‘Wicked: For Good’: Behind Glinda’s Extravagant Wedding, Including Designing a Dress with a 25-Meter Veil and Editing the Stampede to Sound like ‘Day of the Locust’
“Wicked: For Good” costume designer Paul Tazewell knew Glinda’s wedding dress visually needed to reflect a woman completely embedded in the culture of Emerald City — someone who wants to impress.
“She’s also very much in love with Fiyero,” Tazewell says.
In the “Wicked” conclusion, Glinda (Ariana Grande) has become a public figure, tasked with spreading goodness in Oz. She announces to her fellow Ozians that she’s engaged to be married to Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), which, of course, comes as a surprise to him. Unwillingly, he goes along with it.
Their grand Ozian wedding takes place in the Wizard’s Hall of Grandiosity within the Emerald City. Production designer Nathan Crowley transforms the city’s emerald tapestry, giving the bride circular trees that line the aisle. Gold butterflies flutter along the floor, creating a dreamy, yet natural, atmosphere.
Tazewell created a multi-layer dress made from organza and silk tulle. “The main dress is a silk satin, and it’s embellished with swirls of dimensional butterflies that run around the hem of the dress, as well as around the hem of the 25-meter-long veil that she wears,” he says. (For the record, that’s the width of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.)
Glinda’s crystallized tiara is a collection of interlocking butterflies, too. “It is about the presentation of her coming into the Hall of Grandiosity, where she’s parting all these golden butterflies that are sitting on the aisle, and they fly up and become the atmosphere of her wedding dress,” he says. “It becomes this very theatrical moment.”
But the Ozian nuptials are quickly ruined when, simultaneously, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) discovers that the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) has been keeping the animals of Oz locked in cages under the grand hall. Elphaba is furious and unleashes her powers — freeing the animals and causing a stampede, which ends the wedding festivities abruptly.
The whole scene serves as a metaphor, cinematographer Alice Brooks explains. Glinda and Elphaba are descending stairs “to what becomes the consequence of their life,” she says.
Glinda is in the middle of her fairy tale, and the color yellow symbolizes her intuition. “You see it when she selects the yellow brick road, and you see it at the very end of the movie when the Grimmerie opens up for her.” In contrast, Brooks says, “Elphaba is descending into darkness, into what she does not understand or what has been happening in Oz.”
Brooks adds that, at one point, director Jon M. Chu and editor Myron Kerstein — who “like to try everything,” she jokes — removed the intercut so that Glinda was given the full wedding experience and Elphaba was given her own separate moment.
However, this change totally altered the feel of what was originally designed, these matching processions which were very symmetrical.
“There was a whole debate about the fulfillment of the wedding and whether or not that wish fulfillment would be ruined if we’re intercutting with the secret prison,” Kerstein explains. “Balancing that took so much experimentation.”
Kerstein collaborated with fellow editor Tatiana S. Riegel to discuss their options. The key question was who to cut to as the wedding unravels after Elphaba stumbles upon the horrors of Oz directly beneath her. In the moments before the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) shows up and tries to reason with Elphaba, Kerstein was still trying to honor Glinda’s wish fulfillment.
“We want to root for Glinda, who’s been wanting this her entire life — this wedding with Fiyero and the grandeur of the butterflies,” he says, explaining their dilemma.
Then, when the animal stampede happens, Kerstein relies on supervising sound editor John Marquis. “I told John I wanted this to feel like [the 1975 film] ‘The Day of the Locust,’ where everything falls apart. Nothing comes back after this.”
Chu says the decision to intercut between Ginda’s wedding and Elphaba’s discovery as “one of the best discoveries in editorial.”
“We had shot some parallel shots, but I didn’t think necessarily that you could layer them on top of each other,” Chu says. “Plus, the note from the studio was: ‘Let the wedding play. You don’t have very many light moments in this movie. Why make the one light moment dark?’”
Plus, audiences already know that’s coming. “We are ahead of this movie,” he adds.” Myron did an amazing job just smacking the two together and then finding the shots that match. The truth is in the dark; the lies are the light. It just made it more interesting.”
The riotous sequences ends on a close-up of Glinda.
“She does the most wicked thing in the movie,” Brooks says. “You see her walk forward into this very tight close-up. You have the Wizard and Morrible in the background. We didn’t give Myron an option to cut to them. There’s no footage of them. It’s completely out of focus. In the background, you can hear them talking, but we just stayed with Glinda as you watch her make that decision. It’s the choice that changes everybody’s lives, right?”
