‘Wicked’ Director Jon M. Chu on Those Cameos: ‘We Had One Day’

[The following story includes major spoilers for Wicked.]

One short day. That’s, coincidentally, how much time the Wicked filmmakers had to shoot those cameos for the “One Short Day” scene in the film based on the iconic Broadway musical of the same name.

In the film, when Glinda (Ariana Grande) and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) head to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum), they watch a stage show on the history of Oz. At that point, original Broadway castmembers Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, who played Glinda and Elphaba, respectively, in the musical appear to take audience members through the vibrant story of the city.

“There was no world where we wouldn’t invite them to come be a part of this,” director Jon M. Chu tells The Hollywood Reporter. “The question for us was, how, and how much are they willing to do in it, and how much can the story itself handle it? Because they’re such iconic people and especially to these roles.”

He continues: “It was like a mania. [We said], ‘Let’s make them the biggest stars of Oz. Let’s make them this iconic legends of Oz on the stage show, and let them present the history of Oz. They would be the wise women of Oz.’ It just seemed to make sense. And [composer] Steven Schwartz — it might have actually come from him from my memory — said, ‘I know exactly how to do it’ because we needed some information about the story of the history of Oz, plus it would be them, so it would be more meaningful.”

Chu explains that they had only one day to film this sequence after sneaking Menzel and Chenoweth into London. “We had one night in the middle of the night, from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m, on a rainy night. … the moment they sang the songs and got their iconic moments in that, it was beautiful. And what was cool about the day was, I think it was really healing for everybody. … I said, ‘This is in honor of you. This whole us making this movie is an honor of you because we want you to experience what we got to experience when we first saw it, when I went to the theater before it went into Broadway, what it felt like to watch Elphaba and Glinda steal our hearts, you have never got to experience that. And now we get to do that for you.’ Ari is crying the whole time. Cynthia was crying the whole time. There was a lot of love on that set that day. And so I’m so grateful for them to come out there. I was not involved with the deal-making. I have no idea what it took to get them there. All I knew is they were down and willing. We just had one day to do it.”

Two other cameos appear in the sequence. Winnie Holzman, who wrote the book of the musical Wicked, appears as a resident of Emerald City. Schwartz appears at the palace and announces “The Wizard will see you now!”

Wicked, which opened in theaters on Friday via Universal Pictures, also stars Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, Marissa Bode as Nessarose, Keala Settle as Miss Coddle and Bowen Yang as Pfannee, among others.

You can read Chu’s full interview about Wicked here.