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The Wizard Behind Wicked: For Good with Director Jon M. Chu

Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club

Tue Nov 25 2025

Summary

Podcast Summary: Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club

Episode: "The Wizard Behind Wicked: For Good with Director Jon M. Chu"

Host: Danielle Robay (iHeartPodcasts & Hello Sunshine)
Guest: Jon M. Chu (Film Director)
Release Date: November 25, 2025

Episode Overview

This rich and lively episode welcomes acclaimed director Jon M. Chu, the creative mind behind Wicked: For Good (the film adaptation of the musical’s Act II), as well as Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights, and more. Host Danielle Robay guides a warm, insightful conversation exploring Chu’s storytelling philosophy, creative process, handling of artistic legacy, and the resonances between books, musicals, and films. The discussion delves into how Wicked remains timely, complexities of adaptation, representation, identity, and the emotional heart of storytelling on and off the page.

Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. The Enduring Power and Responsibility of Storytelling

Jon M. Chu reflects on the true purpose of stories:
- “I used to think that stories are escape and I think there's an element of that. But I actually think the job of a story is to take you out of your life but land you back at home.” (Jon M. Chu, 04:11)
He sees storytellers as carrying a deep responsibility:
- Chu discusses the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) not as just a villain, but a storyteller “gone too far… And then what point do you have a responsibility to the world that you're creating through your stories?” (05:44)

2. Fairy Tales, the American Dream, and Intergenerational Hope

Chu’s personal connection to the American Dream:
- As the son of immigrants, growing up in his family's Chinese restaurant in Silicon Valley, Jon credits “generosity by people and goodness of people” for fueling his dreams—proof the dream “does exist… fairy tales can exist. Maybe the way in which we tell these stories can shift.” (07:19)

3. Adapting Wicked: Navigating Layers of Legacy

On the Complications of Adaptation:
- The film is based on the musical, which is based on the novel (Wicked by Gregory Maguire), itself riffing on The Wizard of Oz, based on Baum’s book. Chu describes stepping into a “century of creative interpretation.” (11:06)
- “It is the hallmark of a timeless story that it is always timely.” (Jon M. Chu, 11:42)
- Each adaptation reflects cultural anxieties of its time—Baum’s novel at the turn of the century, Maguire’s post-9/11, Chu’s film made during COVID. (12:54)
The film’s relevance to today:
- “Home didn’t feel like home. It felt like a strange place all of a sudden… Those questions became very relevant to me.” (13:10)
- “The only reason to make this now is to speak to the times that we're in.” (14:52)

4. Artistic Choices: What to Keep, What to Change

Translating Internal Monologue into Cinema:
- Movie musicals’ unique power is to make the internal external through song, music, and movement. (16:15)
- “One note can communicate what a paragraph never could... The way someone leans on a microphone says a lot... So you get movement. And that's not just dance. That's posture.” (16:15)
Casting and Character Reinvention:
- On Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande—how their specific histories, identities, and artistry radically reframe the characters of Elphaba and Glinda.
- “The moment [Cynthia] sang was unlike an Elphaba I had ever seen before... That little thing is just like everything. So to me, that's so different than Idina. Like, it's just a different interpretation...” (Jon M. Chu, 33:24–36:09)

5. Deep Questions Raised by Wicked: For Good

Why fight for a home that may not want you?
- Chu relates Elphaba’s journey to his own experiences, and to universal immigrant dilemmas: “Wouldn't she wonder, like, what happens to a place that thinks you're the bad guy?... That is the question that's at the core of Elphaba.” (25:04)
Chu’s direction of emotional scenes:
- The song “No Place Like Home” holds personal resonance—he draws from his own family ties, sense of belonging, and disappointment in the “America that I believe in with all my heart… breaks my heart that we can't be everything that I thought we were.” (28:03)

6. Mediums and Personal Storytelling

Storytelling Beyond the Screen:
- Discusses his memoir Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen—navigating between visual storytelling (film) and internal, structural writing (books). (44:09)
- “Writing a book was... so different than anything I had ever done before. It made me realize that reading a book is a different mental state... it's an active experience happening.” (47:59)
Influence of Family:
- Charming anecdote: Jon’s mom prodded him to direct Step Up 2 when he was wavering, telling him, “Are you a storyteller or are you not? If you're a storyteller, you should be able to tell a story in any medium.” (46:13)

