We’re calling all theater lovers! Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel finally addressed their rumored feud behind the scenes of Wicked!
For those who don’t recall, the two actresses starred in the original cast of the beloved musical long before the show opened on Broadway. Kristin, who portrayed the good witch Glinda, joined the workshops for Wicked in 2000, and then Idina, who played the Wicked Witch of the West Elphaba, signed on for the project the following year. Soon after the show began on October 30, 2003, at the Gershwin Theatre, it became a success. Wicked earned 10 nominations at the Tonys in 2004, with both Kristin and Idina battling out for the honor of Best Actress that year.
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But they weren’t just battling it out for the big award. Despite playing best friends on the show, that allegedly was not the case backstage! Rumors ran rampant at the time that the two co-stars were “at each other’s necks” and didn’t get along behind the scenes of the show. But if you ask Kristin and Idina about the feud, they would insist there never was one !
Speaking to Vulture for the 20th anniversary of Wicked, Kristin touched on the feud. Despite what some may think, she swears they were nothing but “extremely supportive of one another” when they began their “three years of workshops” together. Even when Idina won the Tony, she had only love for the 52-year-old singer. She recalled:
“I’d like to speak on this. After a certain amount of time after we opened, my mom was dealing with cancer. I was emotional and I was thinking about some other things. To me, there was no way that I would win a Tony. Yes, it’s the two girls as leads. But it’s Elphaba’s story. I needed to deal with that part of me. I was very emotional. I tried to push it out, I mean, if only people knew.”
Idina chimed in to say:
“Unfortunately people like to do that to women. They can’t be supportive of one another. You have to put all this conflict in there.”
At the time, the singers were well aware of what many people speculated about them and how much they “enjoyed the rumors” of their spats. Kristin even wanted to poke fun at the whole situation, explaining:
“If I could go back in time, I’d be like, ‘I know what y’all are doing. Stop.’ At one awards presentation, I said to Idina, ‘Can we go out and I’ll have on my neck brace and you have your head wrap and maybe a crutch?’ I wanted it to look like we were beating up on each other.”
LOLz!!! What a great idea to mock the rumors. Idina added:
“Just take the piss out of it all. Because then it’s so outlandish.”
The feud speculation was mainly so “outlandish” to them because much like their characters Kristin and Idina had bonded like sisters on set. However, Kristin explained that like many sisters they can get on each other’s “nerves” sometimes:
“It becomes a family. I’m sure, as a sister, I got on her nerves sometimes. I’m positive I did. I get on my own nerves most of the time. But you also know what the other one’s going through. Nobody else can know that but us.”
No matter what, though, Kristin and Idina knew they had each other’s back. That’s what mattered most to them. And each night, the pair belted out the musical’s popular and final track, For Good, and it was always “very healing” for them amid all the outside chatter. Idina expressed:
“Whatever was going on in our own lives, it was nice to always be able to come to that at the end of a show. We would always look at each other and say, ‘I got you. You got me. We’re making this thing together. We love each other.’ People were saying stuff out there, and we were good at trying to bring it back to the two of us, because that’s all that matters.”
Wow. It sounds like they truly had nothing but love and support for each other. What are YOUR thoughts on this, Perezcious readers? Let us know in the comments below.
[Image via Nicky Nelson/WENN, Broadwaycom/YouTube]
