\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div> \t\t\t\t\tCynthia Erivo, as Elphaba, sings \u2018There\u2019s No Place Like Home\u2019 in \u2018Wicked: For Good.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUniversal Pictures<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tAnd then when Glinda sings \u201cThe Girl in the Bubble,\u201d it so fits in with the movie\u2019s themes of \u201cI\u2019ve been fooled\u201d or \u201cI\u2019ve been kidding myself,\u201d and yet it comes off as a very sweet song. We\u2019ve talked before about your realization that there was an audience for young girls for the stage musical that you didn\u2019t even have in mind when the show was being created. Now you\u2019re very aware of it, do you think about how young girls or women will receive a song of enlightened disillusionment like that?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tNo, to be honest, I was not thinking about the audience per se in terms of either of the songs. But certainly in terms of \u201cGirl in the Bubble,\u201d I do feel that, again, it is a moment of courage for Glinda, because it would be very easy for her to continue to live in this metaphorical bubble where life is easy for her and where she gets to float above all the turmoil and close out the things that are disturbing. But she has an inner goodness that even she doesn\u2019t quite know is there, but it will not allow her to do that anymore. So she makes a courageous choice to give up the privilege that she has.<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s not entirely dissimilar to what we were just talking about with \u201cNo Place Like Home.\u201d If you are living in a place that you feel is going in the wrong direction, but you yourself are perfectly comfortable and safe, what do you do? Do you just stay comfortable and safe, or do you risk that in order to try to make a difference for the land, for the country? I think both songs are somewhat opposite sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tAriana Grande, as Glinda, sings \u2018The Girl in the Bubble\u2019 in \u2018Wicked: For Good.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUniversal Pictures<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tTo talk generally about fleshing out the second act for the second movie\u2026 It feels to me like there are benefits to the second act as it stands in the musical, even though it\u2019s kind of rushed. That hurry kind of works in feeling like you\u2019re rushing toward tragedy and bad things happening, so maybe there\u2019s something to be said for that momentum. But then then expanding the length here for all that action to take place, there are different kinds of emotional beats that you need to have, because it\u2019s its own separate movie and you didn\u2019t just get some of those sitting through act one\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tExactly.<\/p>\n \n\tSo having more comedy or more ballads makes it feel more holistic. But did you feel originally the second act on stage was rushed, or did it seem just right at the time?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI wish the second act in the show could have been longer. There were sequences that I would like to have seen, and that at one point were there, and then the reality of how long a show can be started to make its its presence known when we were actually performing and the curtain was coming down way too late. But I happen to be a fan of shows that are, like, four hours long. So I\u2019d have been delighted to have more time. But I do feel that what we came up with for the second act of the Broadway show works well.<\/p>\n \n\tThe one thing we do in the movie that I wish we had thought of for the show is the inclusion of Glinda in \u201cWonderful.\u201d I think it actually helps that sequence a lot, and it just never occurred to us. When we were working on the movie, because it was its own movie, it became clear as we were looking at the events of the second act as they occur in the show that it was too long a time where Glinda and Elphaba, who are the central relationship of the story, are not actually in the same place at the same time. It\u2019s OK in the second act of the musical, for many reasons, but in a whole separate movie, that was not OK. So we had to figure out, well, where could they get together earlier? Then the idea came up: when Elphaba goes back to the Emerald City, she could actually have interaction with Glinda, instead of just seeing Glinda from afar and then interacting with the Wizard. I do feel it\u2019s better, and maybe if we thought of it, we would\u2019ve done it in the show.<\/p>\n \n\tIt makes sense, because Elphaba is kind of backsliding, reconsidering the path she\u2019s taken. Maybe that\u2019s more realistic if she\u2019s got her friend Glinda there egging her on.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s much more persuasive. And in the movie Glinda makes a really good case, I think, for why Elphaba should join them rather than keep up what is apparently futile resistance.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tJeff Goldblum as the Wizard of Oz and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba meet up for the song \u201cWonderful\u201d in \u201cWicked: For Good.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGiles Keyte\/Universal Pictures<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tCan you talk about other existing songs that got fleshed out, and how much additional material you wrote for the second part?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThe first movie, more or less, is the first act of the show, except the \u201cEmerald City\u201d sequence got extended and fleshed out with seeing the Wizard\u2019s propaganda. But the second movie has a lot of new material in it, not just in the screenplay, but in the music as well. I\u2019ve just cited \u201cWonderful\u201d and the two new songs; that\u2019s where most of the new material comes. But it\u2019s quite a bit, actually. The opening sequence, which is quite extensive, has lots of new stuff in it. We\u2019re seeing what Elphaba has been doing all this time; we\u2019re seeing where Glinda has come to. The opening number is considerably different than in the show. Oh, and the scene where Elphaba goes to see her sister. I\u2019m not gonna tell too much about what happens there \u2014 because, spoilers \u2014 but that also has new music in it.