Wicked director originally wanted to cast "no-namers" as Elphaba and Glinda: "It's a big enough property on its own, so we can discover two people"

The thrillifying big screen adaptation of Wicked, the smash hit Broadway show, is almost here – but, as it turns out, we almost had an entirely different Elphaba and Glinda. 

In the movie, Cynthia Erivo is getting greenified as Elphaba, AKA the not-so-Wicked Witch of the West, while Ariana Grande is stepping into the sparkly pink wardrobe of Glinda the Good Witch. Both Erivo and Grande are household names, but, as director Jon M. Chu tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which features Wicked on the cover and hits newsstands on November 1, his initial approach to casting was very different. 

"I wanted to have a very clear slate coming into Wicked," Chu says. "It's a big enough property on its own, so we can discover two people. I was like, 'We're gonna find no-namers'. But then we got calls from all these great actresses who wanted to audition and we saw everybody, and they were all really great. Anyone could have done this role, except there were two people who were meant to do this role, for this particular movie at this particular time.

"What we found out when we were auditioning everyone, was that the songs are so important in this movie, and so emotionally important to this movie, that the person who's doing it has to get into song and out of song so easily that it's like butter, like you don't even notice it," he continues. "That means having good chops in their skill set."

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Wicked releases on November 22. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which features the movie on the cover and will be available from Friday, November 1. 

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