A few months ago, producers announced that they were planning to do a revival of Funny Girl on Broadway. Most people know the film of the same name starring Barbra Streisand, who also did the Broadway show back in the day. The role of Fanny Brice is generally considered to be one of the great roles of musical theater. The reason the Broadway revival made news is because producers cast Beanie Feldstein in the role and everyone was very happy for her… partially because it meant that Lea Michele was not cast in a role which (honestly) would have been a great fit for her. That’s what Lea gets for being an unprofessional a–hole who threatens to sh-t in people’s wigs, though.
Well, funny story. This week, producers announced their casting for the long-gestating film adaptation of the musical Wicked. Idina Menzel starred in the original Broadway cast, and Lea has always wanted people to think that she’s a mini-Idina. So surely, Lea would get the same role? LOL, no.
Thank goodness! The Wicked movie has found its leading witches. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are set to star in the film adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical as Glinda and Elphaba, respectively. The actresses, as well as director Jon M. Chu, announced the news on Instagram Thursday.
“These two witches!!” Chu wrote alongside photos of Grande and Erivo finding out they’d been cast. “The emotional moment I got to tell @cynthiaerivo and @arianagrande that they were our Elphaba and Galinda in the @WickedMovie for @unistudios 😭😭😭wait until you see what they bring!! It is other worldly. Ahhhhh!!!”
In a post of her own, Erivo shared a photo of a pink and green floral arrangement that Grande had sent her with a note that read: “Dear Cynthia, honored doesn’t even begin to cover it. I cannot wait to hug you. See you in Oz.”
Grande also received flowers from her costar in Glinda and Elphaba’s signature colors and a note that began with “pink goes good with green.”
“Congratulations Miss A, the part was made for you,” Erivo wrote. “I look forward to sharing this musical journey with you.”
Do I feel bad for Lea? No. Am I celebrating the fact that she was an unprofessional bully for years and now the chickens have come home to roost? Little bit. I wonder how Ariana and Cynthia will do in those roles, because there is definitely a big-time Wicked hive. Meanwhile, enjoy everyone dunking on Lea:
Maybe Lea Michele should not have shit in that wig.
— Joel Kim Booster (@ihatejoelkim) November 5, 2021
Wouldn’t wanna be Lea Michele’s therapist this year
— Casey Mink (@Casey_Mink) November 5, 2021
lea michele’s saturn return … woof pic.twitter.com/7JkryH71zL
— alex (@alex_abads) November 5, 2021
Lea Michele looking at Ariana Grande and Beanie Feldstein. pic.twitter.com/hrmL0RFgAU
— sam greisman (@SAMGREIS) November 5, 2021
Lea Michele after finding out within a month that she’s not in the Funny Girl revival or the Wicked movie pic.twitter.com/LQhhDtPjvQ
— Hillary Templeton (@HillTempleton) November 5, 2021
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Karma bus stop!
Where’s the next stop?
🤣 When Twitter is celebrating parts that you DIDN’T get, you’ve burned lots of bridges.
Cynthia Erivo is a AMAZING singer. She’s going to do awesome.
Ariana is…..fine? She’s a great pop singer, I just don’t think she has broadway chops or the charisma to carry that role. Even in a movie.
Arianna is going to need to put across those lyrics. She is going to need to e-nunci-ate.
Yes. Exactly this. She’s mumbled too much in her songs and it matters in this musical. Chenowith was the queen of enunciation in her role as Glinda. I mean just the song Popular is a masterclass in that.
She enunciated when she sang on that nick musical series she did. So she’s capabale of it, when she wants to. I don’t know why she so often chooses not to though.
That was my first thought seeing her name. Also…can she act? I guess she was a child star early on, but has she done acting as an adult?
Hopefully she works with some coaches on both aspects and turns in a good performance. I like the musical and have been hoping for a film version for a long time.
AMM, agree, I think AG can enunciate, she just needs to work on it. She slurs when she’s trying to sing too fast. She’s got the pipes. She’s extremely popular and brings a huge fan base to the film. With good directing she’ll be fine.
Cynthia was horrible as Aretha Franklin. She has never apologized for the vike things she has said about Black Americans either
I am all for unprofessional jerks not being rewarded.
And i adore Ms. Errivo, so i look forward to seeing her in anything.
I do want to point out that only women, and men of color are held accountable in most situations.
White men have chance after chance after chance.
I wish i knew how to rectify that beyond me personally not seeing their work.
I did not realize they were doing a Wicked film adaptation! I was just thinking about it the other day.
I’m not sure about this casting, mostly Ariana Grande. I know she can sing but I feel like I can only picture her as ARIANA GRANDE so it will be interesting to see if she overcomes that.
