When Wicked director Jon M. Chu offered Michelle Yeoh the role of Madame Morrible, the Oscar-winning actress was thrilled — but also terrified she wouldn’t be able to measure up to her costars.
“When I got it, I said, ‘Jon, it’s a musical. I don’t sing.’ You know, [I’m] not like Cynthia [Erivo] and Ariana [Grande] — they are the real deal,” Yeoh, 62, exclusively told Us Weekly about being asked to join the movie musical, which hits theaters on Friday, November 22.
While Yeoh admitted to having initial reservations, she confessed that Chu, 45, could have “thrown the phone book” at her and she would have accepted the role. However, a sweet video message that came her way helped ultimately seal the deal.
“Before I could even react quick enough, I get this video from Jon and he says, ‘Hi Michelle, I have someone who really wants to talk to you,’” she recalled. “Swings it around. It was Ariana and Cynthia going, ‘Hi, Michelle, it is imperative that you join us now.’ It was so sweet of them.”
Yeoh quickly learned that she would have a duet with Erivo, who portrays Elphaba in the film. The twosome sing “The Wizard and I” together, which occurs when Madame Morrible tells Elphaba about her magical talents and arranges a meeting with the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum). Discovering she would be singing directly opposite the Broadway star jump-started Yeoh’s nerves all over again.
“Can you imagine you have to lead the song for Cynthia?” Yeoh said with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be embarrassing as hell.’ [But Cynthia] was like, ‘Michelle, I’ve heard you sing. Just let it out. You can do it. I know you can.’ And so we had fun.”
Yeoh, of course, is an Oscar winner for a reason — and didn’t go into shooting the movie unprepared. The Everything, Everywhere All at Once actress told Us that when she agrees to do something, she’s committed to making sure that she can “deliver” what’s being asked of her. It helped that Chu had the utmost “confidence” she was the right person for the role, but she still took extra precautions.
“Dominic, our music supervisor, found me an amazing coach, Marianne. And so she took me through the lessons and she said, ‘Just forget everything you think you need to sing. Just have fun, just relax,’” Yeoh explained. “And then she started helping me make all these sounds, like a siren. And I go, ‘This is learning how to sing?!’ But what it did was help [me] go to high notes that you didn’t think was possible.”
Ultimately, Yeoh said she “learned to have fun” with the role — even the singing parts — which she believes was the “most important” thing. And where Grande, 31, and Erivo, 37, served as cheerleaders in her more self conscious moments on set, Yeoh paid back in the form of making sure she was “protective” of the younger stars acting in their first big blockbuster project.
“You always feel protective … Because this could frighten [younger stars] away or traumatize them in the worst possible way,” Yeoh explained. “And you are only as good as they are, because it’s a team, it’s a collaboration. You cannot stand out alone. Everybody has to play their part to the fullest.”
Yeoh’s part could be seen as a villain of Wicked — the headmistress of Shiz University and a cohort of The Wizard both tricks Elphaba and spreads rumors about her in order to keep her magic a secret, after all — but Yeoh doesn’t see it that way.
“I think villain characters like [her] have a lot of complexities. There’s a lot of motivation,” she explained. “Of where they are, why they become what they are. … And it was very important for us to bring the character in with someone that you admire, someone that you respect. Someone who is in a position of power and who’s not abusing it. But the thing is, she’s the dean of the University of Shiz and her lifelong ambition is to find someone who really has the gift of magic.”
Yeoh believes that Morrible simply got “blinded by her own ambition” when she found that someone in Elphaba, and rather than “nurturing” her new student to do what’s “good for her,” she takes a different road — one that leads her to “manipulate” to get what she wants.
It likely helped that Yeoh hadn’t seen Wicked the musical before taking on the role of Morrible, but did make sure to check it out in both London and New York City before filming began. From there, she figured out how to pay homage to the original character while putting her own spin on things.
“I think it’s very important because it’s a two decades legacy that’s been here and still ongoing,” she said. “So how do I make her my own? I think it’s very important to understand what Jon Chu, the director — the amazing storyteller — is trying to do, because he has all the pieces. And how does one piece fit with the other? [She’s] not a standalone character.”
That teamwork mentality extended beyond just her own character analysis, Yeoh joked that when Chu, who also directed her in Crazy Rich Asians, would ask her to channel her inner villain and “scare” Grande on set, she was more than willing to do what was being asked of her.
“I mean, sometimes we get a little naughty,” she confessed. “Jon will come and say to me, ‘Can you please scare the hell out of Ariana?’ And you go, ‘OK!’ because sometimes, you know, the shock value is very, very good, and then they don’t know what to expect.”
When asked if scaring Grande actually worked, Yeoh added with a laugh, “She got so scared her [contact] lens popped out!”
Wicked hits theaters on Friday, November 22.
With reporting by Amanda Williams
