Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are saying goodbye to Wicked, but they’ll always be changed for good by the franchise.
On Friday (Nov. 21) — the day Wicked: For Good finally hit theaters worldwide — both leading ladies shared emotional posts marking the end of an era. On Instagram, Erivo began by sharing a carousel of photos of herself in her green Elphaba skin and witch hat on the set of the musical duology.
“I could write you an essay, a poem, Shakespearean prose, to describe what this journey has meant to me, what lessons this time has taught me, bought me,” the Tony winner wrote in her caption. “I could try to give a metric to the love I have felt and experienced. I could give a number to the stories I have heard.”
“The truth is the numbers are too small and the words are not enough,” she continued. “So I’ll simply say this. “Take my hand and walk with me to the end of this road paved with gold and hopefully, the things that I’ve found, might find you too. Thank you for letting me be your Elphaba.”
A few hours later, Grande shared her own roundup of photos from the Wicked set — complete with many pink items of clothing — and gushed about her love for her character in the project. “thank you, my sweet Glinda, for everything,” she wrote. “i will love you always … Wicked For Good is out now.”
It’s certainly an emotional day for both actresses and Wicked fans all over the world. The cast and crew spent years bringing the Broadway musical to life, with Erivo and the R.E.M. Beauty founder first landing the roles of Elphaba and Glinda, respectively, back in 2021. They’d spend the next two years or so rehearsing and shooting on set in London, wrapping in early 2024.
After finishing the films, the cast would take the world by storm with an almost inescapable press tour for the first Wicked, which premiered in November 2024 and shattered box-office records before winning Oscars for best costume and production design. Though the promo cycle for part two this year was far more lowkey, Erivo and Grande still spent much of the past month traveling all over the world for international Wicked: For Good screenings and red carpets in São Paulo, Paris, London and Singapore.
“We knew immediately that we were stepping into something that was quite special because it already has this beautiful legacy behind it,” Erivo told Seth Meyers on Thursday (Nov. 20) of herself and her castmates.
“i will never forget even a minute of my year(s) with [Glinda],” Grande wrote on Instagram last year. “Or you. or my Cyn. permanently and preferably intertwined.”