<\/p>\n \n\tIt is quite different at the start. On stage, Glinda is singing \u201cCouldn\u2019t Be Happier\u201d almost at the very top of Act 2, whereas it takes about 15 minutes to get to that moment in the movie.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tExactly. [In the stage show] there\u2019s a very brief reprise of \u201cEvery Day More Wicked,\u201d which is also in the movie, and then we go right to \u201cI Couldn\u2019t Be Happier.\u201d There\u2019s a great deal more that happens in the movie before we get to that point.<\/p>\n \n\tLet\u2019s talk about this movie\u2019s title song, \u201cFor Good.\u201d When people who were maybe a little bit cynical about this movie\u2019s box office compared to the first one were talking a few months ago, there was some talk along the lines of, \u201cWell, it doesn\u2019t have a \u2018Defying Gravity.\u2019 So maybe that limits its prospects.\u201d Yet hardcore fans of the show would say \u201cFor Good\u201d is just as impactful, even without the battle cry.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tWell, it is impactful in a different way. I mean, I do think that that last 10 minutes of the first movie, with the way Jon Chu created the \u201cDefying Gravity\u201d sequence, is pretty much as exciting as musical movies get, or maybe any movies can get. It\u2019s true, we were never going to have that. Although there are a couple of very cool action sequences in this movie that I didn\u2019t\u2026 I mean, I knew they were there because they were in the screenplay, but I didn\u2019t know they were going to be quite as cool and as in the superhero movie sort of style as they are. There\u2019s plenty of action, I\u2019m saying. But it does not end in an action sequence. It ends with the beating heart of the movie, and of this relationship. That\u2019s a different kind of impact.<\/p>\n \n\tFor people who revere that song, it has a profound impact within seconds. People who know it start crying before more than a couple lines have been sung, with this sense memory of how emotional it\u2019s going to become over the next five minutes or so. What is the legacy of that song, even outside of the show? It\u2019s been made to fit everything from graduations to funerals.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tWell, indeed it seems to be making an appearance at many ceremonies, like those you cited, or a beloved teacher retiring, etc. Most of it seems to be able to translate. I mean, there are some specific things in it which don\u2019t make sense if you left the movie out, where they ask for forgiveness and all that. But, yeah, in writing it originally, I just wanted to find a way to express essentially these two people who love each other having to say goodbye and trying to tell the other one what she has meant, the impact that she\u2019s had.<\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019ve talked frequently about how the song got to be written, and I can talk about it again with you. It got written out of talking about a real relationship, which was a relationship my daughter has with a longtime friend of hers. She talked to me about: if she could only have one time to tell this friend what she\u2019s meant to her, what would she say? A lot of what\u2019s in the song came out of that conversation I had with my daughter, Jessica. So I think there\u2019s an inherent truth to it that somehow then gave it a resonance for the audience.<\/p>\n \n\tThere are other inspirational songs about friendship, like \u201cWind Beneath My Wings,\u201d but something that is appealing to some people about this one is just openly it acknowledges tough times, and that the friends might even have screwed each other over\u2026 it\u2019s not just sunshine and roses prompting the tears.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tAnd that\u2019s long-term friendships. That tends to be true. If they\u2019re real friendships, they\u2019ll have some bumpy patches along the way.<\/p>\n \n\tYou have said, often, that you\u2019re not always a critics\u2019 favorite. I\u2019m a critic, and I contend \u201cWicked\u201d is among the greatest musicals ever written\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThank you. Not all the New York critics agreed with you. Let me just put it that way.<\/p>\n \n\tSo we\u2019re not all immune. But<\/strong> those 2003 reviews dismissing it are there, to be looked up. And it\u2019s not as if everyone has completely come around to embrace the movies, although more critics get it now. But there is a gulf going back 22 years, where the people who\u2019ve love it look at the ones who don\u2019t look and say: Why don\u2019t you see this?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI have a theory, because these people are not idiots, frankly. You know, many of the critics who didn\u2019t get the show when it first came out\u2026 I do think that critics can mistake size and spectacle for lack of substance \u2014 that if they see a show that has a lot of spectacle to it and visceral audience excitement about certain things, it can feel lighter-weight in terms of its content than a smaller, more obviously thoughtful show. And I think they can miss the fact that there\u2019s a seriousness of purpose to a show like \u201cWicked,\u201d too. I do think some of the critics came in and saw the spectacle and didn\u2019t really notice that we were trying to tell a pretty thoughtful story.<\/p>\n \n\tDeveloping the show originally, did you ever get stuck and wonder if you were biting off more than you could chew? There\u2019s themes of love, and of friendship, and then there\u2019s political satire \u2014 it addresses a lot of life experience. On paper it ought to have been hard to work all that into a single piece.