Wicked

Brooms, Breakups & Backlighting: All the Wicked (2024) Gossip They Don’t Put in the Playbill

When you adapt Broadway’s most beloved green girl for the big screen, you’re not just summoning flying monkeys — you’re unleashing an entire ecosystem of drama. From on-set romances to porn-linked dolls (yes, really), the Wicked movie has stirred up more chaos than a tornado over Kansas.

Romance Rumors: The Real-Life Emerald City Love Triangle

Ariana & Ethan: The “Gravity Pull” Affair

• Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater met on the Wicked set in the UK in 2022, both still married at the time — she to Dalton Gomez, he to Lilly Jay, with whom he’d just had a baby .
• Their romance went public in July 2023, the same month Slater filed for divorce and while Grande was in the middle of her own separation, sending the internet into a moral meltdown ^[1].
• Insiders described their connection as having a “gravity pull” born out of the “exciting, stressful process” of making Wicked together — translation: intense on-set chemistry that was hard to walk away from ^[1].
• Slater’s ex Lilly Jay told Page Six her family was treated like “collateral damage” and branded Grande “not a girl’s girl,” which only fueled the “homewrecker” narrative online ^[1].
• Grande later defended Slater, saying there was “no less accurate depiction of a human being” than the tabloids’ version of him, and pointedly refused to spill “the tea” on the real timeline .

Cynthia & Ariana: Friendship Goals or Something More?

• On screen, they’re Glinda and Elphaba. Off screen, they told Vanity Fair they became “real connection” soul-sisters who “communicated like the fucking champions of communication of the world” to keep their friendship solid even during tense scenes ^[2].
• Fans, being fans, promptly decided this meant they were secretly dating. Cynthia Erivo later had to address rumors outright, clarifying that the relationship was not romantic while still defending how close they are .
• At the Australian premiere, they ditched their assigned seats to sit together on the floor because they were “too far apart,” and they even have matching tattoos to commemorate the film — catnip for shippers, even if it’s just very intense bestie energy .

On-Set Drama & Emotional Meltdowns

Ozdust Ballroom Breakdown

• The Ozdust Ballroom sequence – where Glinda humiliates Elphaba – was reportedly the hardest day of filming. Erivo admits she had “a big old breakdown” after shooting the emotionally brutal scene ^[2].
• Producer Marc Platt apparently had to demand Erivo leave the set to decompress. Grande recalled, “Marc and I demanded you leave,” underscoring how raw and intense the day became ^[2].
• Both women talked about “leading with love” even in scenes where their characters are at war, suggesting they worked overtime to avoid the kind of backstage rivalry that once swirled around original Broadway stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth ^[2].

Sobbing Through ‘For Good’ — and Still Getting Cut

• Grande and Erivo have said they were literally “singing through the tears” while filming some Wicked moments, particularly late-film scenes that deepened Glinda and Elphaba’s bond .
• Some of those emotionally devastating bits landed in the pile of 10 deleted and extended scenes created for the digital release, leaving both leads heartbroken about what got cut ^[6].
• Fans raged when a crucial deleted scene leaked online, claiming it was “vital” to understanding certain character relationships — cue calls for an extended “Oz-cut” of the film ^[6].

Casting Claw-Backs: Who Almost Wore the Bubble?

Glinda Hunger Games

• Amanda Seyfried auditioned six times for Glinda while shooting The Dropout, calling it one of the most brutal audition processes of her career. After all that? The role still went to Grande .
• She wasn’t alone. Reports say Dove Cameron, Anna Kendrick, Jessie J, Reneé Rapp and Ariana DeBose were all in the mix for Glinda at various points — a full-on blonde, belter bloodbath ^[3][4].
• Grande had effectively been campaigning for the role for a decade, taking voice and acting lessons and repeatedly auditioning to prove she could be more than just the Nickelodeon girl with a whistle register ^[2][4].

Scandals & Lawsuits: The Wicked Doll Porn Fiasco

The Toy Story From Hell

• Mattel released Wicked movie dolls — and somehow printed the URL for an adult site on the packaging instead of the official Wicked movie page. Kids scanning the code were sent straight to hardcore porn .
• A South Carolina mom filed a class-action lawsuit, claiming her daughter was exposed to explicit content via the QR code. The complaint described “hardcore, full-on nude pornographic images depicting actual intercourse” ^[5].
• Mattel apologized, recalled the dolls, and reissued them with corrected packaging, insisting the misprint didn’t affect “the value or play experience” of the toy. Collectors immediately tried to flip the misprinted versions online as scandalous limited editions ^[5].
• Universal’s marketing chief shrugged it off as more anecdote than apocalypse, saying he didn’t believe it hurt Wicked’s box office, which still flew high with a massive opening weekend ^[5].

Queer Readings, Viral Posters & Other Wicked Weirdness

“Is Glinda Gay?” — The Theory That Went Mainstream

• Ariana Grande openly flirted with the popular fan theory that Glinda is queer, suggesting the character “might be a little in the closet” and teasing fans to “give it a little more time” ^[4].
• Original Glinda Kristin Chenoweth backed her up, admitting she had the same thought “way back when,” helping push a long-standing fandom headcanon straight into mainstream coverage ^[4].
• Wicked’s screenwriter later weighed in to clarify that while fans are free to interpret Glinda and Elphaba as queer, the film doesn’t explicitly canonize them as a couple — but by then, TikTok and Tumblr had already decided otherwise ^[2][6].

The Fan-Edited Poster That Crossed a Line

• A viral fan edit of one of the Wicked movie posters cropped and lightened Elphaba so drastically that Cynthia Erivo’s face was barely visible. She called the altered image “deeply hurtful” and publicly slammed it for erasing her Black, dark-skinned Elphaba from her own movie’s imagery .
• The incident sparked thinkpieces about colorism, fan entitlement, and who gets to control a Black actress’s representation — all over a supposed “fun” fan edit ^[7].

Backlighting Backlash

• Viewers complained that Wicked’s dramatic backlighting made some scenes look too dim. Director Jon M. Chu fired back, saying he thought the movie was “gorgeous” and standing firmly by his stylistic choices .
• The mini-controversy got big enough for industry outlets to cover it, proving that in 2020s Hollywood, even your lighting can get dragged ^[10].

From affair allegations and emotional breakdowns to misprinted porn dolls and queer fan theories gone mainstream, Wicked didn’t just retell Oz — it accidentally became one of the juiciest gossip sagas in recent movie history. Somewhere in the Emerald City, Madame Morrible is taking notes.