Stephen Schwartz on the Two New ‘Wicked’ Songs and Spinoff Prospects

What a long, strange bubble ride it’s been. But the work of songwriter Stephen Schwartz on “Wicked” — the property he first discovered as a source novel and has led into Broadway and dual film iterations — has finally come to a close. (Or has it? More on his feelings about spinoffs momentarily.) He did not coast to the finish line, having come up with two new songs for “Wicked: For Good,” the Elphaba-sung “No Place Like Home” and Glinda’s “The Girl in the Bubble,” to make the second film in the two-parter at least as emotionally and thematically holistic as the first.

In a conversation with Variety after the new film came out of the gate with a $147 million opening weekend at the domestic box office (and $223 million globally), Schwartz said that he is still “cautiously” waiting for a final verdict on whether fans like the inevitably darker conclusion to the story as much as its wildly popu-luhr predecessor. But after more than a quarter-century of shepherding the franchise, he’s personally satisfied that “the two movies together, just talking from the point of view of cinematic accomplishment, are an extraordinary achievement on the part of Jon Chu.” And although there have been ambiguous signals about whether the team believes there is further creative gas in the “Wicked” tank, if you read through to the end of our interview, you’ll find that Schwartz is willing to say he believes his work here may not be done.

Before moving on to the future, anyway, much of our conversation focused on just how much the songs of “Wicked” — the historical song score, but especially the two new ones he wrote for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande — speak to America’s and the wider world’s uncertain present. (The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Is it fair to imagine you’re taking pleasure, if not some kind of vindication, in “Wicked: For Good” opening even bigger than the first movie?

Well, sequels tend to open bigger than the originals, if the originals have been successful. I mean, it’s not really a sequel, it’s a continuation. But yeah, that’s not uncommon. If you hear any hesitance in what I’m saying, I was quite confident that the movie would do very well when it first opened, and of course it’s exceeded expectations. And I think it’s a really good movie and my understanding is that people are liking it. But I’m still waiting to see how it holds up — if the word of mouth is good, and people who are seeing it are telling their friends to go see it, and people who are seeing it decide they’d like to see it again, as they did with the first movie. We need a little bit of time to ascertain that. So I’m still being cautious, to be honest.

All right — you’ve had experience in being smart about not being rash in assuming success.

It’s my nature over the years.

Let’s start by talking about the two new songs. Certainly with the stage production, there was so much thought that went into what you could and couldn’t get into a second act that’s inevitably shorter than the first…

Exactly.

When you were writing these new songs, did they come in similar places to where you were already thinking back in the ‘90s or early 2000s, “It would be great to have this beat covered”? Or did you kind of start from scratch, in thinking where those songs should go?

Totally started from scratch. We actually were not really ever thinking of these songs —these beats — when we were doing the show originally. The whole sequence of “No Place Like Home” is something that we could never have done on stage anyway, because it involves all these animals, and we only have one little animal in our show [the goat professor]. All the other animals were conveniently off stage.

I do think that if we hadn’t had time limitations, we might have come to the point of thinking about “The Girl in the Bubble,” because that very important turning point for the character of Glinda does exist in the show; it just happens off-stage. But because of the time constraints and how things develop when you’re doing a show, it really never occurred to us. It certainly didn’t occur to me. In fact, Kristin (Chenoweth, who first played Glinda on stage) kept asking: Couldn’t she have another song later in the second act? We were looking at places where she might be able to, and ultimately decided against it. But oddly enough, this was not one of the places that we thought of.

People sometimes talk about the balance between the two leads. With a new song for each leading lady now, that helps keep them equally balanced here. Although “lead” is in the eye of the beholder. Because we know that Ariana is being campaigned for supporting actress, and we’re thinking: In no realistic world is Glinda a supporting role. But we understand why they have to do those things.

You are exactly right. I mean, the logic behind those sort of characterizations often elude me. But you know, that’s not up to us, to determine how they’re characterized.

Many people have said that in terms of the journey the characters take or the epiphanies they come to, the first half is a little bit more Elphaba’s, and then they’re surprised that the second film seems to be more Glinda’s journey.

Well, this was pretty conscious on our parts — and by “our,” I mean myself, (co-screenwriters) Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, (director) Jon Chu and (producer) Marc Platt, who were the group that spent endless hours on Zoom figuring out the structure of the two films. And it did arise quite consciously, as we were discussing it, that essentially the first film was Elphaba’s story arc in terms of her becoming at the end of the film who she truly is. Then, of course, she has a lot of action in the second film, but she doesn’t evolve as a character in terms of… Well, that’s not quite true. She does a little bit, when, in “No Good Deed,” she comes to certain realizations. But she’s still the Wicked Witch of the West, if you know what I mean. In the first film, she starts out as a schoolgirl wanting to do good and have all of Oz love her, and at the end of the film, she embraces her identity as the Wicked Witch.

