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'Wicked' author reveals subtle clue in 'The Wizard of Oz' that Glinda and Elphaba were friends

"I fell down onto the ground laughing at the thought that they had gone to college together."

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Gregory Maguire was inspired by a line in the original 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz."

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book or listened to a piece of music and wondered, "How did they come up with that idea?" The creative process is so enigmatic even artists themselves don't always know where their ideas come from, so It's a treat when we get to hear the genesis of a brilliant idea straight from the horse's mouth. It's often not what you would expect!

If you've watched Wicked and wondered where the idea for the friendship between Elphaba (the Wicked Witch) and Glinda (the Good Witch) came from, the author of the book has shared the precise moment it came to him.

The hit movie Wicked is based on the 20-year-old hit stage musical, which is based on the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West written by Gregory Maguire. It says a lot about how powerful the story is that it has succeeded in so many different mediums and continued to find new audiences that connect with it.

While the musical is a simplified version of the 1995 book, the basic storyline—the origins of the two witches from "The Wizard of Oz"—lies at the heart of both. In an interview with BBC, Maguire explained how Elphaba and Glinda's friendship popped into his head.

wizard of oz, wicked, wicked for good, wicked movie, wicked musical, wicked novel, gregory maguire, art, artists, writers, authors Ariana Grande as Glinda in the "Wicked" film Giphy

Maguire was visiting Beatrix Potter's farm in Cumbria, England (Potter was an author and illustrator who created Peter Rabbit) and thinking about "The Wizard of Oz," which he had loved as a child and thought could be an interesting basis for a story about evil.

"I thought 'alright, what do we know about 'The Wizard of Oz' from our memories,'" he said. "We have the house falling on the witch. What do we know about that witch? All we know about that witch is that she has feet. So I began to think about Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West…

"There is one scene in the 1939 film where Billie Burke [Glinda] comes down looking all pink and fluffy, and Margaret Hamilton [The Wicked Witch] is all crawed and crabbed and she says something like, 'I might have known you'd be behind this, Glinda!' This was my memory, and I thought, now why is she using Glinda's first name? They have known each other. Maybe they've known each other for a long time. Maybe they went to college together. And I fell down onto the ground in the Lake District laughing at the thought that they had gone to college together."

Maguire must have thought the idea of Glinda and The Wicked Witch attending college together was absurd at the time. What a kooky idea! But he pursued it nonetheless and, well, the rest is history.

wizard of oz, wicked, wicked for good, wicked movie, wicked musical, wicked novel, gregory maguire, art, artists, writers, authors A photo of author Gregory Maguire.By Jeremy Goldstein/Flickr CC BY 2.0

In "Wicked," Glinda and the Wicked Witch, Elphaba, meet as students at Shiz University, a school of wizardry. They get placed as roommates, loathe each other at first, but eventually become best friends. The story grows a lot more complicated from there (and the novel goes darker than the stage play), but it's the character development of the two witches and their relationship with one another that force us to examine our ideas about good and evil.

Watch his explanation and inspiration here:

Maguire also shared with the Denver Center for Performing Arts what had inspired him to use the "Wizard of Oz" characters in the first place.

"I was living in London in the early 1990’s during the start of the Gulf War. I was interested to see how my own blood temperature chilled at reading a headline in the usually cautious British newspaper, the Times of London: 'Sadaam Hussein: The New Hitler?' I caught myself ready to have a fully formed political opinion about the Gulf War and the necessity of action against Sadaam Hussein on the basis of how that headline made me feel. The use of the word Hitler – what a word! What it evokes! When a few months later several young schoolboys kidnapped and killed a toddler, the British press paid much attention to the nature of the crime.

"I became interested in the nature of evil, and whether one really could be born bad," he said.

"I considered briefly writing a novel about Hitler but discarded the notion due to my general discomfort with the reality of those times. But when I realized that nobody had ever written about the second most evil character in our collective American subconscious, the Wicked Witch of the West, I thought I had experienced a small moment of inspiration. Everybody in America knows who the Wicked Witch of the West is, but nobody really knows anything about her. There is more to her than meets the eye."

Authors and artists—and their ideas—help hold a mirror up to humanity for us to see and reflect on who we are, and "Wicked" is one of those stories that makes us take a hard look at what we're seeing in that mirror. Thanks, Gregory Maguire, for launching us on a collective journey that not only entertains but has the potential to change how we see one another.

The second Wicked film, For Good, hits theaters in November 2025.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

This story originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

Popular

'Wicked' is becoming a political Rorschach test and so many people are missing the point

Watching “Wicked” through a partisan lens is inherently problematic.

Cynthia Erivo plays Elphaba and Ariana Grande plays Glinda in Jon M. Chu's "Wicked" adaptation.

Like millions of others, I recently watched Jon M. Chu's long-awaited movie adaptation of "Wicked," a musical prequel to "The Wizard of Oz" that offers an origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West. Plenty has been said about the film—the performances of Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, the stunning sets, the fun choreography, the questionable lighting— but I'm much more intrigued by people's strangely partisan responses to the story.

As we walked out of the movie theater, someone commented on how "timely" the story was, "considering everything happening in the current political climate." I assumed I knew what they meant, but after reading scores of reactions to the film, I realized I had no clue. People watching the exact same film are walking away with very different ideas about who the characters and the plot represent, with some seeing Donald Trump in the Wizard (a charlatan who feigns being great and powerful) and some seeing him in Elphaba (a misunderstood outsider challenging the establishment).

Unsurprisingly, people seem to be viewing it through polarized partisan lenses, and hoo boy, does that color what they are seeing.

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How are people walking out of "Wicked" with totally opposite political interpretations?

