Chu says Grande immediately nailed the complicated choreography, as she had been “living and breathing” Glinda, but shooting the entire sequence, with Glinda opening endless trunks and taking Elphaba through her countless possessions and accessories, involved numerous crew members to operate different parts of the dorm room like a “giant puppet”.
“The reason why we shot it first was because [the dorm room] is the smallest set, but also, you’re like, we have three big scenes in this movie, plus two musical numbers,” he says, sharing more insight into constructing the sequence as a whole. “And it’s a dorm room, so it has to be believable to be a dorm room—but it’s a suite, so it can be a little bit bigger. It has to house these two people, has to maintain all these scenes, plus a musical number. What kind of dorm room does that look like? And it has to feel like it’s in Oz, and not too earthy.”
Chu adds: “Nathan Crowley, our designer, is freaking amazing. He’s the real wizard. He created these domes, almost little bubble pods for us, so that that place could transform. Lee [Sandales], our set decorator, created these trunks. We knew we wanted these trunks to change form so that the space within the dorm could actually shift and change every scene, so it didn’t feel like dead, open space that you’re stuck in. It had to end up in the space for ‘Popular’ to be in just the right spot. There are people hidden—big, giant special-effects guys—underneath the floor. Underneath even the chandelier, there’s a guy spinning it, because the safety is up there.”
Like Grande’s “Right!”, these blink-and-you’ll-miss-them details invite the repeat viewings of Wicked that we know our community has been loving: it’s currently the second-most rewatched film from this awards season, behind Dune: Part Two. But the sequence definitely brought Chu a few headaches, as he joked to us: “It was really fun to make, and stressful, and you’ve just retraumatized me!”