The second film, we realized, is Glinda’s. She’s the one who has the big turning point. She’s the one who starts in a certain place, because she’s unable to change in the first film, and then ultimately comes to the point where she feels she has to — and she does. So, yeah, this is a long-winded way of solidifying what you said: that we were quite conscious that the larger story arc in terms of character development in the second film was Glinda’s. And that’s why we felt a song at that turning point was necessary for the storytelling.

You might not like the term “message songs,” but in a way, these do seem like quote-unquote message songs, whether you’re writing them strictly with the film in mind or not. When Elphaba sings “No Place Like Home,” I was watching it for the first time and nearly gasped, kind of thinking before the first verse was over, “Oh my God, this is a song about America.”

Of course. Yeah. Or indeed, for anyone who’s living in a country that they love that is changing. I think everybody across the ideological and political spectrum who lives in America would agree that we are not living in the same country we were living in 10 years ago. Maybe you like it better; maybe you think it’s not a good development. But no one could feel like nothing has changed, because it’s an entirely different country. And so, if you are someone who feels that it hasn’t gone in the right direction, what do you do about it? What is your responsibility as an individual citizen of the country, particularly when it’s increasingly dangerous to resist? How much courage do you need? Or do you just feel it’s somebody else’s responsibility?

I think those questions are in everybody’s mind. But we’re not the only country in the world that is undergoing a considerable change. You know, Hungary is certainly not the country that it was pre-Viktor Orbán… etc. So I feel it has ramifications beyond America. But I live in America, and so obviously I was writing from that point of view.

I mean, I write from the point of view of a character. But this is definitely a character who is wrestling with the fact that the country that she loves and lives in — the land that she loves and lives in — has, from her point of view, devolved, and that she feels that she wants to try to help change that, and help bring it back to the country, the land, that she feels it can and should be.

It can be very moving to hear that. Even with animated animals circling around.

Well, the nice thing about being able to write about Oz is that you have this charming world, even at its worst. And yet you can deal with issues that pertain as well to our world.

And then when Glinda sings “The Girl in the Bubble,” it so fits in with the movie’s themes of “I’ve been fooled” or “I’ve been kidding myself,” and yet it comes off as a very sweet song. We’ve talked before about your realization that there was an audience for young girls for the stage musical that you didn’t even have in mind when the show was being created. Now you’re very aware of it, do you think about how young girls or women will receive a song of enlightened disillusionment like that?

No, to be honest, I was not thinking about the audience per se in terms of either of the songs. But certainly in terms of “Girl in the Bubble,” I do feel that, again, it is a moment of courage for Glinda, because it would be very easy for her to continue to live in this metaphorical bubble where life is easy for her and where she gets to float above all the turmoil and close out the things that are disturbing. But she has an inner goodness that even she doesn’t quite know is there, but it will not allow her to do that anymore. So she makes a courageous choice to give up the privilege that she has.

It’s not entirely dissimilar to what we were just talking about with “No Place Like Home.” If you are living in a place that you feel is going in the wrong direction, but you yourself are perfectly comfortable and safe, what do you do? Do you just stay comfortable and safe, or do you risk that in order to try to make a difference for the land, for the country? I think both songs are somewhat opposite sides of the same coin.

To talk generally about fleshing out the second act for the second movie… It feels to me like there are benefits to the second act as it stands in the musical, even though it’s kind of rushed. That hurry kind of works in feeling like you’re rushing toward tragedy and bad things happening, so maybe there’s something to be said for that momentum. But then then expanding the length here for all that action to take place, there are different kinds of emotional beats that you need to have, because it’s its own separate movie and you didn’t just get some of those sitting through act one…

Exactly.

So having more comedy or more ballads makes it feel more holistic. But did you feel originally the second act on stage was rushed, or did it seem just right at the time?

I wish the second act in the show could have been longer. There were sequences that I would like to have seen, and that at one point were there, and then the reality of how long a show can be started to make its its presence known when we were actually performing and the curtain was coming down way too late. But I happen to be a fan of shows that are, like, four hours long. So I’d have been delighted to have more time. But I do feel that what we came up with for the second act of the Broadway show works well.

