Ariana Grande was ‘immediately obsessed’ when she first set eyes on the Munchkins on the Ivinghoe set of Wicked back in 2022.
‘She was just obsessed immediately. She wanted her phone to take pictures of all of us,’ Ricardo Ludgero Souza – who plays a dancing Munchkin – recalled to TMZ on Wednesday.
‘The film uses CGI. So we had like blue blocks everywhere to, like, replicate for post production. So we’d be sitting down and she would just be coming up to us and talking and trying to take photos.’
And while Victor Fleming’s 1939 film The Wizard of Oz amassed over a hundred little people to play Munchkins, director Jon M. Chu took an entirely different approach.
‘The Munchkins we really wanted to define as a culture – not a size, not a look,’ the 45-year-old filmmaker said in the BTS featurette.
Ariana Grande was ‘immediately obsessed’ when she first set eyes on the Munchkins on the Ivinghoe set of Wicked back in 2022
‘They are made up of many different types of people in Oz. They’re a very agricultural culture. They are in charge of collecting the color from the tulip fields.’
The 31-year-old pop star’s character the Good Witch of the South – Glinda Upland – travels to Munchkinland to deliver news of the Wicked Witch of the West’s death and reveal her backstory in an opening number called No One Mourns the Wicked.
‘There’s this one scene where she uses her wand. We were trying to get, like, a really precise camera angle. And she kept getting it wrong,’ the 20-year-old Englishman recalled.
‘She would just start bursting out into laughter, like, “Goddamn it! I got it wrong! I got it wrong!” And it’s just really funny because you just see how like a celebrity that you don’t see, like, face to face.
‘You don’t have normal conversations [to see] just how human they are, really. And it was just nice to see her, like, turning a mistake into such a funny thing for everyone. And not just for herself.’
Ricardo said Ariana was ‘nice’ and ‘well spoken’ and ‘beautiful’ on set, gushing: ‘She had this excited, nervous energy about her that got us all thrilled about doing what we were doing. Like, it was just musical theatre geek merriment, really.’
Souza – who does flips and back handsprings – concluded: ‘She has literally become Glinda. There’s no other way of saying it.’
Grande’s (born Butera) real-life boyfriend Ethan Slater portrays a Munchkin called Boq attending Shiz University with Glinda, who eventually becomes the Woodsman aka the Tin Woodman in the big-screen adaptation of the 2003 Broadway musical.
Ricardo Ludgero Souza – who plays a dancing Munchkin – recalled to TMZ on Wednesday: ‘She was just obsessed immediately. She wanted her phone to take pictures of all of us’
The 20-year-old Englishman continued: ‘We’d be sitting down and she would just be coming up to us and talking and trying to take photos’
And while Victor Fleming’s 1939 film The Wizard of Oz amassed over a hundred little people to play Munchkins, director Jon M. Chu (M) took an entirely different approach
The 45-year-old filmmaker said in the BTS featurette: ‘The Munchkins we really wanted to define as a culture – not a size, not a look’
Jon added: ‘They are made up of many different types of people in Oz. They’re a very agricultural culture. They are in charge of collecting the color from the tulip fields’
The 31-year-old pop star’s character the Good Witch of the South – Glinda Upland – travels to Munchkinland to deliver news of the Wicked Witch of the West’s death
Ricardo recalled: ‘There’s this one scene where she uses her wand. We were trying to get, like, a really precise camera angle. And she kept getting it wrong’
Souza said: ‘She would just start bursting out into laughter, like, “Goddamn it! I got it wrong! I got it wrong!”…It was just nice to see her, like, turning a mistake into such a funny thing for everyone. And not just for herself’
The One Dance UK choreographer went on to gush how Ariana was ‘nice’ and ‘well spoken’ and ‘beautiful’ on set: ‘She has literally become Glinda. There’s no other way of saying it’
Grande’s (born Butera) real-life boyfriend Ethan Slater (R) portrays a Munchkin called Boq attending Shiz University with Glinda, who eventually becomes the Woodsman aka the Tin Woodman in the big-screen adaptation of the 2003 Broadway musical
On Tuesday, Gold Derby reported that the two-time Grammy winner ‘now places among the top five most likely supporting actress contenders’ for the 2025 Oscars due to her performance as Glinda
Part one of Wicked hits US theaters November 27 followed by the second part on November 26, 2025
On Tuesday, Gold Derby reported that the two-time Grammy winner ‘now places among the top five most likely supporting actress contenders’ for the 2025 Oscars due to her performance as Glinda.
Part one of Wicked hits US theaters November 27 followed by the second part on November 26, 2025.
The $145M-budget fantasy film also stars Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Yeoh, and Jeff Goldblum.
Last Friday, Ariana scored three nominations – including best pop vocal album for Eternal Sunshine – at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, which air February 2 on CBS.
