Late last year, a video of Amanda Seyfried singing “Popular” from the Broadway musical/film adaptation of Wicked made the rounds on TikTok. People falsely claimed that it was her audition tape for the role of Glinda. It wasn’t, so Amanda set the record straight by clarifying that although she did audition “hard” for the role, that particular video was shot by her stylist while she was goofing around during a photoshoot. While appearing on the “In the Envelope” podcast this week, Amanda revealed that she actually auditioned for Wicked “like six times.” She was also filming The Dropout at the same time.
“I’m in that privileged spot where I just don’t have to [audition],” she said, “But I like, of course, I talked about this a lot. I auditioned like six times for Wicked.”
“Because that had to be really just right,” the Mamma Mia! star said. “And I like, I loved it.
“I was busy. I barely had time to do it, but I made it work,” she said. “I worked my ass off for years and years and years on that music.”
“I’m just competitive,” she confessed, adding, “with myself in a really healthy way.”
This isn’t the Emmy-winning actress’ first time talking about her audition process for Wicked. During a March episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, she said she sang with Cynthia Erivo while trying out for Glinda.
“I was able to really prepare, and I’m telling you, I’ve never felt that solid in my voice than I did at the auditions. And that’s kind of what I got out of it,” Seyfried told host Josh Horowitz.
“I do, again, think everything happens for a reason,” she continued, adding that her household “sing(s) ‘Defying Gravity’ every day” despite her not nabbing the role of Glinda. “I also got to sing with Cynthia, and that was a moment in itself,” Seyfried said.
The role ultimately went to Ariana Grande. The “7 Rings” singer and Erivo were nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress, respectively, at the Oscars. Seyfried revealed in 2022 that she tried out for the part of Glinda while filming The Dropout, for which she later won an Emmy.
“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,’ ” said the actress. “I literally bent over backwards while playing the hardest role of my life. But I think it also taught me how far I’ve come as a singer, which I really wanted to prove.”
I love how hard Amanda works and how open she is in interviews. Because we knew that she’d made it so far as to do a screen test with Cynthia Erivo, I kind of figured that Amanda had made it pretty far along in the casting process. In fact, my mind-canon just assumed that at the end of the day, it was between her and Ariana! And while Amanda has a lovely voice, I begrudgingly admit that Ariana was an amazing Glinda. I think Amanda could have done a very good job with the role, but in the end, the right actress was cast. That said, I can’t believe that she did all of those auditions while filming The Dropout! She was fully committed to doing Elizabeth Holmes’ husky voice, which had to have affected her singing voice.
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I appreciate that all these already very famous women had to audition for the role and in the end it went to the person they thought was best for the job.
She has a surprisingly good voice, and I think would have held her own in Wicked. Amazing work ethic though.
Why “surprisingly”? She’s been a trained singer since forever.
It’s alright! She’s going to get something huge. No one’s forgotten how amazing her voice (and dulcimer playing) was on late night!
She actually has a beautiful voice, and I was blown away by her singing and dulcimer playing of Joni Mitchell’s “California.” That said, I think she might be too serious an actress to play the role? Ariana brought that pop star glitter to her performance that I think it needed. I didn’t love the movie but the performances were top notch.
I love Amanda and can’t wait to see what she does next.
Amanda was in Ted 2, she can do “not serious”. I love her too.
As for what she does next, I really need her to reunite with her All My Children co-star Michael B Jordan for some road trip gone wrong rom com. They had good chemistry way back when they were 15 and 16 years old.
IDK, I’m a bit of a contrarian here. I love, love, love Amanda but I always found her voice kind of thin. She sounds great on smaller-scale acoustic stuff but I’m not sure she has the belting power or range to play Glinda. Kristen Chenoweth went full-on opera when she originated the role and Ariana even trained her voice to sing operatically — Ari’s larynx moves so she’s not singing in a completely operatic style, but she definitely maintained the melisma and vibrato that Kristen utitlized that’s a trademark of opera styling. I found Amanda to be one of the weaker vocalists in “Mamma Mia” (Pierce was the WORST IMO) and “Les Miserables”… I’m just not sure Amanda could, for example, hit and sustain that E5 on “No One Mourns the Wicked” the way that Kristen and Ari do.
I agree. Her soprano is very high and not powerful enough—this was evident in the. Les Miserables musical. Maybe her voice is stronger but it’s not at powerful as Ariana’s is.
💯, Amanda can sing but she’s nowhere close to Ariana’s caliber as a singer.
A little offtopic but I loved when Ariana sang badly (on purpose) for the Domingo sketch on SNL. I wondered if she had to practice not hitting the note and deliberately missing the beat.
I know someone who knows Anna Kendrick and Anna also made it to the round of singing with Cynthia erivo and was blown away by Cynthia erivo, as everyone would be!