Casting issues aside (and I know that’s a big “aside”), I thought Jon Chu did a great job with In the Heights – the choreography, the visuals, etc were all excellent – so I am overall hopeful for this one.
Chenowith is so strong musically and technically and made a flaky character be sympathetic so I do wonder about Ariana grande because she hasn’t shown any acting chops per se and she’s always tended to be way too breathy when she sings. Chenowith has opera training and musical theatre training. Seems like they went for a name instead of someone with a stronger musical background.
Erivo will be amazing because she’s got it all. No worries there. Will be curious to see what she does with Elphaba.
Eh. Chu is ok. Most of the people who thought The Heights was good aren’t from here. He and Miranda botched a few things. I’ve never seen Wicked but I know it’s been around for a long time and has a culture and certain expectations so hopefully he can stay true to that while creating something unique.
Like I said, I recognize it had some issues, but I still loved the choreography and visuals and I think those are things that could translate well to Wicked. We will see.
I’m not enthralled by this at all. It is really hard to translate a broadway musical to a movie. Just remember Dear Evan Hansen or Cats. Ugh!!! Hamilton was okay, but that was just filming the show. I didn’t think In the Heights was all that good either. Movie musicals are hard to begin with. Now Westside Story the new one is supposed to be good and the old one was good, so I guess we will just see. I liked Les Miserable, but some of the performances made me cringe. I’ll hold my breath on all of these casting news too. I love Cynthia Erivo casting though, and I hope it works out for her but I’m not so sure.
Well, I loved In the Heights, even though I realized it had some issues (@Steph) like I said in my comment – but I agree that movie musicals are really tricky in general in this day and age. West Side Story looks good but it looks like it borrows a LOT from the original, so I’m sure it will be really good but not necessarily that original (we’ll see if i’m wrong there though.)
Chicago really set the bar high for a new era of movie musicals and I don’t think anything else has come close yet, but this could do it if done right.
@Becks – Chicago is one of my my all time faves! That movie is so good! Wicked is one of my all time fave musicals, so I am hopeful on this. I just don’t think Ariana Grande has it, hopefully CE can overcome for her.
Cynthia Erivo is a GODDESS.
Agree. I love her! I’ve been predicting for years that she will be the next EGOT. She needs an Oscar!
She’s got a good voice, but she’s not a good actress. She obviously wasn’t acting on Glee.
Glee will always remain to be her biggest thing. She won’t have a big career and she can only blame herself for that.
Totally on board with Cynthia Erivo, but disappointed about the Ariana Grande casting. Would have much preferred to see someone like Megan Hilty cast as Glinda.
Why was she such a monster, this also have to fall on Ryan Murphy and making her feel untouchable. Surely complaints reached him.
Nope as someone mentioned the white men never seem to get punished. Sure the few and very few who committed multiple crimes get punished, but even they get out i.e. Bill Cosby. It’s funny everyone is all look at that complicit women who may have seen things, but probably just wanted to keep a job and might have been trying to keep herself safe, but when it’s a wealthy powerful white man, who also should have known one of his very young(at the time) actresses was bullying people and he did nothing. He gets off scott free, not even the he should have done something story. He’s just not mentioned.
I’m not upset Lea Michelle isn’t getting work, but I also don’t see the glee (pardon the pun) in her not getting parts because of past behavior when she was young and has issued multiple apologies. If you want to wish some true Karma on people save it for the ones who really deserve it. Lea Michelle is easy pickings. She never really had any power to begin with, it was all in her head.
RE: BC- Go back and read Lea Michelle’s “apology”. She basically denied doing any of the things she was accused of (or rather, disingenuously stated that she “didn’t remember” doing them. Please). And she didn’t even issue it until she got dragged all over the internet for her past behavior. And I’m sorry, but who needs MILLIONS of people to tell her that she should APOLOGIZE for threatening to shit in someone’s wig (among MANY other things?????
said something similar.
I enjoy Ari’s stuff mostly, but good lord is she going to need coaching. She doesn’t enunciate AT ALL, it’s drives me crazy. And with a Broadway play, you definitely need to be able to understand all the lyrics. I also briefly thought she maybe wouldn’t have the power for it, but Galinda’s part isn’t really powerful is it? She’s poppy princessy fluff, which Ari is good at.
The role of Galinda is actually quite musically challenging and you need a strong set of pipes to be up to the task. Maybe less so for a movie where you don’t have to sing live for an entire 2-hour show, but still. It feels like stunt casting. There are so many talented Broadway actresses that could do a better job, IMO.
