Grande and her co-star Cynthia Erivo, who plays Elphaba, sat down with U.K. news outlet Gay Times to discuss the movie.
“I’m from Gay Times, alright, so the questions are going to be very homosexual,” reporter Sam Damshenas said to Grande and Erivo.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Grande responded.
“What I love about Wicked is that there are loads of queer allegories,” Damshenas said.
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“So, how does that inform your performances?” he asked.
“Oz is a celebration of uniqueness,” Grande answered, adding, “Everyone is just so beautifully queer and that roots all the way back to the L. Frank Baum books, where, like, literally the most commonly used word in the books is ‘queer.’”
Erivo called the film a celebration of “the other” and called her and Grande’s characters an “other” and “different.”
She added in unison with the Gay Times reporter that, “Oz is a very queer place.”
Damshenas asked the Wicked actresses what a “pride parade would look like” in their film’s world.
“Everyday in the Emerald City is a Pride parade,” Grande replied, referring to the capital city of the fictional Land of Oz.
“I mean, it’s true. Even, like, the chickens, those chickens are gay,” Grande doubled down.
“Definitely,” Erivo agreed.
Damshenas pressed the Wicked stars about fans suggesting that their own characters are gay.
“I think Elphie, she goes wherever the wind blows,” Erivo said of her green witch character. “I think she loves Glinda. I think she loves love. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with celebrating the deep connection that both of them have.”
Enrivo continued, “They do have a relationship. It is true love, which is probably why people are shipping it, you know? Because what they build with each other is an unbreakable bond and love.”
Grande analyzed her own Good Witch character and said the friendship between Glinda and Elphie was a “safe space.”
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“Maybe Glinda might be a little in the closet. But if there were a time? Y’know, you never know! Give it a little more time! I mean, it is just a true love. And I think that transcends sexuality, it’s just kind of a deep safety within each other,” she said during the movie promotion interview.
Last week during a movie promotion of the animated Moana 2 movie, lead actress Auli’i Cravalho shared on The View how she as a “queer” actress fights “antisemitism, fascism and misogyny.”
