‘Wicked’ screenwriters Dana Fox and Winnie Holzman on ‘many scenes’ that got cut and reclaiming the term ‘touchy-feely’
Wicked has more than defied gravity since sweeping into theaters last month. Fans are swooning, and deeply moved, by the origin story of the witches of Oz, and the movie’s writers are feeling the love. “Hearing from people that the movie reached out to them and made them feel a connection, or made them feel seen, is honestly kind of the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my life,” gushes Dana Fox. She teamed up with Winnie Holzman to write the script for Universal’s theatrical juggernaut and the pair recently received a Critics Choice Award nomination. Watch the video interview above.
Holzman has lived and breathed Wicked for more than two decades, having written the book for the original 2003 smash Broadway musical and scoring a Tony nomination for her efforts. But she admits that she was eager to reexamine her work and make adjustments that would help the story thrive on screen. “You want to make sure that the audience is given an even richer, deeper experience,” she explains. “It’s just a question of how can we … hold true to the spirit of the show while making it, in many ways, an experience that would be for this time, exactly for this time.”
The two writers ultimately spent more than 150 hours on Zoom with composer Stephen Schwartz and director Jon M. Chu, pouring over every word in the script and deepening the story behind Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande). “We wrote many, many scenes that didn’t end up in the movie. And that experimentation that led us to have all this richness in what was there,” reveals Fox, who expresses deep appreciation for the openness of her collaborators, and their willingness to explore areas of the story not captured in the stage version.
“Collaboration” is this duo’s mantra; they view the process of working together as essential to the movie’s success. “I think that’s part of the strength of the script that we all weighed in and that we all gave everything we had,” suggests Holzman. “We all were sort of jamming as hard as we could,” adds Fox, who fondly remembers receiving emails with script ideas in the middle of the night or in the early hours of the morning. The team was feverishly working against the clock since the studio had booked stages for filming before a script was complete. “It was just so exciting,” exclaims Fox as she recalled this “good pressure” to finish writing amid deadlines and the pandemic.
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With the film finally in theaters, dominating the box office and shaping up to be a major awards contender, the writers are overwhelmed by the response. Fans have excavated the themes in Wicked just as deeply as the screenwriters. Essays and videos have blanketed the internet, all explaining how Wicked speaks to politics, race, queer identities, women empowerment, and social inequity.
“I want people to be able to bring themselves, to see themselves, to somehow feel apart, feel less alone,” says Holzman, noting the fan reactions. “I believe that’s because of the compassion and love that we wanted to evoke. The caring, the open-heartedness that we wanted to celebrate. The idea of being able to see someone not on a surface way, not in a judgmental harsh way, but to see their worth, to see their depth, to see their humanity, to see the love in their heart. And all of that might sound corny, but we need that in this world. We need more of that.”
With the resounding positivity, Holzman is happily reclaiming the term “touchy-feely” to describe the effect of this film. “People used to say it in this very derogatory way,” she explains, “but I mean, touching others and feeling something and feeling that you can give people an experience that will help them to feel something beautiful and open them to new ideas … what’s more important than that?”
Watch the special Wicked featurette below: