“Wicked” stars Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum talk about exploring the massive music genre

“Wicked,” part one of the long-awaited film adaptation of one of Broadway’s longest-running musicals, features a bevy of seasoned experts in the musical genre both in front of and behind the camera. The film is directed by Jon M. Chu, who previously received critical acclaim for his adaptation of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s “In the Heights.” Leading the cast as Elphaba is Cynthia Erivo, a Tony winner for “The Color Purple,” while her lover Fiyero is played by Jonathan Bailey, an Olivier Award winner for a role in a London revival of “Company.” And aside from being one of the biggest pop stars of the last decade, Ariana Grande is a theater kid at heart who got her start in show business with the ensemble of the tween musical “13.”

But two key roles star actors who are probably the most familiar faces to cinephiles and moviegoers – but not known for their immediate impact. A darker version of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz is played by Jeff Goldblum, who leads his own jazz band, The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, but whose best-known musical role is as one of Rachel’s fathers on “Glee.” And the devious Shiz professor Madame Morrible is played by Michelle Yeoh, who is completely new to the genre.

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Speaking to IndieWire before seeing the final cut of the film, Yeoh explained, “I don’t know if I’m scared or excited.”

“‘Wicked’ has been around for two decades and is very popular,” Yeoh told IndieWire. “The pressure is great. How do you make it better? There are many expectations. And I think Jon has waited his whole life to do this.”

Speaking about her entry into the role of Morrible, Elphaba’s magic teacher at Shiz College, Yeoh said the role that helped her the most was Paul Tazewell’s costume design and Frances Hannon’s wigs. Tazewell designed several luxurious gowns for Yeoh, while Hannon’s white wigs for Morrible were inspired by the character’s weather-dependent powers.

“My costumes – Madame Morrible’s costumes – were regal,” Yeoh said. “Every time I walked in (in them) I thought, ‘Can I wear this on a red carpet?'”

Yeoh joined the cast of the film after working with Chu on “Crazy Rich Asians”; Before she was asked, she had never seen the stage show and was only watching it to imagine the role of Morrible. While watching the show, she realized that the role in the film, which gives the headmistress softer tones compared to the original, was drastically different from the original stage version and felt free to interpret the character in her own way.

“When you do theater, it’s a very different experience than a movie theater experience,” Yeoh said. “The camera takes you where you can’t go on stage, the camera takes you to Oz.” I don’t see myself on stage in Morrible because the nuances that Jon Chu brought to the character are less obvious. It gave us a lot of space to discover and bring in something new.”

Unlike Yeoh, Goldblum was familiar with the original stage version of Wicked, having seen it on Broadway with the main cast, including Joel Gray as the magician. Also unlike Yeoh, whose character Morrible is an original creation from Wicked, Goldblum’s The Wizard has been an iconic part of Oz stories since the original book by L. Frank Baum – he remembers watching Frank Morgan do it once a year as he played the character in the 1939 original on television as a child.

To play the character, Goldblum observed several different actors playing the role on stage, including famous artists such as Ben Vereen, through online clips. Goldblum said he doesn’t believe in the idea of ​​approaching the role blindly, preferring to use the background of his research to develop his own unique take on the iconic character.

“I’m like a jazz musician who wants to go from doing what my students used to do to saying, ‘I don’t want to see someone else do it, I want to make it my own,'” Goldblum told Indiewire . “This will just get in my way. I don’t believe in that. I’ve seen it, I can make it my own. The real help was Chu and the idea of ​​how what he did was different from the piece that helped create something is, we hope, a little different.”

“Wicked” is currently in theaters.

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