Warning: Spoilers ahead for Wicked.
It was probably always safe to assume that the film adaptation of long-running Broadway musical Wicked would find a way to incorporate the original Elphaba and Glinda, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, alongside the actresses taking over their roles, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, respectively. It’s die-hard theater fans who maintained enthusiasm for the film through countless delays — and director Jon M. Chu knows where his bread is buttered. But until Wicked hit theaters, it wasn’t clear how, exactly, the legacy stars would appear in the movie.
Both Menzel and Chenoweth show up in the “One Short Day” sequence, which takes place after Elphaba and Glinda arrive in the Emerald City. Their section is also the one new bit of music in the film, an expanded performance of the musical-within-a-musical Wizomania. In the Broadway show, Wizomania offers a brief glimpse into pro–Wonderful Wizard of Oz propaganda, with the Flatheads (stumpy fellows with flat heads, blame L. Frank Baum for this) sharing how great the Wizard is. “Wiz-n’t he wonderful?” they sing (and you can blame composer Stephen Schwartz for that).
The film’s version of Wizomania offers a more comprehensive — albeit still heavy on the propaganda — history of Oz and the Wizard’s role therein. Menzel and Chenoweth, sans flat heads, appear as actors in the performance, with both basically taking on their respective OG roles of Elphaba and Glinda. No, Menzel is not green, but the dynamic between the two feels warmly familiar (Menzel’s performer has the star power she brought to Wicked as Elphaba, while Chenoweth’s performer tries to shove her out of the way and pull focus) as they sing about the Grimmerie, an ancient book of magic that no one in Oz could read until the Wizard arrived via hot-air balloon. That story is, of course, not true, but it sounds very convincing in song.
Aside from the two interacting like two former Shiz University roommates, there are a few more nods to the original musical. Menzel does Elphaba’s battle cry from the end of “Defying Gravity,” a wild choice that one assumes had to be cleared with Erivo first. And Chenoweth at one point puts her hand over Grande’s mouth to stop her from singing — which is not an Easter egg, exactly, so much as what you’d expect to happen if you put two Glindas in the same room.
Menzel and Chenoweth aren’t the only cameos in Wicked — or even in “One Short Day.” There’s also a quick appearance from Winnie Holzman as another resident of the Emerald City. Holzman, who should be a household name for creating My So-Called Life alone, wrote the book to the musical Wicked, adapting the story from Gregory Maguire’s 1995, novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. She’s credited with writing two versions of the film’s screenplay, one by herself and one with co-writer Dana Fox.
Composer Stephen Schwartz has a slightly more prominent cameo in the “One Short Day” sequence. He appears as the palace guard who announces “the Wizard will see you now!” to Elphaba and Glinda. Schwartz is a multiple Academy Award winner and Tony nominee — his score for Wicked lost to Avenue Q — whose next project, Broadway-bound The Queen of Versailles, reunites him with Chenoweth in the title role. While Schwartz’s cameo in the first Wicked movie means he probably won’t pop up in Wicked: Part Two, he previously announced that he’d written two new songs for the second film.
As far as future cameos go, there are plenty of opportunities to sneak more original Broadway cast members of Wicked into the next movie. Surely Norbert Leo Butz and Christopher Fitzgerald would make good witch hunters.