7. Craft, Identity, and Advice for Aspiring Storytellers

Finding your voice and medium:
- “If you are a storyteller, what is the medium in which your storytelling is best at? And also it can evolve over time.” (50:43)
- On recognizing his own story’s worth: “The thing that I have found the most power in my storytelling is that I have been telling myself a story my whole life, that one day I'm going to do this and that. And, oh, this is a tough moment. I feel like I'm on the bottom. But you know what? This is going to be a great chapter in my book.” (52:24)
On synesthesia and auras:
- Chu shares his quirky creative side—he sees people’s aura colors but isn’t sure what it means. “I just see colors when asked to see it… if you actually look and you got adjust your eyes and then you can kind of see it. So I don’t know what it means.” (54:28)

8. Rapid Fire ‘Bookmarked’ Questions (55:32–56:59)

Favorite books and influences:
- Elphaba’s bedside table: “The Great Gatsby.” (Jon M. Chu, 55:40)
- Most grateful book: “My Broken Language” by Quiara Alegría Hudes. (55:45)
- Favorite biography: “Steve Jobs” and Build by Tony Fadell. (55:53)
- Favorite fictional love story: “The Great Gatsby.” (56:17)
- Favorite musical staging: “Hamilton.” (56:24)
- Favorite page-to-screen adaptation: “Jurassic Park.” (56:33)
- Favorite fictional friendship: “Wicked.” (56:44)
- Book for aspiring filmmakers: Chu cheekily plugs his own memoir, Viewfinder. (56:51)
- Most-gifted book: “The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.” (57:06)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Wizard as a complicated villain:
“Maybe he's a storyteller that's just gone too far... at some point, we have to wake up and know that our stories affect the world that we live in.” (Jon M. Chu, 05:44)
On maintaining optimism and the possibility of dreams:
“If I can survive and I can flourish, then 100%, that I'm proof that the dream is still alive and that fairy tales can exist.” (Jon M. Chu, 07:19)
On adapting a timeless tale:
“It is the hallmark of a timeless story that it is always timely.” (Jon M. Chu, 11:42)
On crafting “No Place Like Home”:
“Why do I love this place that never loved me? … I think there's a difference between intention and completion. And we can't at this moment have a completion of the idea. It has to be cut off by the troubles of the present...” (Jon M. Chu, 27:04)
Advice from his mother:
“Are you a storyteller or are you not? If you're a storyteller, you should be able to tell a story in any medium… Show yourself that you can actually tell your story in this.” (Jon M. Chu, 46:13)
On movement between mediums:
“If you are a storyteller, what is the medium in which your storytelling is best at? And also it can evolve over time.” (Jon M. Chu, 50:43)
Favorite quote from L. Frank Baum used in the film:
“If we walk far enough, we shall sometime come to some place.” (Jon M. Chu, 36:59)

Timestamps for Key Segments

Opening & Introduction: [03:47–04:54]
Who is the Wizard? Artistic Responsibility: [05:14–07:17]
Belief in Fairy Tales, Personal Story & The American Dream: [07:17–08:44]
Complexities of Adapting “Wicked”: [11:06–14:43]
Making the Internal External — Music & Movement: [16:10–18:20]
Deleted Scene with Jonathan Bailey: [18:22–19:17]
Choice & Consequences in “Wicked: For Good”: [24:43–27:48]
Directorial Emotion: [28:03–30:44]
Adapting Iconic Characters: [32:55–36:49]
‘Bookmarked’ Rapid Fire Segment: [55:32–57:09]
Memoir & Advice: [44:09–52:24]
Closing Reflections: [57:10–59:44]

Conclusion

This episode offers a deep, personal, and often inspiring window into the mind of Jon M. Chu: a filmmaker shaped by family, heritage, and the ever-shifting power of story. Whether musing on America’s promises, explaining the mechanics behind screen musicals, or sharing his mother’s blunt wisdom, Chu embodies the spirit of a modern storyteller, keenly aware of both his influences and the responsibility of shaping myth for the next generation. His vision for Wicked: For Good is one of timely resonance and personal transformation—a story built, like all the best fairy tales, to speak to both the moment and the timeless heart.

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Transcript

Host 1 (Interviewer) (0:00)

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.

Host 2 (Danielle Robay) (0:04)

One thing I love about reading books.

Host 3 (Narrator/Promotions) (0:06)

Is that books take us to places.

Host 2 (Danielle Robay) (0:07)

That feel real, and on TikTok, that.

Host 3 (Narrator/Promotions) (0:10)

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Host 2 (Danielle Robay) (0:12)

It's where readers fall in love with.

