As the massive promotional push for “Wicked” continues apace, a new featurette has provided audiences with the best look and listen yet at the Broadway adaptation’s musical numbers.
Going to great lengths to highlight how stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande sang live on set, the newly released video teases iconic “Wicked” sequences like “Popular” and “Defying Gravity.”
“When we came into this movie, we weren’t sure how much we were going to do live or not,” said director Jon M. Chu in the teaser. “But they are the best singers in the world, so every scene they have been singing live.”
“We chose to sing live because it meant that we would be further connected to the words we were saying and to each other,” added Erivo.
“It was an immediate no-brainer for Cynthia and I. We both were like, ‘Well, of course, we’re singing live,” echoed Grande.
“There’s something special about what happens when music is live in a room,” said Erivo.
That Erivo and Grande performed the “Wicked” songs live on the set has been a talking point about the Universal release for months. Back in March when Vanity Fair pulled back the curtain on the project, Chu said the live singing was a choice made by his stars.
“When we were shooting it, those girls were like, ‘F–k the pre-records. We’re going live,’” he said. Chu said he expressed light skepticism about the choice but was politely told that Erivo and Grande could handle themselves. “There’s going to be a lot of wind in your air pipes. Is that okay?” he asked. They responded, “‘Yeah. That’s what we do.’”
Many movie musicals used pre-record tracks but the live-singing phenomenon has taken hold in recent years, ever since it was done for 2013’s “Les Miserables.” Back in 2021, “West Side Story” star Rachel Zegler revealed she and eventual Oscar winner Ariana DeBose sang “A Boy Like That/I Have Love” live for the Steven Spielberg film. Zegler also sang live on the set of “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.”
“Wicked” is expected to become a box office hit for Universal and a potential darkhorse Best Picture contender as well. The film debuts in theaters on November 22, the same day as “Gladiator II.”
