Wicked Director Almost Cast ‘No-Namers’ Before Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo: Why He Changed His Mind

Elphaba and Glinda could have looked very different on the big screen.

Wicked director Jon M. Chu revealed in a recent interview with SFX Magazine that before Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were cast in the lead roles for the upcoming long-awaited film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical he originally considered “no-namers.”

“I wanted to have a very clear slate coming into Wicked,” recalled Chu, 45. “It’s a big enough property on its own, so we can discover two people. I was like, ‘We’re gonna find no-namers.’ ”

“But then we got calls from all these great actresses who wanted to audition and we saw everybody, and they were all really great,” he added. “Anyone could have done this role, except there were two people who were meant to do this role, for this particular movie at this particular time.”

Chu went on to say that “the songs” in the two-part film are “emotionally important…that the person who’s doing it has to get into song and out of song so easily that it’s like butter, like you don’t even notice it,” which is something they realized when going through auditions.

“That means having good chops in their skill set,” he added.

Erivo, 37, and Grande, 31, bring to life the characters first made famous on The Great White Way in 2003, with Idina Menzel as the original Elphaba and Kristin Chenoweth as the original Glinda.

The cast of Wicked‘s movie adaptation also includes Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard, Marissa Bode as Nessarose, Bowen Yang as Pfannee, Keala Settle as Miss Coddle, Ethan Slater as Boq, Peter Dinklage as Dr. Dillamond and Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible.

Apparently, filming the movie was an emotional experience not only for Grande but everyone else on set as well, according to the two-time Grammy winner.

“Me, everyone, we all cried every day,” she recalled on the Friday, Nov. 1, episode of Broadway Podcast Network’s Sentimental Men podcast.

Shouting out director Chu and costars Erivo and Bailey, 36, the “7 Rings” singer said, “Everyone cried. It was really beautiful.”

“So that was terrible,” Grande added wryly.

Wicked will be released in two parts, with the first arriving in theaters on Nov. 22.