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIt wasn\u2019t so much the different content in terms of the personal story and the larger social story, or political story, if you will. The more difficult part is, there\u2019s just a lot of plot<\/em>. Musicals really don\u2019t tend to have that much plot, where so many things happen. We kept trying to eliminate things, and some of it we could, but some of it, we just couldn\u2019t, and we had to figure out a way to tell it efficiently to get all those events and all those characters in. That was challenging. The fact that it was always gonna be both a personal story and a political story \u2014 that comes with the title. As soon as you have that title, you know that\u2019s what it\u2019s gonna be.<\/p>\n \n\tWorking on these movies as you have, and then having your new Broadway show, \u201cThe Queen of Versailles\u201d [which stars Chenoweth], in development and finally reaching the stage at the same time, was that a challenge to balance those things?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tOf course, yes. But that\u2019s just how the timing worked out. Obviously there is an advantage to being able to split your focus, so I got to be extremely good at compartmentalization.<\/p>\n \n\tHow are you feeling about that now? There were some tough reviews, but then the New York Times gave it a great one.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tObviously we\u2019re very glad about that [the New York Times]. You know, it\u2019s very political, the show, in its social satire. I think there is some misunderstanding out there about what the show is, because I mean, it\u2019s sort of similar to what we were just talking about. Just as you can misunderstand \u201cWicked\u201d through the spectacle, I think you can misunderstand \u201cQueen of Versailles\u201d because it\u2019s funny, and there\u2019s a lot of sort of lighter satire. But it really is an attempt to look at what\u2019s going on in our culture right now, and the ramifications of that. <\/strong>[This interview was conducted before it was announced \u201cQueen of Versailles\u201d will close in January, two months after its official opening night.]<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tIn the new movie, \u201cNo Place Like Home\u201d feels like it written for 2025, and you\u2019ve acknowledged it as being something you wouldn\u2019t necessarily have written 10 or more years ago. But the show feels very topical to people generally.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tCertainly, yeah. I wish it were less relevant. What can I tell you? I wish by the time the movie came out, people would say like, \u201cOh yeah, remember when that was going on in our world?\u201d But unfortunately, that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n \n\tIt doesn\u2019t date. The only thing that maybe is so tied to its time, or earlier, is in \u201cPopular,\u201d when Glinda makes that Reagan joke, about \u201ceven Great Communicators\u2026\u201d By now, probably most of the audience is too young to get that reference.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tSure. But the people who know it know it.<\/p>\n \n\tI wrote an article back in 2011, interviewing you and Platt and some others, about how \u201cWicked\u201d had already become a major cultural touchstone\u2026 and of course anticipating when the movie would finally get made, which it was first envisioned as. There was every indication at the time that it was might still be a few years before it happened. Certainly there could have been opportunities along the way to get it wrong, but everyone thought it was worth the delayed gratification, to stick the landing.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI mean, exactly. We did take a lot of care with it. Frankly, there were, as we were developing it, some wrong roads or cul-de-sacs that we found ourselves in. I have a lot of gratitude to not just Marc Platt but Universal as a company that they never pushed us to get it out until we felt we had it right. And they could have. They\u2019re a movie company, after all [which helped produce the Broadway show, with hopes of a film translation]. And they were very patient and waited a long time while we were saying, \u201cWe haven\u2019t solved this yet.\u201d So here\u2019s a moment for me to say thank you to them.<\/p>\n \n\tFinally, with all the Wicked-mania right now, everybody wants to ask about the possibility for sequels, prequels or side roads.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI think that there will\u2026 there is\u2026 I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m trying to think what I\u2019m allowed to say. But let me just say, I think that a spinoff is not out of the question. Let me put it that way. Oz is a very rich territory. There are a lot of stories there, and possible stories. L. Frank Baum wrote many other odd stories beside that first book. So I think there may be some other visits to Oz in the future, and I might even be participating in one of them.<\/p>\n \n\tYou sound surprisingly open to that.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tYeah\u2026 Yeah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What a long, strange bubble ride it\u2019s been. But the work of songwriter Stephen Schwartz on \u201cWicked\u201d \u2014 the property he first discovered as a source novel and has led into Broadway and dual film iterations \u2014 has finally come to a close. (Or has it? More on his feelings about spinoffs momentarily.) He did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2179038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[415917,344989,368121],"class_list":["post-2179037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-jon-chu","tag-stephen-schwartz","tag-wicked-for-good"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Stephen-Schwartz-on-the-Two-New-Wicked-Songs-and-Spinoff.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2179037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2179039,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179037\/revisions\/2179039"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2179038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2179037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2179037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2179037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-variety-2020\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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