oz as her home, even though she was being hunted and hated, and that was going to set up the pain of having to leave. She could say out loud, “Gosh, I really love Oz,” but it doesn’t have the emotional power of music, her singing just automatically conveys that she’s having a deep emotion.
With the Glinda song, it’s similar. Glinda has this insight, change and transformation. We wanted to get inside that and show her mind working at that point in the story. She can no longer close her eyes to what she’s seeing, and what does that do to her? The idea of singing about being in a bubble — it’s just so perfect, because that bubble is her fraudulence come to life.
Okay, we have to talk about “As Long As You’re Mine.” It’s such a moment in the show because Fiyero and Elphaba are all over one another. In the film, it’s a slow burn. And one thing people are talking about is the cardigan.
That’s Paul Tazewell’s cardigan. I did think it was really sexy, the idea that he, Fiyero, comes to see her lair, where she has been hiding, living and keeping herself. It’s so sexy that she brings him into her secret world. I did write that he’s looking at her things. He plays it so beautifully. You’re seeing him fall more in love with her as he’s walking through her world and realizing how she lives. He’s thrown off by her and the depth of his feelings that are being evoked — he’s not the player anymore. It’s almost like he doesn’t know how to do it. I pictured this character as someone who’s seduced a lot of women. I’m not saying he cheated on Glinda, but I’m saying that in his past, before he even got to Shiz, he had a lot of fun. He doesn’t quite know how to operate.
She starts to make it sexual. Then he starts to realize he’s really there, and he’s really turned on. He’s never been in a situation like that before. Neither has she, for real. What I think is really sexy about the way they’re playing it is how subtle it is, because they’re two such incredible actors. The way Cynthia plays that, I think, is so beautiful because she’s so guarded. She knows what’s going to happen, and she wants it to happen. She takes her time, and that’s a sexy thing too, that build up, “This is really going to happen. We don’t have to rush.”
Well, it’s the slow burn, right? Because on stage, they’re together right away. They’re very close.
I never did that moment where they levitate. That was so fucking cool. But that’s Jon. Jon was finding strategic moments where gravity was defied.
Speaking of moments, there’s that very last moment in the poppy field. Can you talk about that?
I scripted so many versions of that. It’s a montage of the five friends spending time together at Shiz, showing that they have a growing friendship. I love that you don’t need to see it in the first movie, and then to see it at the end — where you flash back to their time of innocence, when everything was possible, and they were all just five friends at school — is so touching.
That beautiful whisper, that whole poppy field sequence, which I call the picnic scene, was all scripted for movie one, and it fits so beautifully at the end of movie two. That’s the kind of magic collaboration — great editing and great filmmaking — to realize that, “Oh, it’s even better over here.” You just see a glimpse of it. You don’t even hear it. I wrote many versions of that montage, but I love where it landed.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
From Variety US