How the ‘Wicked’ craft team pulled off the “most complicated film” of their careers: “It was a mammoth undertaking”

For production designer Nathan Crowley, creating the world of Universal Pictures’ Wicked not only meant occasionally defying gravity, but also his own expectations.

“Design-wise and methodology-­wise, this is by far the most complicated film I’ve done, and that’s a lot to say for me, because I’ve worked with Christopher Nolan for a long time,” explains the seven-time Oscar-nominated UK production designer, whose credits include Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Interstellar and Dunkirk as well as Public Enemies, The Greatest Showman and Wonka.

A fan of the 1939 film The Wizard Of Oz, he was less familiar with the Broadway stage production of Wicked on which the film is based, though his three daughters were happy to fill in the gaps after he received the call from director Jon M Chu. Crowley describes it as “a little overwhelming but also very exciting when I realised I’ve not only got to create Oz beyond the stage, but I’ve also got to build it practically and push the design somewhere new”.

In the first Wicked film – with sequel Wicked For Good landing in November – the principal storyline sees the green-skinned Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) unexpectedly admitted to Shiz University, where she is billeted in the room of a reluctant Galinda (later Glinda, played by Ariana Grande). Universal’s expensive gamble on the two films has already paid off, with worldwide box office standing at $711m for Wicked at press time.

New York-based costume designer Paul Tazewell (previously Oscar-nominated for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story) was equally enthralled by the task.

“The musical and the film are part of our visual bank collectively, so getting in there and starting to play with those images was a little daunting,” says Tazewell, who began his own journey by creating a “lookbook” of ideas, eight months before arriving in the UK. “But with Jon at the helm, producer Marc Platt and the studio encouraging us to create this new world in an expansive way, it opened up the door to a creativity that is pretty rare.”

Based out of the UK’s Sky Studios Elstree, Crowley and Tazewell, together with hair and make-up designer Frances Hannon, began the process of creating something “joyous and full of whimsical colour” (Chu’s brief), breaking down the script in a working design room, complete with models, illustrations and idea boards. All three heads of department have been nominated at Bafta and Oscar for their work on Wicked, with the film earning seven Bafta nominations and 10 at Oscar overall.

“It allows you to look around the room and find how things connect. It’s like a giant jigsaw and it’s a bit like being in Sherlock Holmes’ head,” explains Crowley, for whom one of the biggest conundrums was finding the backstory for Munchkinland. “My main problem was, what do the Munchkins do? We can’t just have a backlot with bad extras, we’ve got to give them a reason to exist in Oz.”

Crowley came up with the idea of making the Munchkins tulip farmers with their own industry dying cloth (enlisting the help of a real-life tulip farmer in Norfolk who planted nine million flowers to achieve the visuals), before handing over to Tazewell who created both colour-enhancing and contrasting costumes and Hannon for hair and make-up that enabled the Munchkins to be identified easily.

“It was a textured land with a wonderful colour palette,” says Hannon, who chose red textured hair, tanned skins and freckles to reflect the fact the Munchkins work on the land. “Their hands were stained with tulip dyes because that was their story­line. It is these small details that make the bigger picture so visually cohesive.”

Physical build

When it came to the sets, Crowley and his construction crew – who he has worked with for 20 years – spent months erecting three giant backlots for exterior sets, as well as using all 13 soundstages at Sky Studios Elstree for interiors.

For Crowley, the most challenging build was the Ivy League-inspired Shiz University, which consisted of a 52-foot-high backlot construction complete with waterway for Galinda’s arrival by boat (using water tanks), dock, grand archway and huge entrance courtyard.

“It was a mammoth undertaking, and I think this was the only construction team who could have done it,” explains the designer, who took inspiration from the American architecture of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, in a bid to give the place the “American fairy tale” feel of L Frank Baum’s 1900 illustrated story (which in turn inspired the 1939 film). While there may be a nod to the waterways of Venice, Crowley was also keen to not let Europe influence the design of Shiz too much, “so the question isn’t even raised, you just accept it as Oz”.

Wicked may look utterly fantastical, but Crowley was determined to push the limits of creating a fantasy feature on this scale by physically building his sets as opposed to relying on CGI, which has become the norm for this kind of genre.

“If you can feel it and touch it, it puts the actors in the place and it gives visual effects the photographic information they need for what it should all look like,” says Crowley. “Once you’ve designed something, you then have 16 weeks to manipulate and sculpt it and make it better. If you just jump from the design to post, you don’t get that. If you want to draw the audience into the film and make them forget where they are, that balance is critical.”

