Despite having a brilliant and clear vision for the film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Wicked, director Jon M. Chu was “intimidated” by everything about making the film. The Wizard of Oz prequel, based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, had been in production for years. On December 13, Chu arrived at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood for a screening of Wicked with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo and producer Marc Platt.
“I mean, everything scares me every day,” the director admitted. He also cited one scene – which was influential to the film – as the most frightening of all the films and that favorite musical was Defying Gravity.
Chu admitted that filming that musical “scared” her. They were concerned about how Erivo would fly as Elphaba and how she would feel about the lyrics of the song, which screenwriter Winnie Holzman had “brilliantly” presented nearly 20 years earlier. Despite intense pressure, he had to finish it to concentrate on the scene. “These things used to worry us, but there was a certain point where we say worry is an abuse of the imagination and we can’t worry at a certain point,” he explained.
“We knew it was in our hearts,” Chu said. Furthermore, the cast and crew being fans of the musical, who had been waiting to see the creation of the song for so many years, put additional pressure on the director.
Continuing to talk about the crew, Chu praised how everyone tried to constantly come up with ideas to make the film better and grander. He recalled the team asking the question, “How do you create a world that might seem like a dream in context, but how do you make it feel like a real landscape with real culture? ” Or how to portray the complex emotional dynamics of Glinda (Grande) and Elphaba (Erivo).
Chu said of the song, “We talked about these things and kicked the tires over and over again.” The director revealed how the team strived to push themselves for better results every day. Wicked is playing in theaters now.