69. The Man Behind the Second Curtain (with Gregory Maguire)

Summary

Sentimental Men Podcast Episode 69: The Man Behind the Second Curtain (with Gloria Estefan)
Broadway Podcast Network
Release Date: March 24, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 69 of Sentimental Men, hosts Quincy Brown and Kevin Bianchi engage in a heartfelt and insightful conversation with the legendary Gloria Estefan. The episode delves deep into Gloria's profound connection with the musical Wicked, her experiences behind the scenes of its film adaptation, and her latest literary work, "Elfie: A Wicked Childhood."

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Welcome and Guest Introduction (02:05 - 03:16)

Quincy Brown and Kevin Bianchi warmly welcome Gloria Estefan to the podcast, setting the stage for an engaging discussion about her favorite women in musical theatre.

Gloria Estefan (02:18):
"I am a sentimental man. And in various profiles of me over the last 25 years, there have been a number of people who have used headlines for stories called things like Mr. Wicked and the man behind the Curtain."

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Gloria's Connection with Wicked (03:16 - 07:12)

Gloria shares her deep appreciation for Wicked, emphasizing her emotional investment in the characters and the story's themes.

Gloria Estefan (03:55):
"I hold the characters in Wicked in any iteration in which they find themselves. Very close to my heart indeed, because they are all flitches and specks of my own character, both good and bad."

She recounts her time in London during the filming of the Universal Studios Wicked Part 1, where she observed the intense dedication of the actresses, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana.

Gloria Estefan (04:37):
"I felt horrible. I felt terrible. I wanted to crash through the kind of molded plastic paper, whatever it is, walls that constructed the ostensible room set and grab the two women by their elbows and hustle them up the stairs and out of that dangerous, fiendish place."
[04:37]

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Behind the Scenes of Wicked Filming (07:12 - 11:44)

Gloria provides an intimate look at the emotional and technical aspects of filming the pivotal ballroom scene, highlighting the actresses' commitment and the profound impact it had on her.

Gloria Estefan (08:05):
"How can you funnel curiosity, openness, guardedness, attention, keenness of perception all in your face at the same time? How can you do that?"
[08:05]

She discusses her conversation with Jonathan Bailey, the actor portraying the Wizard, and the immense skill required to portray complex emotions on screen.

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First Viewing of Wicked and Emotional Reactions (11:44 - 18:05)

Gloria recounts her first experience watching the Wicked movie in San Francisco, describing it as overwhelmingly emotional and transformative.

Gloria Estefan (12:57):
"I think I grabbed my lawyer's hand as the credit started to roll. And I think I held onto it for 2 hours and 40 minutes."
[12:57]

She shares her initial skepticism and eventual awe, emphasizing the movie's ability to convey deep emotional truths.

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Transition from Novel to Broadway Musical (18:05 - 31:38)

The discussion shifts to the challenges and triumphs of adapting Gregory Maguire's novel into a Broadway musical. Gloria explains the business decisions behind choosing a musical adaptation over a direct film version.

Gloria Estefan (25:36):
"The novel had hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list 30 years after it was published. It had been amazing, but not at number one."
[25:36]

She details her collaboration with Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, highlighting the importance of maintaining the story's intellectual depth through musical expression.

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Business Decisions and Long-Term Vision (31:03 - 36:24)

Gloria discusses the strategic choice to develop Wicked into a Broadway musical, recognizing its potential for longevity and cultural impact over a temporary film project.

Gloria Estefan (31:18):
"The long-term benefit certainly outweighed what would have been paid for me as a one-time payout."
[31:18]

She reflects on the financial and artistic considerations that motivated the adaptation, ultimately contributing to Wicked's enduring success.

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Gloria's New Book: "Elfie: A Wicked Childhood" (36:24 - 42:26)

Gloria introduces her latest work, "Elfie: A Wicked Childhood," exploring the untold stories and deeper layers of Elphaba's character. She explains the nuances of editing her previous novel and the creative process behind expanding Elphaba's narrative.

Gloria Estefan (36:24):
"Elfie comes now. It isn't piggybacking on, you know, a 100 million dollar advertising budget for the movie. That doesn't hurt."
[36:44]

She discusses the importance of exploring Elphaba's formative years to provide a more comprehensive understanding of her motivations and character development.

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Reflections on Elphaba's Character (42:26 - 43:58)

Gloria offers a personal reflection on Elphaba, drawing parallels between the character's evolution and her own self-discovery and growth.

