NEED TO KNOW
Michelle Yeoh can’t get enough of pointing out how her character’s initials signify her villainous arc in Wicked: For Good.
The Oscar winner, 63, went viral on social media for the number of times she pointed out during recent interviews that the initials for her Wicked character Madame Morrible can be flipped upside down to “WW,” meaning the “Wicked Witch.”
Yeoh shared the connection during a Nov. 16 interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. “Madame Morrible! M. M. — Wicked Witch!” she said, as she flipped three fingers on each hand upside down and then right side up to resemble a coincidence that reveals her character’s villainous intentions.
Eagle-eyed Wicked fans watching other interviews for the movie noticed that Yeoh repeatedly mentioned the coincidence with the character’s name, and a TikTok that has been viewed more than 2 million times since it was posted on Saturday, Nov. 22 showed that Yeoh has made use of the phrase in at least 10 interviews for Wicked: For Good.
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures
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Many of the most-liked comments on the TikTok compilation compared Yeoh’s go-to Wicked anecdote to Lady Gaga repeatedly using a phrase back in 2018 and 2019 during interviews for A Star Is Born with Bradley Cooper.
That year, people noticed Gaga, 39, often said, “There can be 100 people in a room, and 99 of them don’t believe in you, but all it takes is one, and it just changes your whole life,” while discussing working with Cooper, 50.
Other commenters compared Yeoh’s phrase to the viral “six seven” trend dominating pop culture at the moment.
Yeoh plays Madame Morrible in director Jon M. Chu’s two-part adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked. The character is introduced in last year’s Wicked as the headmaster of Shiz University, who takes on Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) as her top student after she enrolls in the college and reveals her abilities to wield magic.
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures
Madame Morrible turns into an antagonist by the end of the first Wicked installment and doubles down on villainy in For Good as she works with the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) to bring down Elphaba’s campaign to expose the Wizard’s villainy.
As Yeoh has been keen to point out in interviews for the movie, Madame Morrible may be the true “Wicked Witch” of the entire story.
Wicked: For Good is in theaters now; the movie made a massive $150 million in North America and $226 million worldwide during its opening weekend.
