The stars of the long-awaited silver-screen adaptation of Broadway smash “Wicked” have been widely ridiculed for their cringe-worthy press tour behavior ahead of its release, culminating with a recent interview that went viral for being completely nonsensical.
In a clip shared tens of millions of times online, Out magazine reporter Tracy Gilchrist tells co-stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo that she heard people were taking the lyrics of “Defying Gravity” — one of the musical’s big numbers — and “really holding space with that and feeling power in that.”
Erivo, 37, clasped her hand to her chest, visibly emotionally bowled-over by Gilchrist’s inscrutable assemblage of nouns and verbs.
“I didn’t know that was happening. That’s really powerful,” she said, very nearly breathless.
“Mm-hmm,” said Gilchrist, confirming Erivo was appropriately moved by the revelation.
“That’s.. what I wanted,” Erivo said of the 20-year-old song, which was written by renowned composer Stephen Schwartz.
She turns to look at Grande, who solemnly nods her head in apparent agreement before clutching her co-star’s index finger.
“I didn’t know that was happening,” the Brit actress squeaked, her voice catching in her throat.
— masha (@MashaParty) November 21, 2024
Gilchrist then let the air out of the balloon so fast it prompted some online to question if she was trolling.
“I’ve seen it in a couple posts, I don’t know how widespread, but you know, I am in queer media, so, that’s my, you know, but yeah, it’s happening,” she said.
The unusual exchange was savaged on social media, with many unable to get a bead on what was actually being conveyed and why it provoked such a strong emotional response from the film’s stars.
“I feel like I’m in a fever dream,” an Instagram user quipped.
“What is it that is actually happening,” another deadpanned.
Others adopted the instantly viral new term Gilchrist coined to poke fun at the actresses.
“I’m holding space for when this press tour is finally over,” one commenter quipped.
The $150 million blockbuster — which runs 2 hours 40 minutes — is controversially going to be broken up into two separate movies, with “Wicked Part Two” set for release next November.
Throughout the world-galloping press tour the actresses’ strange behavior has raised eyebrows and drawn gales of mockery.
Earlier this month at an event centered around the fashion of the cast, a blogger pointedly asked the women on camera, “What is a common misconception people have” about the duo.
Grande, 31, who is American but moments earlier had been affecting a British accent, literally gasped out loud before whipping her head to face her co-star.
“I don’t know what a common misconception is at all. But that’s not a fashion question, is it?” Erivo jabbed back in a response later criticized as “rude.”
Erivo also made headlines last month for her meltdown over a fan-made poster of the film adaptation done in the style of the original Broadway show’s advert, in which her character’s hat is pulled down over her eyes.
“[T]o edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me,” she wrote on her Instagram story at the time.
“This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen. None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us,” she continued.
“The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION,” she said. “I am a real life human being, who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer … because, without words we communicate with our eyes.”
She later attempted to walk back her embarrassing outburst, chalking up the finger-wagging as “a little human moment” she had, and blamed the intensity of her reaction to, “having that passion for what this piece is and loving it so much.”