Gloria Estefan (43:24):
"Every time I look at Elphaba, I feel she's evolving too. And so that's why I could go back and see her."
[43:24]

She highlights the enduring relevance of Elphaba as a symbol of agency and moral complexity, underscoring the character's impact on both literature and musical theatre.

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Closing Remarks (42:42 - 47:01)

As the conversation winds down, Gloria expresses her gratitude for the engaging discussion, reflecting on the mutual respect and shared passion for Wicked and its characters.

Gloria Estefan (46:07):
"This was really incredible, much fun. I'm really grateful and I'm sorry for having gone, but you can probably scale this down."
[46:07]

The hosts thank Gloria for her time, and the episode concludes with acknowledgments to the Broadway Podcast Network team and information on how listeners can connect with Sentimental Men.

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Notable Quotes

• Gloria Estefan on Emotional Impact:
  "The only thing I'm sure of is I'm still alive. I did not die in the last 2 hours and 40 minutes. I really didn't know what I thought about it. It was just too overwhelming."
  [11:44]

• Gloria on Adaptation:
  "You do what you need to do. And, and that."
  [17:58]

• Gloria on Elphaba's Agency:
  "She has agency. And therefore anybody who has agency, you have to keep tracking, you know, whether it's yourself or somebody else."
  [43:58]

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Conclusion

Episode 69 of Sentimental Men offers a compelling exploration of Gloria Estefan's intimate connection with Wicked, providing listeners with unique insights into the creative and emotional processes behind one of Broadway's most beloved musicals. Through Gloria's heartfelt anecdotes and thoughtful reflections, the podcast captures the essence of what makes Wicked a timeless masterpiece in musical theatre.

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• Email: [e-mail]

Thank you for listening!

Transcript

[Kristin Chenoweth]

Hi, y'all. This is Kristin Chenoweth.

[Gloria Estefan]

Hi, I'm Gloria Stefan. This is Sara Bareilles. Hi, I'm Patti LuPone.

[Lin-Manuel Miranda]

This is Lin Manuel Miranda. You're listening to the Broadway Podcast Network.

[Wayne Brady]

Hey, Broadway fans, this is Wayne Brady. Maybe you've seen me on Whose Line is it Anyway? Making stuff up. Maybe you've seen me giving away money and making things up on let's Make a Deal, but have you seen me on stage? If you haven't, now's your chance. Hop on the Broadway Cruise. What is the Broadway Cruise, you ask? I'm glad you asked. It's where some of your favorite performers from stage are. Are now on a cruise ship. That's right. The Great White way becomes the Great Wet way. I just thought of that. We're going to be on a boat. Panels, discussions, foods. It's a cruise ship. You're going to get to sing, dance, mingle with other Broadway lovers. Sing show tunes at the top of your voice till 2 o'clock in the morning. No one's going to stop you. We're at sea. And the best part is we're all on a boat. We get to hang out from March 31st to April 4th. The Broadway Cruise. You're going to love it.

[Gloria Estefan]

Sailing from Miami to Cozumel, Mexico.

[Quincy]

Visit the broadway cruise.com.

[Gloria Estefan]

That'S the broadwaycruise.com this episode is brought.

[Kristin Chenoweth]

To you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today.

[Gloria Estefan]

I wasn't hard pressed. I knew Stephen Schwartz's work and after all, you know, I'm a gay man. I thought it.

[Kevin]

I'm Quincy. And I'm Kevin and this is Sentimental Men.

[Gloria Estefan]

We're here to talk and maybe scream.

[Quincy]

About our favorite women in musical theater.

[Kevin]

Today we are joined by the man, the myth, the legend, Gregory Maguire. Thank you so much for joining us on Sentimental Men today.

[Gloria Estefan]

Well, you're very welcome. You were going to say the man, the myth, the legend, the mistake. But here I am anyway, mistaken booking or not. And I'm happy to meet you both and happy to be on Sentimental Man.

[Quincy]

Yes, Gregory, I feel like if this Sentimental Men podcast you are, I feel like the original Sentimental Men. This is all thanks to you, sir.

[Gloria Estefan]

Well, you know, I am a sentimental man. And in various profiles of me over the last 25 years, there have been a number of people who have used headlines for stories called things like Mr. Wicked and the man behind the Curtain. And indeed, I do hold the characters in Wicked in any iteration in which they find themselves. Very close to my heart indeed, because they are all flitches and. And. And specks of my own character, both good and bad. As. As. As much bad as. As good, I'm. I'm happy to say. But. But a sentimental man really can characterize me in. In any endeavor in which I do. I think so. So here you are. Tell me how long you've been going on.