The benefit of working on Crowley’s huge physical sets was also felt by hair and make-up designer Hannon, whose credits include The King’s Speech and Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, for which she won an Oscar.

“I’ve never worked on sets of this size and majesty. It meant you knew that everything you were designing had to work in that space and be that size,” says Hannon, who had been to see the stage show many times with her [then young] daughters and whose own creative journey on the film began with trying to find the right green for Elphaba’s skin (the decision was made early in the process that it should be painted on, rather than fixed in post).

“I couldn’t crack it because I found beautiful greens but in different light situations, it changed colour or was very flat. The revelation came when I found a neon-based product from Canada that was discontinued, and when we added a few drops to the green it just lit up Cynthia’s skin from within,” says the designer, who chose to complement the character’s green skin and black clothing with micro braiding for her hair, which becomes looser as the character evolves.

“It was important that between her hat, costumes and cloak, [Elphaba] was never swamped and you could always see her expression, no matter what angle the camera hit her at,” adds Hannon.

The character of Fiyero (played by UK actor Jonathan Bailey) has, in contrast, a blue colour palette. In keeping with Fiyero’s costumes, director Chu decided he wanted the horses to be painted blue as a nod to the “horse of a different colour” from the original The Wizard Of Oz film.

“The horses were hand-painted with brushes and sponges, and every horse had a fake mane, fake tails and plaited hair extensions. The end result in the light was breathtaking and a wonderful call of Jon’s,” says Hannon, who on the film’s biggest shoot days led a team of 120 hair and make-up artists.

Timeless look

For the transformation of Grande into Galinda/Glinda, Hannon took inspiration from Grace Kelly’s looks of the 1940s and 1950s in order to give her an ethereal, princess-like quality. This included dying Grande’s naturally dark hair blonde, but also using a series of wigs that become longer in length and cooler in tone as her character evolves.

“Ari didn’t want to bring anything from her past work, so it was important to remove her from anything she had ever looked like before,” says Hannon, who collaborated closely with the two lead actresses when it came to their characters’ individual looks. “I laid down the plan but the plan grew with them.”

When it was time to design the Elphaba costumes worn by Erivo, one of the biggest considerations for Tazewell was adapting his designs to the athletically demanding nature of the role. “It was very important, even in wanting to get the most pristine silhouette, that I was also acknow­ledging Cynthia’s ability to do what she needs to do, and it was a joy to work with someone who is so connected to her physical being,” says Tazewell, who had previously collaborated with Erivo on 2019’s Harriet.

Of the 25 different looks showcased by Grande across Wicked’s two instalments, creating the iconic pink bubble dress for the first film’s opening sequence was, from a logistical perspective, Tazewell’s biggest challenge.

“To get all the layers and support to work together with all the printing techniques, was very challenging engineering-wise,” explains the designer, who used 137 patterns and 20,000 beads for the bodice (which took a total of 225 hours to sew by hand) to create the exquisitely detailed dress.

Another challenge for Tazewell was designing the dresses for Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, who played Elphaba and Glinda respectively in the original Broadway production of Wicked, and who make cameo appearances in the Emerald City.

“Getting their costumes to operate like the pages of a pop-up book, we had to think about what fabric to use, how we were going to print it, what techniques would hold their colour, and how each layer would hold their shape when they move,” says Tazewell, who oversaw a team of 140 – mostly UK – costumiers. “Working with couture-level tailors, all under the same roof, it meant everybody could see what everybody else was doing. It created a certain energy and immediacy.”

Working simultaneously across two films was something new for all three heads of departments, but they all agreed with the creative decision. “Showing all the elements of this time passage made the job twice as big, but it was the best way to do it,” says Tazewell. “You set up who this character is, you know you have to get them to the last place in their relationship, so you’re always double checking back at the decisions you have made.

“That was a beautiful journey,” adds the designer, who is currently in the early stages of a new Steven Spielberg project.

For Crowley, however, finding another fantasy-building project that offers the same freedom and opportunities as Wicked is not going to be easy. “As you get older as a designer, you want to be challenged and pushed outside your comfort zone,” he says. “This film ticked all the boxes.” 

• Jon M Chu breaks down four key scenes from ‘Wicked’: “everything had to have a little spin on reality”