Ariana got her start on Broadway – I think she’ll be fine. There’s a cute carpool karaoke video with her and Seth McFarlane singing “Suddenly Seymour”.
Cynthia Erivo gets some (extremely justified, IMO) flack for some of her casting, but her as Elphaba is inspired and she can S I N G so I am so excited to see what she does with the role. Ana Gasteyer is my favorite Elphaba but that’s just because I saw her in the role on Broadway and she was incredible.
I think it’d be hilarious if Ariana was some super-staccato enunciating genius and her mumble slurring was a gimmick this whole time.
Never saw Wicked but know it was really popular and I think this has been in development a long time. Seems I remember Amanda Seyfried openly auditioning for one of the roles -Glinda I think.
Omg for all those here who don’t like AG’s singing…Amanda Seyfried and her horribly thin soprano would’ve been a death knell. She and Russell Crowe were hands down the worst singers of Les Mis (whatever Anne was doing wasn’t great either), so I’m 1000x thankful she didn’t get it. And yes, even Lea would be better casting
The Twitter ratio has been spectacular. Truly, an “actions, meet consequences” moment.
How fun for Ariana and Cynthia. And how unfortunate for Lea. **smiles in karma**
I’m not really a fan of Ariana Grande’s singing. Yes, she can belt but technically I dunno, she’s very nasal and doesn’t enunciate at all as others have mentioned so I never understand what she’s saying. When she first came out people were saying she was the next Mariah Carey and I could see why but in the decade since she’s been on the scene, her singing hasn’t changed much. Also she has Disney Channel acting which, let’s face it, is not real acting but children overacting.
I’m not familiar with Cynthia Erivo but everybody raves about her so I’m more confident in that choice!
As for Lea Michele, world’s smallest violin playing.
Ariana was actually Nickolodian child acting, and oddly they’ve had some decent actors out of that group. Plus Ariana was on Broadway in 2008 before, so she probably will be better than people think.
That tweet from Sam Greisman 🤣🤣. He’s Sally Field’s son, right?
I googled that; yes, yes he is. I liked the Kermit tweet best.
Ariana will do fine. That woman is able to adopt lots of different vocal styles as shown by ability to imitate everyone from celine Dione to Xtina. She chooses not to enunciate for her own pop songs. That’s a stylistic choice, not a knock on her abilities.
Cynthia gives me chills and she is going to rock this!!!
What is the point of that stylistic choice? No snark, trying to understand, because clearly, a lot of artists make that choice. I admit it irks me, but maybe if I understood some cultural/artistic/whatever reason for it, I’d be more open-minded? Sia is one of the worst offenders. I LOVE her music, but I often prefer it covered by others, who enunciate.
She wouldn’t be the first actor to be difficult on set, so it makes me wonder why the campaign against her has been so strong. My guess is that she upset the wrong person for whatever reason. Most probably rejected the advances of some man.
There’s no shortage of first person stories about LM’s bullying abuse and bad on set behavior. Very easy to find. Threatening to sh*t in someone’s wig, for example. There’s nothing I’ve seen about her rejecting someone’s advances.
The campaign against Lea Michele had nothing to do with a Me Too type of thing. It was all about her ego, and her bullying behavior towards her co-stars on set. Most prominently on the set of Glee. There were rumors of fights going on while the show was on air, however, they were always downplayed, to my recollection. That was between her and the now deceased Naya Rivera. Later her co-stars came out publicly after Samatha Marie Ware told of LM’s bullying. Whether or not this was reported to Ryan Murphy, who knows? Hard to believe all this shit was going on and he was unaware. But it appears crystal clear LM is an asshole, and is horrible to her co-workers. Karma is a bitch lol!
AmyB, exactly. I thought these stories were well known.
IIRC, Michele was mostly majorly horrible towards women. This is a case of “knock out the ‘competition.’”
She’s a racist a-hole.
@milliemollie LMAO succinctly and well said!!!
I know Kaiser included this tweet in her article, but I literally laughed my ass off at this one: Lea Michele looking at Ariana Grande and Beanie Feldstein
https://twitter.com/SAMGREIS/status/1456434761250091012?s=20
She’s the diva no one asked for. Her talent does not outweigh her attitude. I know theater kids. Too many hard working professionals should get the job, bad behavior shouldn’t be rewarded. Ever.
There are a million plus great vocalists put there. Let’s not recycle the same people.
I absolutely would not wabt to see her in any role because of how she treats people.
That Saud, I believe in genuine second chances should one really grow and learn from past horrid behavior.
As an aside, she reminds me of the late, hate Leona Helmsley and I can’t shake it off. Similar vibe.
That was one vicious bitch. They look similar in their energy to me.