[Kevin]

We started in 2020, and I don't think either of us could have foreseen this podcast going on for as long as it has. But cool things keep happening. And then the movie happened and it's all perfect.

[Gloria Estefan]

History keeps happening and it gets greener and greener, doesn't it?

[Kevin]

I just had a random thought. I'm jumping ahead. You should do a stint as the wizard in Wicked on Broadway.

[Gloria Estefan]

You know what, Quincy? You're absolutely right. And I used to sing, you know, professionally.

[Kevin]

Why has this not happened?

[Gloria Estefan]

This has not happened because I'm not a member of ASCAP or whatever it is.

[Kevin]

Equity.

[Gloria Estefan]

Equity. And also because I don't have any real performing experiences, even though I used to sing coffee houses and, you know, I styled myself as somewhere between Paul Simon and Carly Simon.

[Quincy]

It sounds like the perfect wizard to me.

[Gloria Estefan]

But I did sing a lot. And I have been in the public eye for a long time, especially in college classrooms and grade school classrooms and conferences. So I do know how to command a stage when I walk onto it. I have a good voice. I have a strong voice. I can sing. But I'm not the wizard. I'm the man really behind the curtain. Behind the second curtain.

[Kevin]

I'll hold out hope. I think that can happen.

[Gloria Estefan]

I have to tell you, I'm jumping ahead. Now, I know you have your itinerary to follow, but I'm going to jump ahead. You go for it. I am hard. I'm hard pressed to follow rules because we just have this image of the man behind the curtain. And when I was in London 18 months ago during the filming of the Universal Studios Wicked Part 1, the Week that I was there was the week that they were filming the Asdas ballroom scene, arguably the most important scene in the movie and possibly the most moving scene in the movie, too. And I was behind the curtain. I was sitting in a Corner of the sound stage of the studio, looking at a monitor the way I'm looking at a monitor looking at you today. Same monitor that John M. Chu was seeing on his machinery when he was in. In the actual room opposite the actresses and the dancers. And I saw. I got a three and a half day tour of what it means to be a film actor because I saw those two women go through their paces over and over and over again, trying different things, doing it so that a different camera could get a reaction shot. And as I live and breathe, I am a. I will testify at the Supreme Court that there was no glycerin drop involved in Cynthia Erivo's eye or in Ariana's. Nobody rushed up to prep or prime the pump. Those women were so deeply engaged in what was happening in that scene that I felt horrible. I felt terrible. I wanted to crash through the kind of molded plastic paper, whatever it is, walls that constructed the ostensible room set and grab the two women by their elbows and hustle them up the stairs and out of that dangerous, fiendish place. And so ashamed of having brought them to a week in which they would have to suffer. So in this story, I could. I could hardly bear it. So there I am, both the man behind the curtain and the sentimental man, because my heart was breaking watching them do that over and over again. Now I've. Now I've jumped all over.

[Kevin]

Well, no, it's really interesting to hear that because we talked to both Ariana and Cynthia and they both mentioned filming that scene and how difficult and emotional it was for them. And it felt like there was such mystique prior to seeing the movie. I was like, God, everyone is talking about this scene as if it was like the most intense thing ever. And then you see it and you.

[Gloria Estefan]

Understand why and to see it over and over again. And I also had a great chat with Jonathan Bailey afterwards. I did not meet Cynthia until after the scene was done because once I saw what she was doing, I thought it isn't fair to interrupt her. I had met Ari, but I thought it isn't fair to interrupt her in her work mode. She is really focusing and I will wait till this is done before I am presented. But I was. But I did get to the talk. Sit down on a. On a couch in the Ostos Ballroom with Jonathan Bailey. Who would want to do that?

[Quincy]

Wow, I've had that dream.

[Gloria Estefan]

And he is so affable and so sweet and all those three people are just exactly what they seem to be in the movies at Least they were to me. But we talked for about a half an hour and I asked him some questions because they. They took a lot more reaction shots of Jonathan Bailey as Fiero than they were able to use in the already very long film. But some of them were absolutely astoundingly complex. And I thought, how. How can you funnel curiosity, openness, guardedness, attention, keenness of perception all in your face at the same time? How can you do that? That alone, no words, no movement, just his expression was so brilliant. And I asked him, how did you do it? He said, well, it's called acting. And I said, well, it's more than that. You had. You must have had a strategy, because I was watching you and you were thinking about something. You were. You were leaning into something that you had conceived, had. What was it? And he told me, now, do you have any questions for me?

[Kevin]

What was it?

[Quincy]

Yeah, yeah, tell us.

[Gloria Estefan]

No, I can't. I can't. He didn't say. He didn't say, this is Republic. Well, and he said it. He kind of leaned in. He said, this. This is. This is how I did it. This is what I. This is what I did. And I said, wow. But he didn't say, you can go.

[Quincy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

[Gloria Estefan]

But the fact is that my. My real point is the amount of intelligence and skill and talent that are put into that scene, which I think is only about four minutes out of the movie. But it took three and a half days to film the part that I saw. And, oh, my God, I. I almost needed a walker to get out of soundstage. I was so hobbled by. By grief and by. By being moved, by being sentimental.

[Lin-Manuel Miranda]

Yeah.

[Gloria Estefan]

Wow.

[Quincy]

We've said a couple of times how as. As fans of the show, this movie felt like it was in such safe hands, as people who hold the show very, very close to our. Our hearts. And I would imagine, at least I hope that as the man who built all of this, it felt like it was in safe hands to you as well.

[Gloria Estefan]

Well, I'll tell you, yes. Once it was done, it did. While. While it was happening. I mean, I had. I had. I didn't know much about Cynthia. I knew how impressed with her everybody was, but I had never seen her live, and I had only seen clips of her singing a couple of times. I wasn't sure how her. Her. Her voice has some Ella Fitzgerald in it. It has some. Some smoothness, some veloute in it, and I wasn't sure how that would read as elfable singing voice. And I. But I knew she was consummate professional and highly regarded by everybody you ever met or heard of her. So I was certainly willing to take a chance the way I was with Adina Menzel, because I had no. I hadn't known her or Kristen for matter, 25 years ago. And Ari I knew, you know, a little bit more of. But I wasn't sure how her acting chops would be. I wasn't sure if she would be coming in as a glam, you know, team star diva.

[Quincy]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gloria Estefan]

And. And so I was cautiously optimistic. Now, I'll tell you where did you either you happen to be at the. There was a. A New York preview of the film at the end of October for Wicked theater community. It's the first time I saw the film. I hadn't read the script, hadn't asked to read the script. It had not been offered me either. And I did go to the, to the. I did go to London and I did. It was. Walked through an upstairs chamber where a lot of the art design was posted to show people, you know, know what. So I knew kind of what shiz might look like. I knew a little bit like, of what the Munchkin land, at least the drawings of what it was going to look like. It was all fabulous. Didn't necessarily conform with what I had imagined. But that didn't matter. That's not the point. So I went to the opening. In the preview in late October, my husband did not join me. We live in. We live in Massachusetts. I said, do you want to come and see? You know, they're gonna invitation for two.

[Kevin]

To seeing the Wicked movie.

[Gloria Estefan]

And he did. He said, well, aren't you dragging me to LA in three weeks? I said, well, yes, I am. He said, well, I'll see you then. And I said, okay. All right. But you know, he's. That, that's him. I've been married to him for over 20 years. I know. And so I said, well, I'm gonna go and I'll ask somebody in New York. I'll ask a friend to join me because I don't want to go alone. So I asked a good friend who's actually also one of my lawyers. I said, if you're going to. If you can make it to New York, why don't you come with me? So we went and this is, this is true. We sat down and I was so terrified that it would be cheesy or, or slavish or, or the tunnel register wouldn't. Wouldn't seem appropriate to me that I. The credits started to run. I mean, the logo, the Universal logo in sepia and gray. And I thought the audience, the Broadway audience clapped for everything the way they would. Weren't live. It was really funny. After every musical member. That was terrific. But I. I think I grabbed my lawyer's hand as the credit start to roll. And I think I held onto it for 2 hours and 40 minutes. And when we came out, he said, well, my hand is pretty sweaty. Well, that was. That was amazing. It's a masterpiece, don't you think? And I said, I don't know. The only thing I'm sure of is I'm still alive. You know, I did not die in the last 2 hours and 40 minutes. I really didn't know what I thought about it. It was just too overwhelming. It was almost like being in. Well, if I. If I call it a train crash, it sounds like a disaster. I don't mean a train crash. I mean like in fireworks or something. It would work. Yeah, inside a helium balloon or something. I mean, it just was. It was so overwhelming that I could hardly take it all in. It wasn't until I saw it the second time in Los Angeles with my husband and one of our kids in tow, that I was able to relax. I knew I could live through it. I'd lived through it. I'd lived through it. I was still there. And the second time, I wouldn't say I bawled my eyes out, but I. I had a lot of emotional reaction to it the second time.

[Kevin]

Let's rewind.

[Lin-Manuel Miranda]

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[Kevin]

Because I imagine you had a similar experience seeing the stage production for the first time.