The one thing we do in the movie that I wish we had thought of for the show is the inclusion of Glinda in “Wonderful.” I think it actually helps that sequence a lot, and it just never occurred to us. When we were working on the movie, because it was its own movie, it became clear as we were looking at the events of the second act as they occur in the show that it was too long a time where Glinda and Elphaba, who are the central relationship of the story, are not actually in the same place at the same time. It’s OK in the second act of the musical, for many reasons, but in a whole separate movie, that was not OK. So we had to figure out, well, where could they get together earlier? Then the idea came up: when Elphaba goes back to the Emerald City, she could actually have interaction with Glinda, instead of just seeing Glinda from afar and then interacting with the Wizard. I do feel it’s better, and maybe if we thought of it, we would’ve done it in the show.

It makes sense, because Elphaba is kind of backsliding, reconsidering the path she’s taken. Maybe that’s more realistic if she’s got her friend Glinda there egging her on.

It’s much more persuasive. And in the movie Glinda makes a really good case, I think, for why Elphaba should join them rather than keep up what is apparently futile resistance.

Can you talk about other existing songs that got fleshed out, and how much additional material you wrote for the second part?

The first movie, more or less, is the first act of the show, except the “Emerald City” sequence got extended and fleshed out with seeing the Wizard’s propaganda. But the second movie has a lot of new material in it, not just in the screenplay, but in the music as well. I’ve just cited “Wonderful” and the two new songs; that’s where most of the new material comes. But it’s quite a bit, actually. The opening sequence, which is quite extensive, has lots of new stuff in it. We’re seeing what Elphaba has been doing all this time; we’re seeing where Glinda has come to. The opening number is considerably different than in the show. Oh, and the scene where Elphaba goes to see her sister. I’m not gonna tell too much about what happens there — because, spoilers — but that also has new music in it.

It is quite different at the start. On stage, Glinda is singing “Couldn’t Be Happier” almost at the very top of Act 2, whereas it takes about 15 minutes to get to that moment in the movie.

Exactly. [In the stage show] there’s a very brief reprise of “Every Day More Wicked,” which is also in the movie, and then we go right to “I Couldn’t Be Happier.” There’s a great deal more that happens in the movie before we get to that point.

Let’s talk about this movie’s title song, “For Good.” When people who were maybe a little bit cynical about this movie’s box office compared to the first one were talking a few months ago, there was some talk along the lines of, “Well, it doesn’t have a ‘Defying Gravity.’ So maybe that limits its prospects.” Yet hardcore fans of the show would say “For Good” is just as impactful, even without the battle cry.

Well, it is impactful in a different way. I mean, I do think that that last 10 minutes of the first movie, with the way Jon Chu created the “Defying Gravity” sequence, is pretty much as exciting as musical movies get, or maybe any movies can get. It’s true, we were never going to have that. Although there are a couple of very cool action sequences in this movie that I didn’t… I mean, I knew they were there because they were in the screenplay, but I didn’t know they were going to be quite as cool and as in the superhero movie sort of style as they are. There’s plenty of action, I’m saying. But it does not end in an action sequence. It ends with the beating heart of the movie, and of this relationship. That’s a different kind of impact.

For people who revere that song, it has a profound impact within seconds. People who know it start crying before more than a couple lines have been sung, with this sense memory of how emotional it’s going to become over the next five minutes or so. What is the legacy of that song, even outside of the show? It’s been made to fit everything from graduations to funerals.

Well, indeed it seems to be making an appearance at many ceremonies, like those you cited, or a beloved teacher retiring, etc. Most of it seems to be able to translate. I mean, there are some specific things in it which don’t make sense if you left the movie out, where they ask for forgiveness and all that. But, yeah, in writing it originally, I just wanted to find a way to express essentially these two people who love each other having to say goodbye and trying to tell the other one what she has meant, the impact that she’s had.

I’ve talked frequently about how the song got to be written, and I can talk about it again with you. It got written out of talking about a real relationship, which was a relationship my daughter has with a longtime friend of hers. She talked to me about: if she could only have one time to tell this friend what she’s meant to her, what would she say? A lot of what’s in the song came out of that conversation I had with my daughter, Jessica. So I think there’s an inherent truth to it that somehow then gave it a resonance for the audience.

There are other inspirational songs about friendship, like “Wind Beneath My Wings,” but something that is appealing to some people about this one is just openly it acknowledges tough times, and that the friends might even have screwed each other over… it’s not just sunshine and roses prompting the tears.

And that’s long-term friendships. That tends to be true. If they’re real friendships, they’ll have some bumpy patches along the way.

You have said, often, that you’re not always a critics’ favorite. I’m a critic, and I contend “Wicked” is among the greatest musicals ever written…

Thank you. Not all the New York critics agreed with you. Let me just put it that way.

