Jon M. Chu Feared 'Wicked' Could Be Career-Ending | Vanity Fair

When Jon M. Chu signed on to make a movie of the beloved musical Wicked, he gave himself a nearly impossible challenge. For decades, the complicated prequel to the Wizard of Oz had seemed difficult if not impossible to adapt. After Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were cast as Elphaba and Galinda, respectively, the internet also had plenty of thoughts on whether they could pull off these iconic roles. Then Chu decided they’d split the story into two movies—a gambit naysayers were sure wouldn’t work, either.

As we now know, Chu’s adaptation did work, with the first film becoming the highest-grossing Broadway musical adaptation of all time after earning over $756 million worldwide. It was nominated for 10 Oscars, winning for costume design and production design. It also gave us the “holding space” meme, as well as umpteen viral fashion moments.

On November 21, the second installment, Wicked: For Good, will open in theaters, wrapping an epic five-year journey that included shooting both films simultaneously and traveling the globe for the film’s epic promotional tour.

At the Savannah Film Festival, Chu spoke about defying expectations, the sequel’s two new songs, and what he’s going to do when his journey through Oz is finally over.

Chu on the set of Wicked: For Good with Erivo. “I always feel the need to prove myself and I'm down. That motivates me,” he says.

Vanity Fair: Now that the first movie is a huge hit, be honest: How nervous were you before it hit theaters?

Jon M. Chu: When I took this job, I was like, “Well, either my career’s going to end and I’ll go back to wedding videos, or we’re going to do something extraordinary.” It was COVID lockdown, so we wondered if movies would even exist anymore. And movie musicals were having a hard time. So I was more scared at the beginning of pre-production.

I looked [Erivo and Grande] in the eyes and I said, “I don’t know. I can’t say I have all the answers, but we’ve got to do this, and we’ve got to ignore everybody else.” At some point, you have to turn away from the audience, face the orchestra, and conduct. And that’s what we’ve agreed to do. So in that process of shooting for a year and a half and editing, I had already shut off the outside world.

You have a talent for casting. How do you know if an actor is right for a role?

I think the thing for me is they have to be emotionally available, because I think that that’s what the audience wants to see. If they’re emotionally available, then we can interpret this character in many different ways, but they can incorporate an emotional truth. Our job is to go explore those things that people don’t necessarily have time to think about all the time.

Can you give an example of a time that an actor was struggling, and how you helped them?

Cynthia presents herself in such an untouchable way, but she was very scared about how we would portray what is essentially a caricature of a witch. The joke is, “This is the Wicked Witch. Look how crazy she is.” And Cynthia is like, “That is just not how I’m going to present her.” She doesn’t talk a lot, and Cynthia wanted more lines. So it was a very delicate balance of us finding it together. We were there to support each other. With Ariana, she had a very specific idea of who Galinda was because she loved her. We were there for each other as a group, because it’s scary to take on a movie and these roles that everybody owns, essentially.

You shot both movies simultaneously and out of order. What was most overwhelming about that?

The scheduling. You want to help the girls by doing it in a certain order so they don’t have to jump everywhere, but the reality is when you’re making a movie that’s very expensive and very big, it takes time to build giant sets. There’s 2 million tulips that are going to blossom, and you’ve about 48 hours to shoot them at their full color. Otherwise, why did you plant them in the first place? But the actual hardest part is we have nine months of prep before we shoot, and you’re prepping two movies. You have to do every single scene and every single musical number for two movies—20-something numbers before you ever start shooting. That was daunting.

The second half of the show is deeper. What kind of changes did you feel you had to make for it to work as a movie?

I don’t say deeper, I say deeper. It was interesting because people had certain feelings about Act II. I didn’t have as many pain points to be like, “We have to do that thing that they’re waiting for.” [In Act I,] you have to do “Popular,” you have to do certain things. In movie two, the leash was off, in a way. It’s a lot about once you make a choice in your life and you think it’s happily ever after, and then the next day happens, you’re like, “Oh, life keeps going.”

Can you talk a little bit about the new songs?

The brilliance of Stephen [Schwartz] and Winnie [Holzman] [who created the original Wicked musical and wrote the new songs] is that they are great storytellers. They are of a different generation and have a different generation of what Wicked means to them. We sort of follow that instinct on it. The Elphaba one called “No Place Like Home”—which is a very provocative title in itself—it felt very relevant to now, even though it was written three years ago. And then “The Girl in the Bubble” is for Galinda. It’s watching her have no one to talk to, as she looks back on her life, at what she has become.

When editing Wicked: For Good, were there especially hard cuts to make?

There were a few moments that were difficult. I do think that the architecture is different, because movie one has some sort of pretty predictable architecture—on purpose, because it’s working off of tropes. We’re playing off of the tropes of Hollywood musicals and romantic comedies, and so you know what you’re getting. Then it sort of cracks at “Defying Gravity,” where you’re like, “Oh my gosh, this thing is going to break. This is all false.” And then movie two, it’s broken from the very beginning, and so it’s trying to piece that together. So movie two inherently has a structure that doesn’t feel so predictable. And so how do you put that together so the audience still feels comfort, that they’re being led with confidence?

How have you changed as a director as you’ve grown up?

I really value being a director because, unlike life, you get many tries at things. You have a vision in your head—I see every frame, and I draw it, and then I present it. But it’s not up to you, actually. It’s really hard at first, when you’re like, “No, just say the joke the way it’s written!” And some directors make them say the joke, and they’re great. I can never do that. What I enjoy is learning to set the vision and then trusting people to find their way.

When Wicked: For Good comes out, this five-year journey is over for you. How do you think you’ll feel?

I don’t know. I’m still in the process. Is this my therapy session?

I think the end of this movie is about the possibilities of the unknown. It’s about embracing how beautiful that can be. And so I am trusting that that’s what this will do. But either way, this has been an amazing journey. I had never thought I could do a movie at this scale and scope. That’s the truth.

Chu on the set of Wicked: For Good.