[Gloria Estefan]

I had a little bit more awareness of what was going to happen in the stage play. I had gone to something I always called an oratorio performance of the. Of one of the first drafts where there were 18 people standing on bleachers. Kristen Adena, somebody other than Joel Gray playing the wizard. I don't think it was Robert Morse, but I remember who it was. And there was a kind. There was a rehearsal pianist and there was a narrator, you know, who said, scene Oz, you know, and begin. And I don't know if you've ever been to one of those. You probably have.

[Kevin]

I think I've Heard the audios of these workshops.

[Gloria Estefan]

Yeah, it's when the, when people are on stage, they're standing, and if they leave the stage, if they go off stage, they sit down and you can, you can think. So if there's only one or two people left standing, you know, they're on stage alone, even though they're surrounded by a mob of people in chairs, you get that convention about how that works within about 10 seconds. I had never come across that before, for it was very moving. They sang all the songs, they went through all the plot. I had not read the plot. I had, I had advised Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman about the pronunciation of everybody's name, because at first they were saying El Faba, like from Duluth. No, you know, she's not. It's Elphaba.

[Kevin]

So you didn't know going in that the plot was going to differ so drastically from the novel?

[Gloria Estefan]

No, I knew it would differ so much, and I'd given them permission to do what they needed to do to make it a viable play.

[Kevin]

Gotcha.

[Gloria Estefan]

You. You do what you need to do. And, and that.

[Kevin]

So you didn't have any feelings about it being different?

[Gloria Estefan]

Well, no, that's, that's not true of Quincy. I had lots of feelings about it, but I had given them permission. And I'm a man of my word.

[Quincy]

So interesting.

[Gloria Estefan]

You know, I, I, I did not quibble, I didn't cavil, I didn't carp, I didn't complain, I didn't any other word that begins with a C sound about what they had done. But when they got to the last three minutes of the play where Elphaba pops up out of a trap door. Yeah, I did take a gas bin. I can imagine who was sitting next to me, gripped my hand up my forearm so hard that that skin was broken and blood was shed. And I had. And I felt initially, I'm on it. I'm very honest, even if sentimental. I felt initially that there'd been a kind of betrayal because the song before that for good, especially the bridge when Elphaba sings, and just to clear the air, ask forgiveness. I started to cry at that because I had never seen a moment in musical theater in which even the concept of forgiveness was even mentioned as an important transactional moment between people and among people. I'm sure there are places, but for me, it was very rare. And for me, it was one of the central motifs of the second half of my novel. And I thought that was brilliant. And then to have Elphaba live, I felt it was Kind of. At the time, I felt it was kind of a bait and switch and I thought it was kind of a cheat. And at the last minute, it sort of Disneyfied the story, which was supposed to be, which was in my novel, a tragedy. What is a tragedy? A tragedy is when somebody with great promises cut down in their prime and cannot, Cannot continue the work for which they have labored their whole lives to be ready to do so. I wasn't really happy, but of course I smiled and said, thank you. It's wonderful. Thank you. I did write a letter to the producers and to Stephen and Winnie when I got back to Boston. I don't think the letter was ever delivered to Stephen. And when I went back to. When I went back in a couple years later in California, I had no idea about. I knew how Kristen could sing and I knew how Adina could sing by then, but I had no idea about costume, setting or bells and whistles that were gonna. Yeah, especially, you know, the Cherry Pick Flight or the Dragon. I mean, none of it, I. I knew about everything was right was astounding. And the first week in San Francisco, I saw the play five times because I wasn't sure it was ever going to get to New York. And I just wanted to be able to remember it for the rest of my life. Yeah. And at the time, the first time, there are two great moments of the first time it ever played in front of a paying audience. Two great moments for me. One is that after Glinda comes down in her bubble and the first scene happens and it's. It's a mix of being comic and serious, I thought, well, this is it. This is going to be an interesting mood to hold for a whole evening. Comic and serious. Are they going to be able to do that? Is it going to trespass into parody? I hope it doesn't. Etc. But then the doors in the backstage open and Dina Menzel comes out in her green skin paint. And that first night, the. The reception by the San Francisco audience, I. I swear, because this was before she was Elphaba and before she was Elsa and, you know, Broadway aficionados knew her as Maureen and Rent, but she wasn't as well known as she became when she came onto the stage. Of course, it's. It's just practice to welcome the. The lead actress, particularly all the leads of the lead actress, particularly when she went to the stage, she was greeted with such a roar of approval that I have to say I felt it was as much for the Wicked Witch of the west that she was back as it was for Idina Menzel as the star. She started singing. It was for Dina all, all the rest of the night. But the first, before she begun the first notes of the wizard and I, she was being greeted because people in San Francisco knew my book, San Francisco's a Gay Town. It had been out for eight years and had sold more than half a million copies. It was, you know, a present in San Francisco. And they were glad to see her and they welcomed her back and they were on her side before she uttered a note to say so. That was one. That was one response. Second response. The first night was on the other end of the evening when she pops out of the trapdoor. And the first time she does that in front of a public audience. There were booze, really, there were. There, you know, I'm not saying the whole room booed, but there were more than one. There was an affable. I mean, not affable. There was a perceptible reaction not unlike the one I had had two years earlier in the. In the oratorial thing through. And so I thought, now are they gonna. Are people listening to that? I kept coming back, though. By the end of the first week, the booze had died down and they weren't happening anymore. And I had changed my mind too. I had decided that even though I still think of the story as a tragedy, in fact, all the pertinent reasons we consider something a tragedy, which is failure, early demise, unfulfillment of potential, they are all present in Wicked, the musical. On stage, they just take a different guise. When Elphaba and Glinda say goodbye to each other, that's the central emotional relationship for both of those people. And the fact that Elphaba is exiled rather than dead doesn't change how separate she is from everybody in her life before that moment, except for Fiero. And. And we come out of the theater with a lump in our throat. And we come out of our theater, I think, with the same sorts of emotional reactions that we have as people who close the 406 page book. Life is Short. Cherishing whom we will is essential. And what we choose to do with our time matters. All those three messages come through in the play and they were messages that I planted there in the book. So I decided it was a transliteration and a translation and not an abomination. And we arrived at the same landing zone in both book and in the show. And I'm sure the same will be true in the movie Part two.

