Meet ‘Wicked’ Breakout Marissa Bode, Who Plays Nessarose (Exclusive)

Evil It’s not just Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo!

Filmmaker Jon M. Chu’s new musical adaptation of the legendary Broadway production also stars Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Ethan Slater, Michelle Yeoh and Marissa Bode, a newcomer who plays Elphaba’s younger sister Nessarose. While Nessarose uses a wheelchair, the character had never been portrayed by an actor who also used a wheelchair in real life until Bode recalled the first time Evil on stage when she was 11 or 12 years old.

“I had never seen a character on a theater stage like that in a wheelchair,” Bode, now 24, tells PEOPLE. “That was really cool for me at that age.”

Bode tells PEOPLE that she auditioned for the role “over a period of a few weeks” but was worried that she didn’t do her best. Finally, Chu offered to call her back. “I go into the callback and we’re talking about the character like we’ve done before, and then Jon interrupts me and says, ‘Actually, there’s someone at the door. I absolutely have to get this done. It’s really important,'” she recalls. To her surprise, Grande and Erivo were at the door “with a sign that said ‘Welcome to Oz. Will you be our Nessarose?'” ”

“And that was like, I was definitely a deer in the headlights because I wasn’t expecting that,” she says. “I really thought it was another callback, but really they just told me I got the part.”

Bode credits the film’s disability advisor, who she says also uses a wheelchair, as well as the film’s choreographers – including another wheelchair user in “the incredibly talented wheelchair dancer” Hannah Rainer – with helping her learn the dance moves for Nessarose’s Develop roles in numbers. like “Ozdust Duet”. The production also developed a trailer that could feature Bode on set, as announced in a video shared on the film’s official YouTube account.

“I think it would have been very different if someone wasn’t disabled and maybe didn’t fully understand how to choreograph a number in a wheelchair or in a wheelchair,” she says. “So I’m really glad she was there to help choreograph the dance. She was incredible and I learned a lot.”

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While Bode thinks about her role in Evil Seeing on the big screen “an incredible achievement” for representation in the disability community, she hopes people will continue to take the opportunity to further educate themselves and their children in their lives about creating accessible spaces for all.

“I think when you don’t understand something, it scares you more or you just, I don’t know, make a judgment about it because you don’t know much about it,” she says. “So I think representation has obviously been front and center in the debate about what it should be like. . . I would love if (people) hadn’t already done that to put in the work to make sure that happens. “They’re just as inclusive and considerate of the disability community.”

At the film’s premiere in Los Angeles on November 9, Bode told PEOPLE that her first day on set was one of her most memorable experiences filming the new film.

“Just being there with my mom, and she helped me settle in the UK, and just… I think Ethan was the first performer I met, and he was there and learned the dance,” she said . “Or trying to learn the dance on the first…literally first day there in rehearsal. I think that was definitely a moment that really pinched me.”

Wicked: Part One is now in cinemas; Part Two Is The release is scheduled for November 21, 2025.