🚨🚨🚨Warning: This story contains important spoilers for ‘Bad’.

“Wicked” officially hit theaters on Nov. 22, more than 21 years after the Broadway musical of the same name premiered at the Gershwin Theater.

The premiere sees Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande step into the shoes of Broadway stars Idina Menzel, who played Elphaba, and Kristin Chenoweth, Glinda – and they received their blessing both on and off screen.

Chenoweth and Menzel attended the film’s premiere in Los Angeles on November 9 and posed side-by-side with Grande and Erivo.

Then, after years of speculation about how and… as Menzel and Chenoweth are said to be involved in the production, with the film’s release confirming that the actors will make cameos in the adaptation.

Chenoweth and Menzel’s cameo features a few bars of new music written by Stephen Schwartz, the Broadway musical’s composer, and a sweet moment between Elphaba, Glinda and the actors who originally played them.

And for the ‘Wicked’ superfans, there’s also a nod to two key figures behind the musical.

“That was a very special day for us because it felt like we were being knighted by the queens,” Erivo told TODAY’s Willie Geist. “They were so wonderful and supportive. So many words of wisdom. So many words of encouragement, on a constant basis.

“I got three video messages from Kristin and a bunch of different voice notes from Idina,” she added.

Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth’s ‘Wicked’ cameo, explained

Menzel and Chenoweth’s cameo takes place near the end of the film, during Glinda and Elphaba’s memorable duet, “One Short Day,” which follows the friends as they visit the Emerald City for the first time to meet the Wizard.

During the song, Elphaba and Glinda stop for a spectacle called Wizomania, which provides a shiny and glittery retelling of how the Wizard managed to take power in Oz.

That moment is expanded upon in the 2024 film with a new song and dance, performed by two members of an Emerald City theater group playing Oz’s Wise Ones.

The two Wise Ones are played by Menzel and Chenoweth. Everyone gets his or her moment in the spotlight and sings about a prophecy about the Grimmerie, a spell book.

According to the song, the Magi wrote down their spells in the Grimmerie in a ‘strange and secret language’. But a prophecy predicts that after their deaths, in ‘Oz’s darkest hour’, a powerful figure will lead Oz, distinguished by their ability to read the Grimmerie.

At the end of the Song of the Magi, this figure is revealed to be the Wizard of Oz (although the ending of “Wicked: Part 1” questions his authenticity).

At the end of the cameo, Chenoweth and Menzel stand next to Grande and Erivo respectively, looking fondly at the actors playing the roles they originated. Menzel even fixes the hat Erivo wears as Elphaba.

Schwartz tells TODAY.com that they had “all kinds of ideas” about how Chenoweth and Menzel could star in the film.

“We obviously wanted to honor Kristin and Idina by having them in the film,” he says.

Some of those ideas included having Chenoweth play Glinda’s mother, or having Chenoweth and Menzel appear as teachers at Shiz University, the fictional university where Glinda and Elphaba meet.

At the same time, Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, who wrote the book for the musical “Wicked” and the screenplay for the 2024 film, were already expanding the song “One Short Day.”

“We wanted to expand ‘One Short Day’ to show more of the propaganda the Wizard was spreading and to better understand this magical book – the Grimmerie, what is it? Because it’s so important to the plot,” says Schwartz.

It was none other than director Jon M. Chu who connected the dots between Menzel and Chenoweth and the “One Short Day” expansion, Schwartz says.

“Why don’t we just make it two wise women of Oz, and they could be Kristin and Idina?” Schwartz remembers Chu saying.

“And then of course we were able to adapt the song to give Easter egg tributes to their appearances on the show,” Schwartz adds.

Easter eggs within an Easter egg

In addition to recognizing Chenoweth and Menzel, fans of “Wicked” will likely clock certain moments of their performance as nods to their legacies as Glinda and Elphaba.

During the vocal arrangement written for them, both Menzel and Chenoweth hit some of their signature notes. Menzel sings the signature “Oh!” riff that you hear at the very end of ‘Defying Gravity’.

Meanwhile, “Kristin needs to play her soprano,” says Schwartz. “She hits a high D-flat.”

The two Sages also seem to have a bit of a rivalry, which “the press castigates at the time they tried to make (Chenoweth and Menzel) rivals,” Schwartz adds. (For a bit of “bad” history, both Menzel and Chenoweth were nominated for Best Performance by a Lead Actress in a Musical at the 2004 Tonys, which Menzel won.)

“There’s a beautiful moment where Ariana is about to hit a high note and Kristin puts her hand over her mouth,” Schwartz adds.

The whole number is “one big Easter egg,” Schwartz says.

Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s Cameos in ‘Wicked’

Schwartz and Holzman even appear in the scene.

Holzman appears in the scene as one of the residents of the Emerald City watching Wizomania’s performance. Towards the end of the Song of the Magi, an image of the Wizard landing in Oz and apparently reading the Grimmerie plays out in the sky.

Holzman’s character points to the picture and says, “He can read it. He must be… a magician!”

Then, at the very end of “One Short Day”, Schwartz appears as one of the Wizard’s palace guards. When Elphaba and Glinda show their invitation, Schwartz’s character peers at the piece of paper from a watchtower. He breaks into a smile and memorably shouts, “The wizard will see you now!”

Filming “One Short Day” and being part of a scene with Chenoweth, Grande, Menzel and Erivo was “emotional,” Holzman says.

“It was like, ‘Pinch me, is this really happening?’” Holzman says. “These four women are very special women and artists and they all admire and respect each other immensely.”