U.S. film director Jon M. Chu poses upon arrival for the U.K. premiere of the film Wicked at the Royal Festival Hall, in London, on Nov. 18.BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images
Wicked, the musical and now movie adaptation bound to send the box office over the rainbow, is all about an outsider challenging the dominant narratives.
You’re probably familiar with its story, where we learn that the whole Wicked Witch of the West thing is just a projection on a misunderstood green-skinned woman named Elphaba, who Cynthia Erivo plays with such warmth and majesty. Elphaba stays dignified while weathering all the microaggressions the Land of Oz throws her way. She secretly yearns for acceptance but forsakes it in the movie’s rousing finale when she learns that Oz isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She chooses instead to stand on principle, fight for those who don’t have a voice and maybe cackle a little on their behalf as well.
The movie is a neat fit for director Jon M. Chu, whose own canon reads like an outsider challenging Hollywood norms. Chu cut his teeth making glorious sequels to Step Up, the Save The Last Dance knockoff where hip-hop moves are appropriated by ballerinas. “I decided I’m gonna make the best damn direct-to-DVD dance movie sequel ever,” says Chu on a Zoom call with The Globe and Mail, thinking back on the work he put in on Step Up 2: The Streets and Step Up 3-D. Both films departed from the original by centring diverse hip-hop dance crews in stories that reject any aspirations for the likes of the Julliard School, defiantly championing their own spaces instead.
Chu went on to adapt Crazy Rich Asians (the movie that proved minorities could blow up the global box office), In The Heights (where hip-hop elbows out room on Broadway) and now one of the biggest musicals of all time. Chu spoke to The Globe and Mail about his journey from Step Up 2 to Wicked.
The Wizard of Oz holds a special place from childhood. I always felt immersed in that moment when Dorothy opens the door to a world full of colour. Talk to me about your own experience with that.
My parents are immigrants. The American dream was sort of based off this idea of the Yellow Brick Road that’s going to give you your heart’s desire. How do you prove yourself here? What do you have to do to be accepted? It was great to be dreaming of a place where we’re on the other side of the rainbow where everything was perfect. That did help me.
As I grew up, that story started to be questioned. What happens when the Yellow Brick Road wasn’t necessarily made for me. The wizard isn’t there to help fix all our problems. Then what? And I think that’s what Wicked did: upended that story and started to create a new perspective.
Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande, with director Jon M. Chu, on the set of Wicked.Giles Keyte/The Associated Press
Wicked is all about rooting for the outsider. When I think of rooting for the outsiders, I also think of your filmmaking trajectory.
I’ve been trying to be accepted into this business from the very beginning. When I just drive up to the studio lot, they’d say “Deliveries are over there.” The people at locations scouts looking for the director never look at me. They look at the tall older white guy over there. I feel it all the time. But at the same time, it drove me and helped me say “I’m going to work harder. I’m going to prove myself. Spielberg’s going to like me. The studio executives got to like me.”
At a certain point – and maybe it’s the point I hit my 10,000 hours making movies – I remember thinking that I deserve to be here and probably have made enough money for people that I could probably tell the story that they don’t want to make. That’s where Crazy Rich Asians came in.
In a weird way, going to Crazy Rich Asians was having to deal with the thing I did not want to deal with: my cultural identity crisis, examining being an Asian-American. I knew the moment I identified myself as Asian-American, I go into the Asian bucket of Hollywood – and they only send me Asian things, they only think of me as the Asian director and I don’t get the opportunities that other people get. I was scared of that.
But at that point, I was like, “Let’s go.”
Going back to the The Wizard of Oz, what made that movie so special was how it leaned into the “glorious Technicolor” for its storytelling, really emphasizing the ruby slippers, Yellow Brick Road, the Emerald City, etc. Colour was essential to that story. Wicked is a little desaturated except for the pink glow during the Popular number. Talk to me about the aesthetic.
I mean, there’s colour all over it. I think what we wanted to do was immerse people into Oz, to make it a real place. Because if it was a fake place, if it was a dream in someone’s mind, then the real relationships and the stakes that these two girls are going through wouldn’t feel real.
It’s also [presented in] a way we have not experienced Oz before. It’s been a matte painting. It’s been a video game digital world. But for us, I want to feel the dirt. I want to feel the wear and tear of it. And that means it’s not plastic.
We have the environment. The sun is the main source of light. You see the vast landscapes. You see the air. You see creatures exist here. These two characters that will go through two movies, their relationship with the land is important; their relationship with the nature of this land that the wizard imposed himself. The [colour] contrast goes up over time because that is what Elphaba brings to this world.
This interview has been edited and condensed.