The cast of Wicked: For Good descended on Universal Studios Singapore, turning the theme park into a full-blown Emerald City moment.
Fans lined the yellow carpet (yes, they really leaned into the Yellow Brick Road energy) as Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum and director Jon M. Chu arrived for the Asia-Pacific premiere — the second-last stop on their massive global press tour.
But the biggest surprise of the night wasn’t anything from the movie itself. It was a behind-the-scenes ritual from the Wicked witch herself.
Because apparently, while filming two giant movies back-to-back, Cynthia had a rather unique method for shifting between Elphaba’s emotional states.
“Cynthia has perfumes that she smells to change her mode,” Jon M. Chu told BuzzFeed Australia.
And considering Wicked: For Good was filmed simultaneously with the first movie, the cast didn’t exactly get downtime to reset. They had to stay locked into Oz while shooting some of the story’s biggest emotional moments: the heartbreak, the rebellion, the fall of friendships and kingdoms.
So naturally, we asked Jon how they pulled all of this off without combusting — and he kept it simple.
“The hardest thing was just organisation. Once you got started, it was emotionally staying in it,” Jon added. “But when you have actors like this, and you have a crew like we do, everyone was so plugged into the reality of these characters that it actually came out very naturally.”
Wicked: For Good picks up right where the first film left off, adapting the second half of the Broadway musical and diving into the deeper, more political and more heartbreaking turns of Elphaba and Glinda’s story.