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New worlds, discuss plot twists, and share the books that make them laugh, cry, or heal. On TikTok, stories become conversations and conversations.

Host 2 (Danielle Robay) (0:22)

Turn into community, all in a place that's welcoming and inclusive every day. TikTok's community isn't just celebrating stories, it's shaping them, driving new trends and inspiring readers everywhere.

Host 3 (Narrator/Promotions) (0:34)

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Host 2 (Danielle Robay) (1:16)

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Jon M. Chu (16:15)

You know, we have the best tool to make the internal exterior, which is song. So Winnie, years and years ago, made many choices about what to take from the book and into the stage show. I got to take that and say. And then Stephen Schwartz got to externalize those. In music, the power of a musical is some people think, oh, it's like a show and dance. Oh, I hate musicals. Because it's just performance. Actually, it's not. You get deeper and more intimate with a character because you don't just have a soliloquy for a character. You get melody, you get a note. And one note can communicate what a paragraph never could communicate. And you get movement, which means the way someone leans on a microphone says a lot about what mood they're in, who they are. The way they aggressively look at the characters says so much, and I don't have to say one word of it. So you get movement. And that's not just dance. That's movement. That's. That's. That's posture. And so you have that, and then you have song, and then you have lyric. And lyric can say the exact opposite, what they're feeling. When Glinda is singing in the microphone, it couldn't be happier. That is an I want song. But everything she's singing about is the opposite of what she wants. So now I get to watch her sing what she, quote, unquote, says what she wants. But you see in her eyes, it's empty. It's complicated, as she says. And I that power of a movie musical. And when done right, when you understand every. Every tool that you have, you. You become more intimate and closer to these characters. I think that's why when people watch this movie, they feel so moved, is because we have permission from the audience to use these tools. They've accepted these tools. And if we don't use them to get us to care about a character more than. What are we using them for? For. For song and dance. You can go on. On TikTok and get all the song and dance you want to. So it becomes only more important as we use that language to. And in the book, you have the words and you have imagination. And so we get to. Then through this other avenues get to those similar places, actually.

Jon M. Chu (25:04)

Yeah, it's something when I was doing in the Heights and there was this moment, Abuela Claudia in that movie. She's someone who came from another country and came to this country and raised her family, her neighborhood there and cared about them. But at a certain point it wasn't working for her. So she's making this decision to go back and I always thought that was so interesting. I always thought that was so complicated like, oh, you don't hear stories about people wanting to leave the United States. This Abuela Cloudy idea of going home after her whole journey here was. I don't know. It was so. I don't know, different than I've ever heard. And so when we were talking about Elphaba and what she would go through, and this is not necessarily in the stage show, but what was happening in Movie two was, wouldn't she wonder why she would even want to stay? Wouldn't she wonder, like, what happens to this, to a place that thinks you're the bad guy? And that question is so relevant when you actually bring it up, because that's an actual debate that's happening every day. That is the question that's at the core of Elphaba. Because eventually, whether she thinks, like, she's not her responsibility to fix this place and she leaves or something else, like, she does ultimately leave. And to use one of the most iconic terms, there's no place like home to make that point. Oh, that's, like, heartbreaking just in saying it out loud. And Stephen Schwartz is brilliant. He knew this moment, it was either gonna be a scene or a song to express this. And Stephen Schwartz, it's a song, and I know how it's gonna play out. And at first it was like, it's gonna be an anthem. And like, okay. But the question is very deep. And so he added this opening that was, why do I love this place that never loved me? Oh, that was so heartbreaking in itself. And then she goes on and she fights for it. She's like, no, no, no, but this is you. We have to. The other animals are like, I'm. We're. We're tired. We can't fight anymore. And she's like, no, we have to. And so it becomes this calling card. But she doesn't finish the last note and on purpose.

Jon M. Chu (28:03)