There's no question that the story of "Wicked" is political, tackling fascism, populism, charlatanism, scapegoating and manipulation of the masses. The protagonist, Elphaba, is someone who has been "othered," a victim of prejudice and propaganda, who sees the pathetic reality of "the man behind the curtain" and courageously thwarts his plot to make himself more powerful. What and who the storyline and characters represent in our "current political climate" is open to interpretation, however, and people are coming to polar opposite conclusions.

You know the famous Rorschach inkblot test used to analyze how people interpret what they're seeing? "Wicked" appears to be a film version of that for American politics.

Partisan lenses cause people to oversimplify a story that is purposefully complex

Everything stemming from those opposing interpretations colors how people view the rest of the film, with both sides insisting they have rock solid evidence for their viewpoint. However, the partisan lenses that lead people to feel more certain that their side is the right side—the "good" side—entirely misses the point.

Rorschach inkblotThe first inkblot in the Rorschach test.Public domain

The show explores multiple themes, but the biggie is that “good” and “evil” are complex and nuanced concepts. What appears to be evil or good is influenced by people's motivations, perceptions, prejudices, relationships, self-interest, propaganda, power, sense of the greater good, etc. The deep dive into the complexity of how those things influence what—and whom—we view as good or evil is what makes the show so beautifully compelling. The three times I saw "Wicked" on stage, I came away delightfully awed by how it made me question my biases and beliefs.

If you walk out of "Wicked" more certain about your worldview, you're missing the point.

The point of "Wicked" is that good vs. evil narratives are overly simplistic. Not only is everyone capable of good and evil, but having the full context is vital in determining what is actually good or evil—and even then, it's not always clear. As we will see in Part 2, even Glinda's opening question, "Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?" proves to be overly simplistic because sometimes what is "wicked" is in the eye of the beholder. Ultimately, the show implores us to question what we believe about others and recognize how easy it is to be influenced by propaganda and fear-mongering. We aren't meant to come away more certain of our views.

That's not to say there aren't objectively good or evil actions or that some people don't indulge their evil tendencies more than their good. But there's a lot more gray area than our black-and-white public discourse, with its viral soundbites and hot takes and incentivized sensationalism, acknowledges.

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Prejudice makes us easy to control

Another big takeaway from "Wicked" is that people in positions of power will exploit our prejudices and manipulate our perceptions of good and evil to achieve their purposes. That's a message for all of us, not just for the people we believe are being deluded by populist politicians or unscrupulous media outlets. If anyone of any political persuasion walks out of “Wicked” thinking, “That's right! THOSE people are being duped by propaganda from evil leaders masquerading as great and powerful,” without recognizing how they themselves might just be in the same boat, they’ve missed the point. If people walk out more confident that their political side is "good" and the other side is "evil," no matter what side of the spectrum they’re on, they’ve also missed the point.

"Wicked" asks us to untangle ourselves from the prejudices and biases that make us easy to manipulate, and that starts with seeing the inherent potential for good and evil that we all share. If we continue to toss nuance and complexity out the window in favor of simplistic narratives about one another, if we refuse to try to acknowledge that we might not be as right as we think we are and others might not be as wrong as we think they are, we might as well just be flying monkeys.

Pop Culture

Ariana Grande wows TikTok with a stunning, stripped down cover of 'Over The Rainbow'

Grande is currently filming a live adaptation of the musical “Wicked."

This pink sweater is everything.

Ariana Grande might be best known as a pop queen, but her musical theatre talents run deep. She was a performer on Broadway at the age of nine, long before she began racking up Grammys. And even throughout her adult career, she’ll wave that theatre kid flag once in a while, as she did for NBC’s “Hairspray Live!”

Grande is even currently filming a live adaptation of the musical “Wicked,” playing the role of Galinda, aka Glinda the Good Witch. While the movie might not release until Christmas of 2024, the singer treated fans to an early taste of Oz with a gorgeous rendition of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow,” originally sung by Judy Garland in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.”


The video shows Grande chilling in a kitchen, completely covered up in a giant pink yarn sweater—equal parts for comfort and hiding her golden Glinda locks, to be sure—as she effortlessly captures that same kind of dreamy lilt that Garland once did for the tune. Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Grande is a whiz at musical impressions.

Listen. It’s stunning.

@arianagrande

wanted to sing you a little something but don’t want to sing anything that is not “Ozian” at the moment :) keeping to my little bubble for now … done with lots of love.

♬ original sound - arianagrande

“Wanted to sing you a little something but don’t want to sing anything that is not ‘Ozian’ at the moment :) keeping to my little bubble for now,” Grande wrote in the video’s caption. “Done with lots of love.” The cover comes as a polite response to a fan who asked, “Why aren’t you a singer anymore?” since Grande hasn’t put out a new album since 2020.

Understandably, filming two huge movies at the same time (“Wicked” director Jon Chu previously announced that the movie would be split into two parts) leaves little time to produce new music. But rest assured, Grande is, and probably always will be, a SINGER. (All-caps necessary to encapsulate all that talent.)

Grande’s clip quickly went viral, reaching yet another famous Glinda—Kristin Chenoweth. Chenoweth, who originated the "Wicked" role on Broadway, threw on a hot pink feathered sweater and performed a TikTok duet of the song, along with the caption, “Just two Ozians.”

Is there any better seal of approval than a duet with the OG Galinda herself? I don't think so.

@kristinchenoweth Just two Ozians 🌈💞 @arianagrande #wicked #glinda #galinda #wizardofoz #overtherainbow ♬ original sound - arianagrande

“Wicked” boasts an impressive cast of not only Grande, but Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible and Jeff Goldblum as The Wizard of Oz. And if this cover is any indicator, it seems like it’s going to be a lovely retelling of the story…with one amazing soundtrack.