Amanda Seyfried is looking back at auditioning for Wicked.
In a conversation with Backstage, the actress reflected on auditioning for the role of Glinda in Universal’s upcoming adaptation of the hit musical, while filming the Hulu series The Dropout.
“I have dreams that I’m still auditioning for Wicked. Last summer while I was playing Elizabeth [on The Dropout], on the weekends I was auditioning in person to play Glinda in the movie version of Wicked — because I wanted it that much that I was like, ‘You know what? Yeah, I have to play the last scene of The Dropout on Tuesday. I’ll give my Sunday to you.’ I literally bent over backwards while playing the hardest role of my life,” Seyfried said.
The Glinda role in Jon M. Chu’s film would eventually go to Ariana Grande, who will co-star alongside Cynthia Erivo, the film’s Elphaba.
Seyfried previously starred in the 2012 film adaptation of Les Misérables as Cosette, and the audition process for Wicked, Seyfried said, “taught me how far I’ve come as a singer, which I really wanted to prove.”
She explained, “Because ever since Les Miz, I was like, I need to be better. I need to do better. So whatever comes next in terms of musicals, I’m finally prepared.”
A Wicked film adaptation has been in the works at Universal since 2004, a year after the musical made its Broadway debut. The stage musical, adapted from the novel by Gregory Maguire, is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz and chronicles the friendship between Glinda, the Good Witch, and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West.
It was announced in April that the Wicked film will be split into two films, with the first film releasing in December 2024, and the second the following Christmas.
“As we prepared the production over the past year, it became increasingly clear that it would be impossible to wrestle the story of ‘Wicked’ into a single film without doing some real damage to it. As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions felt like fatal compromises to the source material that has entertained us all for so many years,” Chu wrote in a statement on Twitter at the time.