[Quincy]

Wow.

[Kevin]

Talk to us about The Broadway. So San Francisco happens and then you get word that you're moving to Broadway. What was that experience like? Because Wicked didn't open to rave recently. Reviews. I think it's open to mixed reviews.

[Gloria Estefan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

But then seeing it go on through the Tony Awards and become the hit that it is. When do you think you kind of settled in and clicked that this show was gonna be around for a while?

[Quincy]

Because that point was also a second life for your novel as well, right?

[Gloria Estefan]

Oh, absolutely. Well, you know, and now it's had a third life with the film. The novel is. I'll go back to your question, Quincy. The novel in December had hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list 30 years after it was published. It had been amazing, but not at number one. So when I took, I took my family and great many friends to see the show the night before its formal Broadway opening with the red carpet, I filled up half the theater, you know, orchestra seats with about 120 cousins and siblings and stuff. And when it was over, my. One of my younger brothers who was sitting in front of me turned around and he said, I only have one word for you. And I said, what? And he said retired. And, and you know, it was quite clear that even that first night on Broadway that it didn't, it wasn't going to matter. I didn't, I didn't anticipate it would go on to be the fourth longest running play in Broadway history, but I did think, this is. This, this is going to survive. Whatever slings and arrows are sent its way, this is going to survive it. And how long it survives it, how hobbled it is by critics, disapproval because it takes a, an American sacred cow and decides it's fair game to make adjustments to the understanding about it. Well, we're going to survive this. Because the audience reaction was so patently rapturous. And that wasn't just because it was just about to open. It was because it was good enough to be rapturous about it.

[Kevin]

Right. What can you tell us about the non musical movies that were supposed to happen before this musical adaptation?

[Quincy]

And can I add to that question is then what about a musical adaptation felt good to you? Like felt right to you as the, as it took, took shape?

[Gloria Estefan]

Yeah. When Stephen, you know, first, the first. The book was published in 1995. 1995. By late 1995, I had multiple movie offers and my agent had to get a Hollywood contact and, and we were talking to four or five different people and fielding buffers. It was not as you, as you know, it was not thought of as a musical film at the beginning. And the first drafts that I saw in the first couple of years, 96, 97 were not to my personal liking. They were skewing the story more juvenile. There was some degree of pratfall and a bit scad. Too much scatology for my personal liking. And. But I had three adopted children, you know, and I was thinking, well I, you know, if I can earn anything out of this project and pay off my mortgage, then it will all be worth it. Even if they make a film that I don't really admire. That's the business I'm lucky in the running. When Stephen Schwartz discovered that nobody at Universal really knew what to do with this script and mind this was about a year and a half before the arrival of Harry Potter and before the arrival of Peter Jackson's the Lord of the Rings, you know, big films. So nobody really knew there was big money to be had in, in fantasy cinema or as big money as was proven in the next few years. So Universal was a little skittish about putting a literal hundred million dollars in a movie that mostly featured women and men. And Stephen Schwartz heard that Universal was on the fence about investing and moving forward and he went to Mark Platt. This part is sort of fairly well known and said the reason you can't get a good script just because ever since 1939 everybody knows people at us sing. And so I would like to turn it into a play first and then you can film it when you're ready. And Mark said fine, but you have to talk to Gregory because he holds all the rights, which was true. And the purchase price of a novel to be made into a movie is higher than the purchase price of a novel to be turned into a play. I think the play play advance was 4% of what paid if it had been made directly into a movie. You know, and money's important when you're a freelance artist. Yeah, it's actually important all the time.

