Before there was a cast, there was a press tour.
Promotion for the film adaptation of the musical Wicked started even before Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo were announced as Glinda and Elphaba.
For almost two decades, the idea of an onscreen production of the famed Broadway show, which debuted in October 2003, was shopped around Hollywood. At one point, Salma Hayek’s production company was teaming up with ABC, who’d initially bought the rights from Gregory Maguire, who wrote Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the book on which the Broadway show is based.
While that never came to fruition, the project began to take shape after Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu was named the film’s director and the lead roles went to Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. With the film officially a go, fervent fans waited with bated breath for any updates about the movie from its stars.
As the film’s theatrical release on Nov. 22 fast approaches, the marketing team is now hard at work pushing a Barbie-level amount of collaborations with brands like Stanley (for cups that had people nearly brawling in a Target), Lego and Mattel. Starbucks announced two drinks inspired by the film’s two protagonists.
The promotional tour for this movie feels like a marathon, with the lead actresses making appearances at major cultural events together or with their co-stars after having wrapped up filming parts one and two of the movie in January.
Since then, fans have spotted Grande and Erivo together at the Super Bowl, the Met Gala and the Olympics, among other events.
Grande’s fans know that she’s mentioned wanting to play Glinda for over a decade. During a June appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the host shared a 2011 tweet from Grande, in which she said she’d love to play Glinda, calling it a “dream role.” Erivo, a Grammy, Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress, is well-known in the theater community after gaining critical acclaim for her role as Celie in the 2015 revival of The Color Purple.
While it’s not uncommon for stars to attend events to drum up interest, the duo is more often than not wearing pink and green to pay homage to the characters they are bringing to the screen. More recently, a long press tour for blockbuster movies attempting to emulate the runaway success of the Barbie movie last year is becoming more commonplace.
For theater fans who have waited years for this movie to come out, watching Grande and Erivo promote this movie is more than welcome. Here are all the times the two witches appeared and changed us for good.
November 2021: Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are cast
In November 2021, Grande and Erivo took to their Instagram accounts to announce their casting in Wicked. Their posts captured their reactions, which warmed the hearts of theater lovers everywhere.
April 2023: A work-in-progress exclusive 1st look at CinemaCon
With less than one month until the movie hits theaters, fans should expect Grande and Erivo to leave a trail of pink and green in their wake, all the way to the cinema.
Wicked is in theaters Nov. 22.
