The reason Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey’s “Passionate” Kiss Was Removed From Wicked: For Good
There are surprises for Wicked: For Good in this article. A scene was permanently removed by the Wicked producers from the sequel.
Screenwriter Dana Fox of Wicked: For Good disclosed that a passionate kiss sequence between Jonathan Bailey's Fiyero and Ariana Grande's Glinda was removed in order to improve viewers' perceptions of the characters.
In fact, the two actors' characters were supposed to get married until Fiyero's true love, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), came out of hiding. This was supposed to be a more intimate moment.
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"It was romantic and beautiful, but a little too passionate," in a November 21 interview, Dana informed Deadline. "Seeing that made it too hard to watch him make the choice he makes to be with Elphaba and made it too hard to make it OK that Elphaba ran off with him. It was too real that he and Glinda were actually feeling something together."
There isn't much discussion of Fiyero and Glinda's relationship in the movie, but at a speech to the people of Oz, Glinda revealed she was engaged to Fiyero without his knowledge. Dana said that it was terrible for Fiyero to flee with Elphaba because it implied that there were genuine affections between the two.
"It was like a feeling that he really did love her—which he does care about Glinda a lot, don’t get me wrong," Dana went on. "But he likes her in a different way."
Additionally, by preventing Glinda and Fiyero's relationship from appearing to be more serious, viewers were perhaps kept from placing blame on any one of the love triangle's characters.
"This scene was too romantic, so it was like, 'Oh, we can’t know that because then our brains will explode when he doesn’t choose her in the end,'" Dana clarified. "And then we’ll hate Elphaba, Glinda and Fiyero.”
In the end, she was pleased that it wasn't included in the movie. In her words, "Everything we cut, I felt we cut for exactly the right reasons."
