Original ‘Wicked’ Musical Star Kristin Chenoweth Responds After One Million Moms’ Boycott Accuse Film Adaptation Of Being LGBT Propagada: “I Try To Love ‘Em Anyways, For They Don’t Get It”
After passing the $500 million mark on its fourth weekend, Wicked joined Moana, Lion King, and Frozen as one of the highest-grossing musical adaptations of all time. However, this success hasn’t come without its criticism, as the conservative group One Million Moms launched a boycott campaign against the film on December 5th, 2024, just two weeks into its U.S. theatrical release.
The film, which tells the origin story of The Wizard of Oz’s Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande), is undoubtedly one of the warmest films of 2024. In the PG-rated film, Elphaba and Glinda meet as roommates at Shiz University. Elphaba starts out as an outcast because of her green skin, while Glinda is the most popular girl in school. Despite being so different, the two go on to forge one of the strongest friendships in the World of Oz, which fans hope to see when they visit the theatres.
However, according to One Million Moms, the film is a clear attempt by Universal to force the LGBTQ+ agenda on families. “Of course, the musical contains a tremendous amount of witchcraft and sorcery, and that content prompts most parents to avoid taking their children to see Wicked. But the film also shows not-so-discrete crossdressing and men crushing on men, which parents may not expect. Instead of an uplifting Broadway musical about friendship and family, talents and resources were used to create a dark movie that also pushes wokeness,” they posted on their website.
The online campaign has just over 13,000 signatures, but it has drawn the ire of people close to the film, including Kristin Chenoweth, who played Glinda in the Broadway musical in 2003.
Their campaign, however, seems to be based more on the events outside the film than on the film itself. While the Elphaba and Glinda lesbian subtext does exist in both the books and the film, it is subject to interpretation and not clearly expressed in the film. The Wicked book series author, Gregory Maguire, who is himself gay, told the gay activist network Them that he included the gay subtext intentionally to establish sexual tension, something the Broadway musical and the film have both recreated.
Wicked’s numbers prove that this campaign failed, but people have called out the group for hating on the film anyway. The most vocal criticism has come from Chenoweth, who took on the group on her Instagram, saying, “Everyone knows the ‘one million Moms’ are a mere few hundred. Maybe.” Chenoweth confirmed that she is also a Christian mother, but she plays Glinda. “. . . [All] the silliness that these women spew out of hate. No no no. I can’t help it: I try to love em anyways. For they don’t get it. For anyone who wants to see girl power, then go see WICKED. Onstage or in a movie theater,” she added.
Wicked and Wizard of Oz fans on Reddit have equally joined Chenoweth in condemning the campaign, terming it petty and hateful. “They never bothered to care about boycotting the musical over the last 21 years, and it tells the same story and has similar costume styles. These people are ridiculous. They are just mad it’s popular (pun intended),” one Reddit user said.
While responding to the kiss that Elphaba and Glinda have in the books, Maguire said, “That was intentional, and it was modest and restrained and refined in such a way that one could imagine that one of those two young women had felt more than the other and had not wanted to say it. Or perhaps because a novelist can’t write every scene, perhaps when the lights were out and the novelist was out having a smoke in the back alley, the girls had sex in the bed on the way to the Emerald City. I wanted to propose this possibility, but I did not want to make a declarative statement about.”
The campaign doesn’t mention Maguire’s books, but they do mention the statements issued by the Wicked stars in an interview with Gay Times just before the film’s U.S. release. In the interview, both Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande suggested that their characters could indeed have a romantic relationship, but that remains to be seen. Their comments were a response to fans who are shipping Elphaba and Glinda. The most prominent comment came from Ariana Grande, who said, “Glinda might be a little in the closet.”
Both stars, however, confirmed that the focus of the relationship between the two witches is friendship, and it goes beyond any sexual feelings. These comments align with the books in which Elphaba and Glinda are strictly platonic friends. The two actually have feelings for the same man, Fiyero, at some point. However, the film has changed certain aspects of the books, so the relationship could change in the upcoming Wicked sequel. One Million Moms actually sites this possibility in their campaign, saying, “Even if you have seen ‘Wicked: Part One,’ you can commit to not watching ‘Wicked: Part Two.'”
NEXT: ‘Wicked’ Review – A Bloated, Screechy Symphony Straight From Pink And Green Hell
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