There’s been a strange phenomenon in Hollywood of late – films that are song-and-dance musicals, paired with marketing that seems designed to hide that very fact. The song-packed Wonka wasn’t advertised as such; the Mean Girls musical adaptation was soundtracked by Olivia Rodrigo songs in its trailers rather than its own numbers; even Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga spent the Joker: Folie À Deux promo tour claiming the film isn’t a musical. And while that phenomenon isn’t exactly new (audiences coming to Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd back in 2007 weren’t informed by the trailers that it was a full-on Stephen Sondheim adaptation), it seems particularly prevalent today.
One film that’s been more overt about its status as a Broadway adaptation is Jon M. Chu’s two-part take on Wicked. If early teasers were oddly song-lite, more recent trailers are clearer about it being a musical. And as star Cynthia Erivo – who plays Elphaba, aka the Wicked Witch Of The West – tells Empire in a major new career-spanning interview, being up-front about that is important. “There’s something really special about a movie musical. In its essence, it becomes a spectacle, whether you like it or not,” she says of the form. “I think that we don’t give audiences enough credit when it comes to musicals, so we pretend that musicals aren’t musicals. And I think now, it’s okay to just be like, ‘Hey, this is a musical, come and see it, you’ll survive... and you might even like it!’”
The shying away from showing songs in trailers might simply be down to the divisive nature of musicals themselves – some audiences simply don’t like them (or at least claim that to be the case). “I never understand when [musical haters] are like, ‘Why are people singing randomly?’,” says Erivo. “Because people sing every day, randomly, in the middle of the street! They literally do! I have sat in cars and people are just singing along to songs! Or the amount of times where people do that passive-aggressive thing of, when something happens that they don’t like, instead of saying, ‘What’s going on?’, they sing the thing that’s happening. Or at football stadiums, all of a sudden, everyone is singing along together — that’s singing in real life!” Be honest: disliking every musical is about as impossible as defying gravity.
Read Empire’s full Cynthia Erivo interview – talking about being an outsider, singing with Ariana Grande, connecting with Wicked, and working with all kinds of cinematic legends – in the Mickey 17 issue, on sale Thursday 24 October. Order a copy online here. Wicked comes to UK cinemas from 22 November.