NEED TO KNOW
Jon M. Chu has a surprise in store for Wicked: For Good audiences.
The director told Deadline in an interview published Thursday, Oct. 16, that when he set out to finish the sequel to 2024’s Wicked in January, he filmed additional scenes with stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande — and recruited a mystery actor to voice the Cowardly Lion in a cameo.
He said of contacting the actor via Instagram: “I was like, ‘It’s not a ton of lines, but maybe you have a little time. I know you’re busy. I’ll come to you,’ ” said Chu, 45. “He was like, ‘Why the f— not, let’s go!’ And then we went ahead and recorded the lines.”
Chu gave no hint as to who agreed to voice the character, but he appeared confident that revealing that actor at one of Wicked: For Good’s premieres will excite fans. “Man, wait until the red carpet when the actor who gave us the Cowardly Lion’s voice steps foot on it. It’ll be wild,” he added.
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The Cowardly Lion is one of the main characters from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. Wicked is inspired by L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Bert Lahr portrayed the Cowardly Lion in the 1939 movie, and the character is briefly teased along with Oz’s Tin Man and the Scarecrow in Wicked’s most recent trailer, released on Sept. 24. Dorothy, whom Judy Garland played in The Wizard of Oz, and her companions have been teased in the first film and trailers for both Wicked movies.
Back in December 2024, Chu told CinemaBlend in an interview that the production “definitely did cast Dorothy,” though he declined to comment how much screen time the character will receive compared to Wicked’s stage show.
“How much of do you see of Dorothy? I’m going to leave people— I can’t, I can’t confirm or deny how much you see of her,” Chu told the outlet at that time. “I will say that I do think it’s important for, whoever Dorothy is to you, to try to respect that as much as possible. But does The Wizard of Oz and our movie intersect in movie two more than ever? One hundred percent.”
Erivo, 38, and Grande, 32, and Wicked stars like Michelle Yeoh, Marissa Bode, Bowen Yang, Ethan Slater, Jonathan Bailey and Jeff Goldblum reprise their roles from the first movie in Wicked: For Good, in theaters Nov. 21.
