By Nate Bloom
Contributing Columnist
“Wicked,” the huge musical stage hit, has finally been made into a film and it will open in theaters on Nov. 22. The stage musical premiered in 2003. The musical’s story was loosely based on a 1995 novel entitled “Wicked.” The novel drew on the original (early 20th century) Oz novels, but it had a different spin about the origins and lives of the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch.
Top Broadway composer/lyricist STEPHEN SCHWARTZ, now 76, stumbled (1996) on the 1995 novel and he thought it would be a good play and/or musical. After much trouble, Schwartz got the rights to use the novel as a basis for a Broadway musical. Schwartz rewrote or reworked a lot of the material in the novel. He wrote all the songs, too.
WINNIE HOLZMAN, now 70, wrote original scenes and dialogue for the musical. She is credited as “Wicked” book writer (stage and movie versions).
The original Broadway musical co-starred IDINA MENZEL, now 53, as the Wicked Witch/AKA Elphaba Thropp. JOEL GREY, now 92, played the Wizard of Oz.
In the new film, Cynthia Erivo, a British actress, plays the green-skinned Elphaba Thropp (she’s known later as the Wicked Witch). JEFF GOLDBLUM, 71, plays the Wizard of Oz in the new film.
ETHAN SLATER, 32, has a biggish film role as Boq Woodsman, a Munchkin in love with Galinda (later known as the Good Witch of North. Galinda is played by Ariana Grande).
Slater grew up in Washington, D.C. suburbs. He was raised in a Conservative home and he went to a Jewish Day School for several years. He’s had many TV guest shots. But he’s best known as a Broadway musical star (The SpongeBob musical and Spamalot.)
ANDY NYMAN, 58, has a somewhat smaller role than Slater. He plays Frexspar Thropp, Elphaba and Nessarose’s father. He’s also the Governor of Munchkinland. (Nessarose is Elphba’s younger, paraplegic sister. She’s later known as the Wicked Witch of the East.)
Nyman is an English Jew. He’s a fixture in British TV and stage productions. His Jewish roles include playing a Polish Jewish resistance fighter in Uprising, a 2001 Emmy-winning film about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; Tevye in a British 2018 revival of Fiddler on the Roof; and Max Bialystock in a British revival (2023-4) of “The Producers.”
Nyman had a bar mitzvah ceremony and he went to a Jewish summer camp. In one interview, he said he wished that he could be more observant. But, he said, he recites the “shema” every day.
Also opening on the 22nd is “Gladiator 2,” a kind-of sequel to “Gladiator,” a 2000 mega-hit film that took place in ancient Rome (c. 177-192). Ridley Scott, now 86(!), directed both films. Both films take big liberties with history. For example, Maximus (see below) didn’t really exist.
In the original, Maximus (Russell Crowe), a heroic Roman general, despises Commodus (who became Rome’s emperor in 177 C.E.). Commodus (JOAQUIN PHOENIX) hates Maximus back and he has Maximus’s wife and child killed. Maximus eludes arrest, but slavers, not knowing who he is, capture him and sell him to fight as a (slave) gladiator in arenas.
Maximum’s identity is revealed in arena fights in front of Commodus. Shortly after the reveal Maximus tries and fails to lead a revolt against Commodus. But he does manage to kill Commodus in the arena and he dies shortly thereafter.
The sequel is set around 198 to 211. Maximus had a son, Lucius, with Lucilla, the sister of Commodus. As the sequel starts, Lucius is a young man, living peacefully in North Africa, when Roman soldiers arrest him. Like Maximus, his wife is killed and Lucius is made to be a gladiator-slave.
Lucius really hates Geta and Caracalla, unstable brothers who govern as Rome’s co-emperors. FRED HECHINGER, 24, plays Caracalla. He broke out with a biggish supporting role in “News of the World” (2021), a Tom Hanks movie, and he’s co-starred in good series, like “White Lotus.” The actor’s late grandfather, also named Fred Hechinger, fled Nazi Germany in 1936, and became a prominent NY Times editor/education writer. His other “grands” were Jewish, too.
LIOR RAZ, 52, plays Vigo, a former gladiator who trains gladiators for the arena. Raz has too much bio to relay here: born and raised in Israel, the son of Jews from Arab countries, he became an elite commando in the IDF — then Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bodyguard — and, then, a lot of smallish acting roles.
Lucius’s wife (played by YUVAL GONEN) is murdered early on in the sequel. I know that Gonen is a pretty, young Israeli actress with a few credits. But, right now, there is very little bio out there.