Ariana Grande really, really wanted to play Glinda the Good Witch in Wicked.
How much? “If it hadn’t happened, I might have ended up in an insane asylum,” she joked during a panel Sunday (Nov. 10) in Hollywood following a screening of the film, which opens in theaters Nov. 22. Grande, who is credited as Ariana Grande-Butera in the film, prepared for months for her audition.
“Vocally, it’s very different for me than what I usually sing, so I started training every single day with my vocal coach for two-and-a-half, three months before my first audition, and my acting coach. I just wanted to be prepared to use any tool needed whatever was asked, I wanted to be able to drop in and do it and really become her,” Grande said. “I gave my everything to it and paused everything else.”
If she had not gotten the role, Grande noted she knew that, because of director Jon M. Chu and producer Marc Platt, the part “was in the most loving hands, so I just kind of worked as hard as I could and let the rest fall into place. I do think, though, if it hadn’t happened, I might have ended up in an insane asylum, so there’s that.”
Chu admitted that Grande had “a giant wall to climb over” simply because of her fame as “Ariana Grande.” He also questioned, “Does she really know what it takes to carry a movie? Does she know what it takes to be inside a character? And she came in, and I couldn’t believe what I was watching. I was like, ‘She’s not talking like Ariana Grande. She’s not singing like Ariana Grande.’ By the way, I was outside in the parking lot, and she drove past like 14 times in 20 minutes.”
“I didn’t know you had seen me or heard me,” Grande broke in. “You were like, ‘Who’s blasting [Wicked song] “One Short Day?”’”
Grande and Cynthia Erivo, who stars as the Wicked Witch Elphaba, first met at Erivo’s house and shared snacks, including berries. “We just giggled and I felt an immediate safety,” Grande says. “And then we kind of made a pact to really take care of each other.”
“To be really honest with each other,” Erivo continued. “To make space for each other.”
Grande says she was extremely nervous. “I almost sh-t in my pants. But she’s just the warmest human being. We were just so open immediately with each other. I think that that promise that we made to each other and how we kept it and how it strengthened along the way is one of the things that we’re proudest of.”