[Kevin]

Is it fair to say the long game business wise of adapting into a Broadway musical that hits outweighs adapting it into a movie?

[Gloria Estefan]

It depends on whether on if it.

[Quincy]

Runs 22 years or not. Yeah.

[Gloria Estefan]

Short term, if it, if it closed in six months, it would have been a great experience. I would have been happy for it. But as it began to be part of popular culture then, yes, the long term benefit certainly outweighed and continues to outweigh what would have been paid for me as a one time payout.

[Quincy]

You got that 96 back I, well.

[Gloria Estefan]

I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna answer that question without my lawyer, but I, I did, I, I, well, for one thing, you know, you see the book on the bestseller list. A book hits the bestseller list and that can be seven figures, you know, in one month, if you're lucky. So it's. Of course, bestsellers have changed a lot the last 30 years. You can get on the bestseller list selling a lot fewer books than you used to be able to because people are not buying as many books all across the board. So Stephen Schwartz had to talk me into walking away from the 96% of income that I would have used to buy this house, you know, from the bank or. And he did so by telling me things about the story that he thought made it pertinent to be developed as a musical. One of them was, he said, you have written a kind of 19th century pre Freudian novel where there are no jargony terms from the therapist's office to explain why somebody is the way that they are. There's no, there's no Electra complex. There's no, you know, daddy issues. These are 19th century people struggling with high moral questions the way they do in Dickens and the way they do in George Eliot and the way they do in Dostoevsky, etc. And that means that singing can present to your audience the moral conundrums in a very moving and in the face kind of way that a film without music would have a very hard time doing. It's not that it can't be done, but, but with all the bells and whistles around your story, it'll be hard to be that convincing. So I, you know, that was pretty, that was pretty persuasive. And, you know, I wasn't hard pressed. I knew Stephen Schwartz's work and after all, you know, I'm a gay man. I thought it kind of Scottish Presbyterian Dementor. Is that so, Steven? I love Pippin. So he got a little nervous. We were going, we were walking in, in some fields around my husband's, my now husband's family farm in central Connecticut. And he said, I'm so convinced that you, I'm going to be persuasive to you that I will admit that I've already written the first song. Now he says that wasn't true, but that's how I remember it. So that's how I'm telling it. Maybe he just said, I've already conceived of the first song. But he said the first song is going to be no one Mourns the wicked. You know, the witch is just going to have died. Glinda is going to be up in a tower at the edge of the stage. He said, not the bubble, but a tower. And she's going to be in grief. While the citizens of Oz sing, no one mourns the wicked. And with those five words, he basically pinched the deal for me because he persuaded me that he understood I was writing a kind of serious intellectual inquiry about what we mean when we use words like evil and wicked and how we use that concept to better ourselves and belittle others. That's what the book was written for. That was very much why I harnessed our old childhood favorite, the wizard of Oz, for my own nefarious needs. I hijacked it so that I could tell an intellectual story in a popular guise. And of the 7 million copies of the book sold, maybe, you know, maybe 25,000 have been read. Who knows? But whoever managed to read it may not have realized that they were reading an intellectual novel because I gussied it up in the window trappings of L. Frank Baum and 1939 MGM.

[Kevin]

Did you think the movie would take this long?

[Gloria Estefan]

No, no. Originally they said, you know, we'll. We'll. We'll run this five to seven years and then make a movie if we can. If we can get that much time out of it. And then they said, it's going to run 10 years. And then at one point, David Stone, that one of the other producers with a Broadway connection, called me up about five years in and said, this is going to run 20 years. I don't know when it's going to be a movie. It'll be movie eventually, maybe not in your lifetime. To be fair, he didn't say that, but that was the implication.

[Kevin]

Okay, so now moving on to this new book you're releasing. Talk to us about that.