When producer Marc Platt — who launched the “Wicked” show on Broadway before overeeing the Universal movies — saw the final product and the filmmakers’ choice to juxtapose those moments, he told Chu, “What you guys did, that’s cinema.”
“She’s also very much in love with Fiyero,” Tazewell says.
In the “Wicked” conclusion, Glinda (Ariana Grande) has become a public figure, tasked with spreading goodness in Oz. She announces to her fellow Ozians that she’s engaged to be married to Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), which, of course, comes as a surprise to him. Unwillingly, he goes along with it.
Their grand Ozian wedding takes place in the Wizard’s Hall of Grandiosity within the Emerald City. Production designer Nathan Crowley transforms the city’s emerald tapestry, giving the bride circular trees that line the aisle. Gold butterflies flutter along the floor, creating a dreamy, yet natural, atmosphere.
Tazewell created a multi-layer dress made from organza and silk tulle. “The main dress is a silk satin, and it’s embellished with swirls of dimensional butterflies that run around the hem of the dress, as well as around the hem of the 25-meter-long veil that she wears,” he says. (For the record, that’s the width of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.)
Glinda’s crystallized tiara is a collection of interlocking butterflies, too. “It is about the presentation of her coming into the Hall of Grandiosity, where she’s parting all these golden butterflies that are sitting on the aisle, and they fly up and become the atmosphere of her wedding dress,” he says. “It becomes this very theatrical moment.”
But the Ozian nuptials are quickly ruined when, simultaneously, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) discovers that the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) has been keeping the animals of Oz locked in cages under the grand hall. Elphaba is furious and unleashes her powers — freeing the animals and causing a stampede, which ends the wedding festivities abruptly.
The whole scene serves as a metaphor, cinematographer Alice Brooks explains. Glinda and Elphaba are descending stairs “to what becomes the consequence of their life,” she says.
Glinda is in the middle of her fairy tale, and the color yellow symbolizes her intuition. “You see it when she selects the yellow brick road, and you see it at the very end of the movie when the Grimmerie opens up for her.” In contrast, Brooks says, “Elphaba is descending into darkness, into what she does not understand or what has been happening in Oz.”
Brooks adds that, at one point, director Jon M. Chu and editor Myron Kerstein — who “like to try everything,” she jokes — removed the intercut so that Glinda was given the full wedding experience and Elphaba was given her own separate moment.
However, this change totally altered the feel of what was originally designed, these matching processions which were very symmetrical.
“There was a whole debate about the fulfillment of the wedding and whether or not that wish fulfillment would be ruined if we’re intercutting with the secret prison,” Kerstein explains. “Balancing that took so much experimentation.”
Kerstein collaborated with fellow editor Tatiana S. Riegel to discuss their options. The key question was who to cut to as the wedding unravels after Elphaba stumbles upon the horrors of Oz directly beneath her. In the moments before the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) shows up and tries to reason with Elphaba, Kerstein was still trying to honor Glinda’s wish fulfillment.
“We want to root for Glinda, who’s been wanting this her entire life — this wedding with Fiyero and the grandeur of the butterflies,” he says, explaining their dilemma.
Then, when the animal stampede happens, Kerstein relies on supervising sound editor John Marquis. “I told John I wanted this to feel like [the 1975 film] ‘The Day of the Locust,’ where everything falls apart. Nothing comes back after this.”
Chu says the decision to intercut between Ginda’s wedding and Elphaba’s discovery as “one of the best discoveries in editorial.”
“We had shot some parallel shots, but I didn’t think necessarily that you could layer them on top of each other,” Chu says. “Plus, the note from the studio was: ‘Let the wedding play. You don’t have very many light moments in this movie. Why make the one light moment dark?’”
Plus, audiences already know that’s coming. “We are ahead of this movie,” he adds.” Myron did an amazing job just smacking the two together and then finding the shots that match. The truth is in the dark; the lies are the light. It just made it more interesting.”
The riotous sequences ends on a close-up of Glinda.
“She does the most wicked thing in the movie,” Brooks says. “You see her walk forward into this very tight close-up. You have the Wizard and Morrible in the background. We didn’t give Myron an option to cut to them. There’s no footage of them. It’s completely out of focus. In the background, you can hear them talking, but we just stayed with Glinda as you watch her make that decision. It’s the choice that changes everybody’s lives, right?”
When producer Marc Platt — who launched the “Wicked” show on Broadway before overeeing the Universal movies — saw the final product and the filmmakers’ choice to juxtapose those moments, he told Chu, “What you guys did, that’s cinema.”