Icon is an overused honorific in Hollywood, but it’s hard to think of a better descriptor for Winnie Holzman. The New York-born writer has produced masterworks across decades, genres and mediums — from television to Broadway to the big screen. Her series My So-Called Life will go down as the perfect encapsulation of Gen X’s coming of age and one of the great dramas of TV history. She took on an altogether different coming-of-age story when she adapted the best-selling novel Wicked to the stage and, more recently, both of its film adaptations. Her only regret, she told me on this week’s Rushfield Lunch, is that the story of a country coming apart under the rule of a despot — as depicted in the emotional Wicked: For Good — is so applicable to our current political reality.
“You couldn’t ignore it,” she said of the parallels. “I felt devastated in a lot of ways that it was so relevant. I would give anything for it not to be so relevant, but here we are. Our country is at a crossroads, no question.”
Based on the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire — which itself expanded upon the Wonderful Wizard of Oz novel by L. Frank Baum first published in 1900 — Wicked: For Good isn’t just a stirring musical with showstopping performances from stars (and 2024 Oscar nominees) Cynthia Erivo, as Elphaba, and Ariana Grande, as Glinda. It’s also about standing up for the rights of the persecuted — even when some fellow citizens are more than happy to scapegoat their neighbor — and smashing the cult of personality.
Oz at the start of Wicked: For Good is “a country falling victim to this fascistic thinking,” Winnie told me. Citing the lyrics to “Defying Gravity,” the song Erivo performs at the conclusion of the first Wicked movie, she added, “To defy gravity could mean defying the status quo, or defying what the authoritarian is telling you, and to defy what people are saying you are capable of. So there are so many nonpolitical ways and many political ways to interpret even just that phrase. But these are timeless questions.”
During our great conversation, Winnie talked to me about the impact the movie has had on audiences over the last year (“humbling and gratifying”). She also said she was the person who first suggested Erivo and Grande for the roles that made them Oscar nominees: “There aren’t that many people that you can picture casting a spell or arriving somewhere in a bubble.”