We're shooting no place like home. I mean, it's very personal question for me in terms of what is home? Because I grew up in a very close knit family in a Chinese restaurant that has very specific ideas about what America is and what our family should be and how close we should be. And I'm the one who left. They all live in the area still. I left. I came to LA to pursue this dream and I always struggle with them, so close with my family about what I'm creating, away from them. And now that I have five kids, like, my whole life is changing. Oh, my home is here. Those are my. Am I supposed to say relatives? No, that's my family too. Like, it's very confusing as an adult now. You're supposed to be like, where's the priority? But like, my wife is my priority. My kids are my priority. When you're that close with your family and they've survived for you and they've lived so much and sacrificed so much for you, it is really hard to even, like, maybe it's not a list. You know, my mom taught us, oh, you got to be number one, you got to do this and that. But maybe it's not. Maybe, maybe the whole thing is like, it's not a list. But I struggle with that. So. So when she's singing it, I. And I look at America and I think about this place I believe in with all my heart. And I see how bad we can be too. Yeah, it breaks my heart that we can't be everything that I thought we were. And so as she's singing it, I'm very, I'm very invested in that. It's not. I don't want her to blame anything and I don't want. I just want her to be like searching. And so that's sort of what I'm doing as I'm watching her perform. Of course I need to be very present to capture what she's doing. And I need to be aware that if I need to move the camera to get to juice something that she's doing, I have to be plugged in right where she is. So I'm usually really close to the camera. I'm usually like on the ground somewhere and I'm trying to feel everything that she's giving so that I can. Because the movie usually starts to speak back to you. She's doing usually something different on the day we have. She did all her singing live, both of them. So. So we have a pianist right off camera, and she has an earwig in her. In her ear so she can hear the piano. She can go off tempo if she wants, or she can go on tempo. The pianist is supposed to watch, follow her. And so I'm. I am also following her in a way. And as she's doing it, things are changing and I'm finding things so I can be like, oh, you hit this moment. Let me get a close up right here. So I can be. Hey, let me push the camera in just slightly here. Or if you walk into this light, right when you sing that, that lyric, you're giving. You're giving this sort of surrender. But if you walk into the light on that surrender, I think we're gonna. It's gonna, it's gonna enhance that idea. So it's just being present.

Jon M. Chu (33:24)

Yeah. And I think that we auditioned a lot of people. It was a reason why it wasn't like, let's just go and make an offer to this person, that person. We didn't know the answer. I could not determine what is going to make the difference. Like, who's going to be. Who's going to understand this at a level of Adina or Kristen. Like, that wasn't a prescriptive thing I could figure out. It was like, we'll know it when we see it. And we didn't necessarily want stars. We knew Wicked was big enough, you could discover people. So let's go searching. And then you discover the technical aspect of the singing is really hard. So that you actually probably do need professionals who have, like, you know, been through the. Through the thing to pull it off. And then you're like, all right, then they have to be an actor. Like, you can't just sing. That is not good enough. Like, you have to connect the dots and you have to be able to do it, communicate it on screen, which is very different than on stage. We went through everybody. I mean, the reality is we wouldn't have made this movie if they didn't show up at our doorstep. And it was the very last doorstep. But Cynthia Rivo arrived and you're like, does she even want to do this? Does it have to be this? Because, you know, it could take over your life. It has taken over her life now. But the moment she sang was unlike an Alphabet I had ever seen before. Those words spoke to me in ways I'd never. And I've listened to it. Over and over and over and over again. Wizard and I. I saw myself as a kid dreaming about being a filmmaker in my dorm room when she's saying, did that really just happen? And I. Then when she gets onto the. At that point, it wasn't a cliff yet, but I could feel like she, oh, she needs to be on a cliff here. When she sings that last note of the wizard and I and, and she stops and the birds fly over and there's a, there's a rainbow in the distance and that yearning. And yet when she turns back to walk away, you think, oh, she's not gonna, she's not ready for that yet. That she turns back and looks. One little look. And that's so typical Cynthia Rio. She looks back and you can tell that she's saying, well, one day I'm going to. That little thing is just like everything. So to me, that's so different than Adina. Like, I didn't. That's not competing with Adina. That's not anything. It's just a different interpretation of Elphaba. And yet we're using the bones of what Elphaba? What, what, what? This character that, that Adina dug deep into. So there's. We are, we are on the shoulders of giants and, and Kristen especially, like, she created these jokes and these things in, in workshops and however they create and now they're, they are Bible and so we try to stick to them. But at the same time, the Glinda that we were gonna choose had to be in a different way. When I saw Ariana and she came in, she was. The best way I can explain it is she was the real life Glinda. Like, as, as if I was reading, I was meeting the Glinda that the show was based off of because she wasn't doing an impression of Kristin Genoweth, she was just doing the spirit of it. And then I could give her improv about other things and I would. I was watching Glinda trip over a chair or reading and that was when I knew, okay, I like actors who can play, who can be president and live, because that's where we're going to play and we're going to make this unique to us. So anyway, I didn't know it would be this successful though, to be honest. They'd be Academy Award nominated actors and it's deserved in all the ways. But I don't think any of us could have predicted that.