Key Points
Wicked: For Good director Jon M. Chu knew the stage blocking for “As Long As You’re Mine” wouldn’t translate well to the big screen.
The filmmaker details how moments in rehearsal with Jonathan Bailey and Cynthia Erivo led to some of the film’s most touching romantic moments between Fiyero and Elphaba.
Chu credits Erivo with the idea that Elphaba would have a cozy “nest” that allowed her some “dignity.”
Fans of the Wicked stage musical know the “As Long As You’re Mine” staging well: Elphaba and Fiyero kneeling and wailing right into each other’s faces for 3 minutes and 46 seconds. It’s a steamy and intimate performance as the two finally act on their long-simmering chemistry.
Wicked: For Good director Jon M. Chu knew that wouldn’t work on the big screen, and opted for his Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) to take a more demure approach (including one fantastically cozy sweater robe).
“I just felt like, ‘Is this movie the type of movie where you just sit and stare at each other and sing?’ I was like, ‘There’s nothing happening,'” Chu tells Entertainment Weekly. “And passion can only happen…. They didn’t have time to…. We need a scene where they go out on a date or something. How do they know each other?“
The director says his thinking led to long conversations with Bailey: “It was about ‘What do you see that’s beautiful about her? She cracked your brain open in movie one, and you’ve been living in this lie. You’ve been watching her have this beautiful confidence that you don’t have. What happens when you go to her nest?'”
Chu says he and Bailey posited that Fiyero would “look at her at nest and see how beautiful of a place she made. That’s something Cynthia brought to this character that none of us were thinking: dignity. She’s like, ‘I would have a home, I would make it smell nice. I would put my hair up.’ She’s not just a caricature that we’re making fun of in learning the backstory. It’s not fan fiction; this is a real character to her.”
In rehearsals, Bailey improvised the moment before the song starts when Fiyero takes off Elphaba’s cape.
“He was like, ‘I want to take off her cape so she can feel what it feels like to let go,'” Chu recalls of the rehearsal. “And this moment was way longer than what they did in the film. I mean, it was f—ing 20 minutes. They just stared at each other.”
Chu recognizes the dissonance of choosing to have Elphaba sing the “aggressive” opening lyric, “Kiss me too fiercely,” while actually distancing herself from Fiyero, “But I need somewhere to go. So what if that was her wish and her dream, but she wasn’t sure he was there yet? And what if we got to the point where then he looked at her and looked at even the propaganda that paints her as ugly and evil, and can’t believe that she still loves and knows herself? He cannot do that. It’s not about him being in love with her, it’s about him respecting her at a level that he cannot be alive in the way she’s alive.”
The director believes the moment where Bailey walks to Elphaba after telling her she’s beautiful is “Jonny at his best.”
Universal
Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) in ‘Wicked: For Good’
“And then he gets down on his knees — and she’s not on her knees yet — but he gets down and he says, ‘I’m not lying.’ And then, this again was Cynthia, she responds with a defense mechanism: ‘What the f— are you talking about?’ And then he says he’s just looking at things a different way. To me, that is earning the moment. That makes it more intimate and sensual, not sexual. And I think that’s when you fall for their love. That to me is more sexy than anything else.”
“And then he brings her outside, and now they can play,” he continues. “She smiles for the first time, and they’re singing together. And that’s again, Cynthia just finding that right moment: When he says ‘falling under your spell,’ she laughs, because he’s doing this little thing with his eyes and he’s making her laugh.”
The song concludes with the couple embracing as Elphaba levitates them into the air.
“Like a Warner Bros. cartoon, they fly in the air when they’re in love,” says Chu. “And then, just as you’re almost getting so far away from two people on their knees, you land with them on their knees, together.”
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Floating like Superman and Lois could have been cheesy, but Chu credits Bailey for playing the moment just right.
“It’s a tricky one because you’re like, ‘How big do you make his reaction of Whoa, how’d you do that? But he’s such a good actor. That was the relief, I could just throw crazy ideas at them and they would find the truth in it.”
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