NEED TO KNOW
Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth have been changed — “For Good” — because they knew Stephen Schwartz.
Schwartz, the 77-year-old composer and lyricist of the new Wicked films and the original Broadway musical, opened up to PEOPLE in an exclusive interview about Erivo and Grande’s recent televised performance with Menzel and Chenoweth for a reworked version of the song “For Good.”
“It was a very surreal moment,” Schwartz said of the performance, which aired on Nov. 6 during NBC’s Wicked special One Wonderful Night, as he attended the Nov. 16 opening night of Chess on Broadway.
Menzel and Chenoweth respectively originated the roles of Elphaba and Glinda in the Broadway musical, while Erivo and Grande play the characters on the big screen.
Schwartz explained how the quartet came to be, recalling that he “had been asked to write those new lyrics for the bridge for when Kristin and Idina came in and kind of passed the torch, and that whole idea.”
For this “For Good (Live from the Gershwin Theatre)” version, Schwartz’s updated bridge includes Menzel, 54, singing, “The years go by so fast, the flames keep burning, but we know some day it could be gone.”
Then, Chenoweth, 57, joins with, “It’s nice to know that as the torch gets passed,” before they harmonize, “You will keep it blazing brightly on.”
Erivo, 38, and Grande, 32, later join forces vocally with the original stage actors in an emotionally symbolic passing of the torch.
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Ralph Bavaro/NBC via Getty
Schwartz, who played the piano as the quartet sang, looked back on filming the moment, saying, “We all got dressed up at nine o’clock in the morning. I put on my tuxedo and … went to do it. It was a great experience.”
Schwartz and Chenoweth have teamed up again for The Queen of Versailles — which opened on Broadway on Nov. 9 — more than two decades after their Wicked collaboration.
Meanwhile, Erivo and Grande’s rendition of “For Good” is part of Wicked: For Good, which is now playing in theaters.
