Wicked’s Marissa Bode Is ‘Uncomfortable’ About Movie Disability Jokes

While Marissa Bode is excited by the warm reception her movie Wicked has received, she has also felt “uncomfortable” by certain jokes aimed at her character, Nessarose.

“It is absolutely OK to not like a fictional character. I am going to be admitting my bias in the way that I have a lot of different feelings on Nessa than a lot of you do,” Bode, 24, said in a Friday, November 29, TikTok video. “That’s totally fine; I think Nessa is complex but that’s the beauty of art and Wicked and these characters and the movies wouldn’t be what it was if there weren’t different opinions on the characters and who’s truly wicked or not.”

Wicked, which hit theaters earlier this month, was adapted by director Jon M. Chu from the Broadway musical of the same name. The stage production itself took inspiration from Gregory Maguire’s novel, a prequel to The Wizard of Oz. In all adaptations, Wicked tells the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Galinda/Glinda, The Good Witch of the North, when they first met as roommates at Shiz University.

In Chu’s movie, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande play Elphaba and Galinda, respectively. Bode’s character, Nessarose, is Elphie’s sister and the apple of their father’s eye. As Nessa is confined to a wheelchair, their father entrusts Elphaba to watch over her while at school.

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Theater lovers and movie goers alike have been counting down the days until the film adaptation of Broadway’s Wicked premieres. Wicked made its stage debut in 2003, with Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth playing witches Elphaba and Glinda, respectively. More than two decades later, fans are getting a two-part movie version of the musical starring […]

“Not liking Nessa herself is OK because she is fictional, that’s totally fine,” Bode, who uses a wheelchair in real life, further admitted. “I am a deeply unserious person [and] I love a little jokey joke. … Jokes about Nessa’s personality are silly, goofy because she herself is fictional.”

She added, “That being said … aggressive comments and ‘jokes’ about Nessa’s disability itself is deeply uncomfortable because disability is not fictional. At the end of the day, me Marissa, is the person that is still disabled and in a wheelchair. It is simply a low-hanging fruit that too many of you are comfortable taking.”

While Bode acknowledges that she heard certain jokes long before Wicked, they still aren’t “original” and “feels like laughing at [me] rather than laughing with [me].”

“The most frustrating part of all of this is how scared I am to even post [or] talk about this,” Bode added. “This goes so far beyond me Marissa just needing to ignore comments on the internet. These comments do not exist in a vacuum. Aggressive comments of wanting to cause harm and ‘push Nessa out of her wheelchair’ or that she deserves her disability are two very gross and harmful comments that real disabled people, including myself, have heard.”

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Bode further implored her followers in her TikTok caption to “do the work” and “dissect and unlearn your own ableism.”

“Listen to the people or to the person that [the comment] is affecting and how it makes them feel,” she concluded. “Thankfully, I am at a place in my life today where I can recognize these jokes about disability are made out of ignorance. I couldn’t say the same about Marissa 10 years ago.”

Wicked is now in theaters.