1 week Ago By Daniel Rodgers
The Wicked film has been three years and several gallons of tears in the making. There have been tearful duets on set, tearful wrap parties, tearful interviews, tearful red carpets, and there were, in the case of Ariana Grande , tears even years before the movie had been slated for production. (So potent was this drama kid’s dream of playing Glinda the Good Witch, and that’s before she heard Cynthia Erivo was cast as Elphaba.
) I don’t think I have ever seen two people so affected, so apparently changed by having taken part in a film. Grande and Erivo’s language, gestures, and at times entire identities have converged – or “wormed”, as the actors describe the eerie way their voices blend together – into one vision of musical theatre earnestness where everything and anything that happens in life seems an act of divine kismet. Ariana Grande in custom Versace and Cynthia Erivo in Thom Browne at the Mexico premiere.
This is probably a result of playing magical beings with a moral compass that skews saccharine. “I hope when people watch it, it will inspire them to become more empathetic, maybe to be less judgmental and give people the chance,” said Grande at the Australian premiere. “Maybe they’ll meet someone like Elphaba who will pop their bubble.
” Their path to self-actualisation – and contractual marketing – has expressed itself through the clothes they’ve worn at red-carpet events: Grande always in bouffant dresses cut from big froths of pale pink and Erivo in lots of green Louis Vuitton designs. The Thom Browne princess dresses and the verdant Marc Jacobs skirt suits are the latest examples of Hollywood’s ongoing enthusiasm for method dressing, with both actors drawing inspiration from their characters’s pink and green costumes, but it would seem these two have taken more than just mere aesthetics from Glinda and Elphaba. “There still may be tears yet,” Erivo not long ago told a red-carpet journalist.
“It just happens! We can’t help it. We’re trying our best.” To which Grande replied: “Why does emotional availability scare you so?” Here, a running list of the most memorable looks to have emerged on Wicked ’s red carpets, and the misty-eyed gazes that have accompanied them.
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