Spoiler alert for Wicked: For Good. If you haven’t seen the sequel beware!
After a year of waiting Wicked: For Good is in theaters and breaking records. The movie musical adapted the second act of Wicked, and featured some thrilling connections to The Wizard of Oz (which is streaming with a HBO Max subscription). Namely the inclusion of The Scarecrow and The Tin Man, and we just found out just how long it took the actors to get into makeup and prosthetics to play those roles.
Prior to For Good being released, Ethan Slater posted a photo of him in prosthetics as Tin Man. Jonathan Bailey kept things closer to the chest, not speaking about his transformation from Fiyero to The Scarecrow until after the movie was in theaters. During an interview with Us Weekly, makeup artist Frances Hannon spoke about how long it took to bring these classic characters to life. In her words:
[It took] four hours with the hair, the wigs, the straw and everything, the prosthetics and the hands, and then the costume came afterwards. But it was really so moving. And I think it really brings something very special to Wicked: For Good.
Ouch. Four hours is a ton of time to spend in the makeup chair, but that’s exactly what it took to bring Scarecrow and Tin Man to life using practical makeup, rather than visual effects. Although I have to agree that both characters look excellent in Wicked: For Good, and help to bring something really special to Jon M. Chu‘s musical sequel.
Slater and Bailey had to go through a lengthy makeup process for Wicked, but it could have been worse. Fo example, Jacob Elordi spent 10 hours getting into makeup for Frankenstein. And Alan Cumming sat for over four hours for X-Men 2.
In the same interview, Hannon spoke about how much this lengthy makeup process helped Ethan Slater and Jonathan Bailey in their roles. As she put it:
The transformations were phenomenal. The design was amazing, both Ethan and Jonathan were really moved by it all. And I think it really helps to see the visual. But what I find the beauty of it is they’re all done practically, but it fills the screen in the IMAX, and you can’t tell one single thing. It’s absolutely perfect.
She’s not wrong. Both of these looks are visually striking, and the use of practical makeup ensured that the two Wizard of Oz characters looked real and didn’t feature the uncanny valley that can sometimes happen with visual effects. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the de-aging used for Jeff Goldblum in that flashback sequence.
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Wicked: For Good is in theaters now as part of the 2025 movie release list and the original movie is streaming with an Amazon Prime subscription. Both movies have done very well so we’ll just have to see if Universal decides to expand it further through spinoffs.