The two Wicked films were filmed simultaneously — an impressive feat in and of itself for the entire crew, given the massive scope of the production.
But the second feature had one twist the first didn’t — two new original songs, one each for its leading ladies.
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So while Ariana Grande calls it “the privilege of a lifetime” to originate a new song from Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz, she also admits “there was a scary element” to the prospect of debuting the new tune, “The Girl in the Bubble.”
“To be trusted with that was all of the right kinds of nerve-wracking and also just such an honor,” she said in a press conference with journalists on Sunday. “But what I love most about it is that it is such a narrative piece for [Glinda]. I’m so glad that we get to see her experience that moment of change, to make that choice, to begin the chapter of being truly good — not performing goodness, not a facade of goodness, but to put down the wand and actually become truly good.”
The song gives Glinda a rare introspective moment, a chance to reflect on her past and present — which Grande appreciated. “To see that moment is a gift,” she said. It also gave her a bit more range from a sonic perspective as well. “I love that she’s singing a little bit differently in it. It’s like halfway through the song after she looks down the closet and sees all of her memories from easier, pure times, she really opens up and sings vocally in a way that sounds like her guard is down.”
When it came to learning to perform the songs, Grande joked that she didn’t need to do much since she’s loved them since she was 10. “The thing that took the most work, when it comes to the music for me, was retraining my voice,” she said. “I have always had a higher range, but I’ve never had to sing operatically. Glinda does a coloratura soprano, and it’s operatic, it’s classical. I needed to spend a lot of time retraining the muscles of my voice to know how to do that and to create a rounder, more fuller, warmer vibrato and get there technically, so that it would sound legitimate. And I really wanted to have that ready before my first audition.”
Grande went through extensive vocal training every day for months even before her first audition, “so that I wouldn’t have to think about how the notes were going to come out in the room, and I could just honor the honesty of what’s happening in the scene,” she said. “Achieving the legitimate tone of a Glinda voice was a really fun homework assignment.”
But beyond the technical voice skills, she also had to learn to bring the emotional truth to the role. “I needed to be able to bring my own point of view and honesty,” she said. That became even more important given the back-to-back schedule for the films, where they’d be shooting part one Monday through Wednesday, and part two Thursday through Saturday. “I just wanted to make sure that even in the first film, beneath the bubbly, shiny, perfect exterior, her ‘bubble of privilege’ as I like to call it, there’s a person underneath that has a lot of insecurities, a lot of little wounds that contribute to her need for all of that external validation.”
Grande spent a lot of time with the script mapping out Glinda’s moods with a color-coding system of sticky tabs. “I would have a tab for each insecurity or emotional thing that was peeking through when she feels safe with a different color than when she feels like not chosen was a different color,” she said. “I just wanted to map it all out so that in my brain, I knew where everything was coming from before we got to set, so by the time we got there, thankfully that work was just in my system, and I could throw it away.”
All that hard work and preparation paid off. Ultimately, “I didn’t even know where I ended and she began — it was like we were just one for a while,” she said. “It’s a beautiful privilege to play a character that has so much light and so much darkness, and to finally be able to get to spend some more time with that darkness in this second film.”
Grande credited director Jon M. Chu’s vision with bringing the films to life so vividly — and said no one else could have done so. “Who he is as a person is just as special and extraordinary as who he is as a visionary and as a director,” she said. “He just has such an innate understanding of the human experience, what it feels like to be othered or made to feel like you don’t belong, and also what it feels like to watch that happen from the inside. He leads with so much empathy that I don’t think there was really a better person for this to tell the story. I think it was a part of his destiny.”
She also appreciated that while he was a perfectionist who prepared meticulously for every shot, he also let his actors improvise. “He was just like, let’s catch butterflies and see what happens,” she said. “He’s able to balance everything with such ease and grace and respect that everyone felt safe to give everything they had at all times.”
The fan response has been overwhelming, Grande said — “I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life.” But one moment stands out for her: her interaction with Remington, the 4-year-old boy from the taping the Wicked: One Wonderful Night special, who she brought on stage while she sang Popular. “I had no idea what he was going to do, if he was going to want to play along or not, but he was so cute, and just the perfect Elfie scene partner,” she said.”It was really special. I will always cherish that.”
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