The Great Debate About ‘Wicked’

After a deeply emotional and disturbingly long press run, the much-anticipated movie musical Wicked is finally premiering in theaters. Adapted from the historically popular Broadway play and starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, the film is shouldering heavy expectations from a massive (and extremely vocal, of course) fandom—but in equal measure, it is also a somewhat perplexing entity, conjuring questions such as “What is an Elphaba?” and “Why is Ariana Grande’s hair that color?” To work through that divide, and in an effort to figure out just what exactly this thing is, we gathered members from both sides of the Wicked aisle to talk it out. Their conversation below has been edited only slightly .

.. Katie Baker : Once upon a time, I used to fret whenever I was unfamiliar with something big in the zeitgeist.

“Write what you know,” the old pep talk goes, so it felt like a personal and professional failure when I found myself catching up. These days, though, I’m older and wiser and way more tired, so I no longer fear the voids in my cultural knowledge—I luxuriate in their lukewarmth instead, like I’m floating in a sensory deprivation tank. Knowing nothing about something: I can definitely write about that! Wicked is one such void for me, and it’s an enormous one.

I somehow never read the book , even though it came out when I was a tween who read everything. I somehow never saw the Tony Award–winning musical, even though I went to other Broadway sho.