Entertainment
Wicked: For Good Director Reveals Dorothy Deleted Scene That Felt ‘a Little Too Much’
NEED TO KNOW
- Wicked: For Good director Jon M. Chu revealed that they filmed scenes of the dancer who played Dorothy straight-on, but they were not used
- The movie, which is an adaptation of the beloved Broadway play based on The Wizard of Oz, still features the character’s storyline, but Chu said they never planned to show her face
- Wicked: For Good is in theaters now
Jon M. Chu is explaining why Dorothy’s face wasn’t shown in Wicked: For Good.
The director opened up about the second part of his adaptation of Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz’s hit Broadway musical in an interview with Business Insider. While For Good takes place in the magical land first seen in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz, which stars Judy Garland as Dorothy, she wasn’t featured much in the new movie.
“At the auditions, we would put a sheet up, looking at the performer’s silhouette,” Chu, 46, revealed. “Through that, I was looking at how she could walk, but also, could I guide her in that way? The person had to have youthful energy, so we ultimately chose a dancer.”
He also said that there are some deleted scenes showing Dorothy’s face, who was ultimately played by Bethany Weaver, but they were cut.
“We had opportunities to show more, and we shot some things where you could see her face, but our intention, from the beginning, was not to show her face,” Chu shared. “But was I sure of that choice? We did get options for it, but every time, it was a distraction.”
“The thing we went by the whole time was something from the stage show,” he added. “They told us, ‘It’s about the girls! Whatever is happening, it’s about the girls.’ So every time it drew us to, ‘What does Dorothy think?’ we reminded ourselves of that.”
Starring Ariana Grande as Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elpheba, For Good is the second of Chu’s two-part adaptation of the beloved musical — which has been playing on Broadway since 2003 and was adapted from Gregory Maguire’s 1995 revisionist novel, itself inspired by L. Frank Baum’s 1900 classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
For Good concludes the stories of Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the West, by tying their origins to the events of The Wizard of Oz. While Dorothy’s face was never shown, it still offers glimpses of her story from the witches’ perspective, from the arrival of the Kansas girl’s house in Munchkinland to her throwing the bucket of water onto Elphaba (who we later learn set it out to stage her death).
Other peeks at Dorothy include when her feet are shown dangling from the clutches of a flying monkey in a close-up. She is also spotted with Toto and their three companions in the Wizard’s chamber as he instructs them to hunt down Elphaba.
When it comes to Dorothy’s interactions with Glinda, the witch doesn’t appear to have much patience for her. Glinda even dismisses Dorothy along the yellow brick road and rolls her eyes when the young girl fails to join the Wizard as he departs in a hot air balloon.
“It’s always something with her”, Grande’s Glinda quips, bringing Dorothy’s time in Oz to its end.
More Wizard of Oz characters make an appearance in For Good as well, including the grown-up Cowardly Lion (voiced by Colman Domingo) and Fiyero’s Scarecrow (Jonathan Bailey).
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Wicked: For Good is in theaters now.
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