I’ll get you, my beautiful…

When people see her, they will scream…

Cynthia Erivo knew there was no way she could play Elphaba, the girl who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West. The Wizard of Oz, without turning to one of the most iconic images for inspiration.

“Margaret Hamilton was definitely a touchstone for me,” she says Entertainment weekly. Hamilton played the Wicked Witch in the legendary 1939 film adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s novel. Her interpretation of the witch dictated how the character would be viewed for decades to come.

Related: Get a glimpse of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s tears Bad auditions

Before Hamilton, the witch, as described in Baum’s book, had a more haggish appearance, but Hamilton was the first to choose green for the role – a now iconic part of the witch’s identity and a core part of why Elphaba is an outsider in the Bad musical. She also gave the witch her signature cackle, black dress and pointy hat.

But it was a smaller distinguishing feature that especially made Erivo melt. “You don’t calculate those things when you’re younger,” she explains of the details she noticed when revisiting Hamilton’s performance as an adult. “I didn’t realize it until I went back. But I always go back to this image of the black and white (silhouette) where she has her claws. It’s the first time I realized, ‘Oh, she has nails. That’s something I can recognize in her appearance”.

Related: Bad The first reactions call film a ‘musical masterpiece’ and praise Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande

Erivo often has incredible manicures, and she likes to show them off on the red carpets and Bad press tour. But it’s also something she specifically took from Hamilton and brought to her version of Elphaba (she’s also previously mentioned the nails as an important part of emphasizing her identity as a black woman and how that imbues the character).

“I thought, ‘Where did that come from?'” Erivo said on the channel Sentimental men podcast about determining the origin and style of Elphaba’s nails. “What do we do to make it feel like it’s part of her DNA?” Her DNA affects the way things grow. We went through a few different ideas about what the nails could look like, and then we came to the conclusion: It’s just an extension of the green.” Erivo also teased that viewers should keep their eyes peeled to see how the color of her nails shifts as Elphaba also changes.

Of course she was also inspired by the original Bad witches — Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, who joined Erivo and costar Ariana Grande (Glinda) for an exclusive preserve with EW.

“I had seen the show a few times,” Ervio adds. “I had listened to both of you (Menzel and Chenoweth) a lot, so I had your voices in my head, and I had the images of Margaret Hamilton. It’s a lot of fun to find pieces of those things to create something and then there my own thing to add to it.”

Related: Bad star Cynthia Erivo says she wouldn’t use the bathroom once she put on her costume (Exclusive)

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Bad 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 earned ten Tony Award nominations in 2004, including one for Best Musical.

The film adaptation will be split into two parts, with the first half set to hit theaters on November 22. Directed by Jon M. Chu, the adaptation also stars Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey, Bowen Yang and Marissa Bode.

Watch the video above for more, and look to the western sky (and by that we mean EW) for more about our exclusive conversation with the four witches.