Inside the making of Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba in ‘Wicked’: ‘We were never going for a witchy look’
She’s that girl.
Cynthia Erivo transformed into Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, in “Wicked” thanks to the film’s makeup artist and hairstylist Frances Hannon.
Hannon told The Post her work on Erivo, 37, and the rest of the cast started with researching the world of Oz.
“I looked into everything. Every book. I’ve seen ‘Wicked’ many times. I went and refreshed myself. The original ‘Wizard of Oz’ as well,” Hannon said.
“But we were never going for a witchy look,” she added about the making of Erivo’s character. “We were making it very real, very timeless and very connected to everybody. We weren’t going for the prosthetic fantasy version at all. Jon [M. Chu] always wanted everything real.”
Hannon conceived her idea for Elphaba’s hair for the film even before Erivo arrived in the United Kingdom for filming in 2022.
“She loved the micro braiding, which gave her lots of scope for her to have freedom with her hair,” she explained. “But we always kept in mind that it’s very important to never get so big because with the black hat and the huge black cloak, she could have disappeared. Her hair wasn’t black, it was brown mixed, but she could have disappeared completely within that.”
As for the makeup process on Erivo, Hannon explained how she created the color of Elphaba’s infamous look.
“I started by trying to find the right shade of green for the skin tone because one would never use anything that was used onstage because that was face-painted and played for the back of the audience, whereas we wanted it to work in every light, but certainly in big close-ups,” she said. “Once I found the shade of green that I thought was right by working on models, I couldn’t make that shade of green work in all the different lights.”
Hannon also confirmed she never changed Erivo’s shade of green while filming both parts of the movie.
“The green itself was the base, and then we contoured on top,” she explained. “I added freckles to give her a story arc, so we had somewhere to go younger and then progression for when she changes in her storyline. So the green stayed the same. The contours became stronger, the eye shadows were stronger, her hair became looser and wilder. Her skin tone was her skin tone.”
To transform Ariana Grande into Glinda the Good Witch, Hannon’s main priorities were to make the character “very classical and princess-like.”
“Again, kindness was very important,” she said. “We looked at all the history. [Costume designer] Paul Tazewell took the pink from the original film [‘The Wizard of Oz’] and used it rather than the blue from the stage. And Nathan Crowley, our set designer, he had used circles a lot, which Paul used within the costumes and I used within the hair as well.”
“More waves and flowy. We kept her hair warmer and shorter for the school and simpler, not so much wave and curl,” Hannon continued.
“And when she went into the bubble dress for the opening of the film, we worked from Paul’s costume upward. We kept her skin very translucent, opalescent. And kept her hair with the curl and the wave that is within the whole storyline of Oz.”
Hannon noted that there were no makeup- or hair-related mishaps with any of the cast members during shooting.
“We were very structured and controlled,” she told The Post. “I often would have everything ready before their arrival, and then have a choice made. One always says the artist chooses the character and how they see it.”
“Wicked” is in theaters now.
