No good deed goes unpunished…

That’s exactly what Jon M. Chu discovered when he realized that neither he nor Ariana Grande were interested in her role as Elphaba in the film. Bad films, despite having prepared and sung several Elphaba songs for her first auditions.

When asked if he ever considered Grande for the role of the future evil witch, he answers bluntly, “The reality is no.”

“We got mixed messages,” he says Entertainment weekly. “I thought, ‘Of course she’s coming for Galinda.’ And then my casting director said, ‘No, I think she thinks she’s coming for Elphaba.’ I’m like, ‘That wasn’t the plan.’ And they say, ‘Well, she prepared it.'”

Despite her connection to the original Broadway Glinda, Kristin Chenoweth, and after talking about Glinda as a dream role, casting directors assumed that Grande wanted to be considered for Elphaba because she had previously sung Elphaba’s “The Wizard and I” on NBC’s television special in honor of the 15th anniversary. celebrating the stage musical.

“The funny thing is, before that, we had only sung opposite songs in public,” Grande tells EW of her and costar Cynthia Erivo’s history with the Bad score. “I had only sung ‘The Wizard and I’, and she had only sung ‘Thank Goodness’ in public.”

Grande recently spoke about her first audition at the Sentimental men podcast, which revealed that she auditioned for both roles. “I always had an inkling in my heart that it was going to be Glinda, but I heard very mixed things from people saying, ‘Oh, they might want you to read for both,’” she said. “And I thought, that’s probably because they don’t know what my voice is, and maybe vocally they think I might be better suited for Elphaba. I secretly knew that I was only meant for Glinda.”

Her first audition was on August 13, 2021 and she was asked to sing for both roles, in preparation for ‘No One Mourns, the Wicked’, ‘Popular’ and ‘Defying Gravity’.

Chu had Grande sing all the songs she had prepared, but they later found out that neither of them seriously wanted her to be in the running for Elphaba. “She was nice to me, and I was nice to her,” Chu says. “We just let her do it. But in my mind I was like, ‘Why is she singing Elphaba now?’ Maybe because she’s sung them in the past, but to me she was always a Glinda. We didn’t know each other well enough to say, ‘Okay, let’s clear up the phone game?'”

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They both got the hint relatively quickly (Grande came in wearing pink and carrying a pink water bottle, according to her audition story) — and at each subsequent audition, Grande read and sang parts alone for the role of Glinda. Thank God!

Badwhich also starred Idina Menzel, premiered on Broadway in 2003. Based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire and with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. Wizard of Oz prequel musical follows the paths of the two witches, from students at Shiz University to Elphaba becoming the Wicked Witch of the West. The show won three of its ten Tony Award nominations in 2004.

Grande has already received rave reviews and Oscar buzz for her work in the film. The story is split into two parts, with the first film set to hit theaters on November 22.