It’s the Wicked Witch of the East, bro! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s recently been a massive campaign for a new movie called Wicked, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo as an almost-insufferable teacher’s pet and good witch smeared by wizarding PR, respectively. Michelle Yeoh plays an everything-everywhere-all-out witch and Jurassic actor Jeff Goldblum is the un-magical wizard.
Well, something happened last week where, after months of pre-release media spots, we all got sick to the back teeth of the press roll-out clogging our feeds. We couldn’t move for pink dresses and green skin, and begged to be released from Wicked’s Technicolor talons. Then another thing happened: a reset point. A tabula rasa. An interview with a pioneering voice in queer media seized us in an enchanting chokehold. Before we knew it, we were, all of us, holding space for “Defying Gravity,” and feeling power in that.
I don’t need to tell you that we live in very cynical times. The cynic in all of us watched, mouth agog, as the two Wicked leads first started gushing over each other in front of the world’s media. These days, we’re used to seeing staunchly media-trained actresses dole out polite platitudes on about their acting roles, nothing burgers that fans gobble up as the rest of our eyes roll. We’re so inured to this glamourous pantomime, this Hollywood-colleague-politesse, that watching Grande and Erivo gently caressing hands and openly weeping because of, well, their parts in a film felt unsettlingly unreal. We saw these high-emotional-intensity interviews, this deep intimacy, before we saw the film, and the yellow brick road that led to their closeness. While these two witches weren’t in Kansas anymore, the rest of us were still firmly rooted to the ground.
But rather than grate, all those theatrical feelings started to seep in. We even felt a vicarious joy. The vibes on the Wicked press tour shifted from feeling claustrophobic to aspirational. Women whole-heartedly celebrating a work they’d given so much of themselves to seemed…suddenly magical? They both just seemed completely free, completely in the moment, completely accomplished.
Our initial, knee-jerk reactions to these women being utterly themselves suddenly had me questioning that inclination; the impulse to deride people (usually…women!) for using their full emotional vocabulary. What’s wrong with public displays of collegial affection? What’s wrong with saying something with your whole chest? I assume being a woman in the public eye can weigh heavily on the shoulders. Despite the inner cynic telling us to scoff, perhaps we really should—dare I say it—hold space for these women at the top of their games, defying the gravity of a truly gargantuan project? Actresses—and all women, to a degree—are constantly being yanked off their pedestals and back down to earth. Maybe, just this once, we can enjoy watching them soar? Maybe we can lean into the brillant daftness of two theater kids fulfilling their dreams? I don’t know about you, but somewhere over the rainbow, this tin man finally found his heart.