How ‘Wicked’ Stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande Transformed Into the Witches of Oz

From getting Cynthia in the chair to her being completely greenified, how long did that process take?

Frances: The girls who made her up were Alice Jones and Olivia Jerrard. There were two people used, one for the hands, one did the face, and then Cyn did her wig. But the whole process, once we got it down, was roughly two hours and 15 minutes.

When it comes to removing the green, is it just hopping in the shower and washing it off? Or is it not that simple?

Frances: Not exactly. That’s a special remover. Three girls in the evening, they got that down to 45 minutes depending on if Cynthia had a real rush; you get it off a bit quicker. But then the average time was about 45 to remove. So all that’s incorporated into the length of her working day.

Moving on to hair, Elphaba wears micro braids. I imagine Cynthia was part of that conversation around hairstyling from the beginning?

Frances: Very much so. It was in the early days of research that I came across this particular micro braiding that I liked. We researched everything, the history of braiding and the contemporary looks now. We wanted to make it timeless, so it was trying to find a balance. Cynthia as an artist is tiny, and her costumes—that big witch’s hat and those cloaks—are big. So we had to bring a style to Cynthia that could grow and change but not swamp her.

Micro braiding fulfilled every nuance. It kept her head shape very small and tight. It allowed development by letting it free, but keeping it very simple. Elphaba isn’ vain, unlike Glinda, so she wouldn’t be doing anything too fancy to herself or taking time for that sort of thing. I brought it to Jon Chu and Marc Platt. Jon really loved the idea, then he took it to Cynthia, and she loved the idea. It just developed from there. We made four simple hairstyles but as Cynthia’s Elphaba developed, more hairstyles developed within it.

How many wigs did Cynthia wear throughout both movies?

Frances: Cynthia had seven in total that were for her. But all round, four stand-ins, stunt doubles, and everything else we had to cover, so we had something like 17 wigs. Those wigs were made by Samuel James on green lace, six to eight inches long of the right texture. And then the braids were put in afterwards. It took four braiders several days to braid each individual wig. The first day I met Cynthia, she only had a day in the UK, long before anybody else was on board and before we had cameras. We trialed the green and it worked great. I had a black stock wig, and we had imagined that would be the way to go, but I put the black wig on her head against the green and it looked really jarring. It was really, really unattractive and harsh. And I realized then straight away, she needed a lot more brown in it to soften the look and make it younger.