So we’re not all immune. But those 2003 reviews dismissing it are there, to be looked up. And it’s not as if everyone has completely come around to embrace the movies, although more critics get it now. But there is a gulf going back 22 years, where the people who’ve love it look at the ones who don’t look and say: Why don’t you see this?

I have a theory, because these people are not idiots, frankly. You know, many of the critics who didn’t get the show when it first came out… I do think that critics can mistake size and spectacle for lack of substance — that if they see a show that has a lot of spectacle to it and visceral audience excitement about certain things, it can feel lighter-weight in terms of its content than a smaller, more obviously thoughtful show. And I think they can miss the fact that there’s a seriousness of purpose to a show like “Wicked,” too. I do think some of the critics came in and saw the spectacle and didn’t really notice that we were trying to tell a pretty thoughtful story.

Developing the show originally, did you ever get stuck and wonder if you were biting off more than you could chew? There’s themes of love, and of friendship, and then there’s political satire — it addresses a lot of life experience. On paper it ought to have been hard to work all that into a single piece.

It wasn’t so much the different content in terms of the personal story and the larger social story, or political story, if you will. The more difficult part is, there’s just a lot of plot. Musicals really don’t tend to have that much plot, where so many things happen. We kept trying to eliminate things, and some of it we could, but some of it, we just couldn’t, and we had to figure out a way to tell it efficiently to get all those events and all those characters in. That was challenging. The fact that it was always gonna be both a personal story and a political story — that comes with the title. As soon as you have that title, you know that’s what it’s gonna be.

Working on these movies as you have, and then having your new Broadway show, “The Queen of Versailles” [which stars Chenoweth], in development and finally reaching the stage at the same time, was that a challenge to balance those things?

Of course, yes. But that’s just how the timing worked out. Obviously there is an advantage to being able to split your focus, so I got to be extremely good at compartmentalization.

How are you feeling about that now? There were some tough reviews, but then the New York Times gave it a great one.

Obviously we’re very glad about that [the New York Times]. You know, it’s very political, the show, in its social satire. I think there is some misunderstanding out there about what the show is, because I mean, it’s sort of similar to what we were just talking about. Just as you can misunderstand “Wicked” through the spectacle, I think you can misunderstand “Queen of Versailles” because it’s funny, and there’s a lot of sort of lighter satire. But it really is an attempt to look at what’s going on in our culture right now, and the ramifications of that. [This interview was conducted before it was announced “Queen of Versailles” will close in January, two months after its official opening night.]

In the new movie, “No Place Like Home” feels like it written for 2025, and you’ve acknowledged it as being something you wouldn’t necessarily have written 10 or more years ago. But the show feels very topical to people generally.

Certainly, yeah. I wish it were less relevant. What can I tell you? I wish by the time the movie came out, people would say like, “Oh yeah, remember when that was going on in our world?” But unfortunately, that’s not the case.

It doesn’t date. The only thing that maybe is so tied to its time, or earlier, is in “Popular,” when Glinda makes that Reagan joke, about “even Great Communicators…” By now, probably most of the audience is too young to get that reference.

Sure. But the people who know it know it.

I wrote an article back in 2011, interviewing you and Platt and some others, about how “Wicked” had already become a major cultural touchstone… and of course anticipating when the movie would finally get made, which it was first envisioned as. There was every indication at the time that it was might still be a few years before it happened. Certainly there could have been opportunities along the way to get it wrong, but everyone thought it was worth the delayed gratification, to stick the landing.

I mean, exactly. We did take a lot of care with it. Frankly, there were, as we were developing it, some wrong roads or cul-de-sacs that we found ourselves in. I have a lot of gratitude to not just Marc Platt but Universal as a company that they never pushed us to get it out until we felt we had it right. And they could have. They’re a movie company, after all [which helped produce the Broadway show, with hopes of a film translation]. And they were very patient and waited a long time while we were saying, “We haven’t solved this yet.” So here’s a moment for me to say thank you to them.

Finally, with all the Wicked-mania right now, everybody wants to ask about the possibility for sequels, prequels or side roads.

I think that there will… there is… I don’t know. I’m trying to think what I’m allowed to say. But let me just say, I think that a spinoff is not out of the question. Let me put it that way. Oz is a very rich territory. There are a lot of stories there, and possible stories. L. Frank Baum wrote many other odd stories beside that first book. So I think there may be some other visits to Oz in the future, and I might even be participating in one of them.

You sound surprisingly open to that.

Yeah… Yeah.