[Gloria Estefan]

Oh, yes, yes, yes. The new book is called Elfie, and it is. The subtitle is A Wicked Childhood, which you theater nerds will know is a quote from the Sound of Music. I wanted to reference the Sound of Music somewhere. Perhaps I had a wicked childhood.

[Kevin]

See, you say you're not a theater person, you're a theater person.

[Gloria Estefan]

Oh, I am. So I. When. When I submitted the book to Harper in 94, my agent did. It came back to me saying, this is great. We love it. We want to publish it. Here's what. We'll pay you, but it is 7 to 10% too long. It's, It's, It's a math. It's a massive book and you have to trim it. And. And mostly the way I trimmed it. Like if you bring an Aubusson tapestry to the castle in the north of Scotland, you say, here's your carpet. And the. The Queen says, oh, well, it was a little cold, so we had to put some plaster on the walls and. And build them in a little bit and put in some piping. So actually the carpet's too large for the space now. You're going to have to bring it down. Well, the Aubusson tapestry makers did not come up with pinking shears and cut off one edge of the carpet so it fit. What they would have to do is go over the entire piece and pull out one thread at a time while making sure that everything that had been articulated not only stayed in the carpet, but stayed proportionally in the same relationship to what had been originally presented. So that's what I had to do. And mo. I lost most of the 5 to 7% by trimming paragraphs and by trimming adjectives and adverbs. But there were one or two places where I could actually trim a couple of scenes because I was told, or I was advised by one of my editors that they didn't add enough to get in the way of the forward movement of the story. And two of them were of Elphaba as a child. One was when she was about 7 and one was when she was about 12. And they said, we, you know, all this, all the front matter about how Oz is arranged geographically, politically, spiritually, etc. All that is essential because it undergirds the entire rest of the novel. However, we have to get to Elphaba and Galinda at school faster. So, see, you know, the most of the cutting you need to do is in the first 70 pages. So I brought the first 70 pages down to about the first 50 pages. And even. Even at that. Now, I probably could have. I probably could have done more because I'm skilled at that kind of thing. But I had took out the scenes where Elphaba was 7 and where she was 12. Why 7 and 12? Why had I written them? Because when you're 7, you go through a kind of biological change, the biological changes in your brain. And you become capable of moral evaluations at the agency. You become capable not just of saying, am I safe? Am I okay? But what's going on here? What's the right thing? What's right and wrong here? All the major religions and educational schemes suggest that a child's brain begins to be able to process Right and wrong at about the age of seven, therefore, it begins to be a little bit culpable. If they can process it, then they can make choices and they know what their choices are. When we're 12 or 13, the second big change happens, which is adolescence and prepubescence and the fact that hormones then begin to screw up with whatever we knew so confidently right for the previous seven years. So that's why I had scenes of Alphabet at those two ages, because I thought they were important in order to understand how she got to be who she was by the time she got to college. But those scenes hit the cutting room floor, if you want to use that. That film metaphor for a novel. And I never forgot them. I didn't throw them out. I kind of snipped them and put them in a glass of Alka Seltzer and said, just and tend to yourself. I'll be back. And 28 years later, I thought. I didn't think, as I've been accused of. I didn't think, oh, I can make some real moolah by hopping on the bandwagon of the movie. It wasn't that. What's happened is I am 30 years older than I was when I. When I published Wicked and Wicked. The story that I wrote in all its iterations has not finished evolving, and it is going to outlast me. It is going to be. Maybe it won't have the effect of an MGM film, 1939, Getting Into all our consciousnesses, but it is definitely a property that has its own established history now. And I'm just part of its origins. It is, you know, you are the origin, but I don't own it anymore. You know, it's evolving. It's like a child evolves. It's evolving, too, and that's fine. But I'm going to die at one point. So I think somebody eventually is going to say, you know, there's a lot we don't know about what happened between the time she was 2 and when she got to shins. We can make hay of that. Let's go back and let's do young Elphaba like young Frankenstein and young Sherlock Holmes. And I thought that's. That's probably going to be all fine and good if my heirs and assigns approve it. But why don't I do it first? Because after all this in my head, more vividly, I believe, than she does in anybody else's. So that's why Elfie comes now. It isn't piggybacking on, you know, a 100 million dollar advertising budget for the movie. That doesn't hurt.

[Kevin]

And also, what a perfect tie in because the movie features young Elphaba more than. Yeah.

[Gloria Estefan]

Yes.

[Quincy]

Such a big way. Yeah.

[Gloria Estefan]

That I didn't know. Of course, since I hadn't seen the script. I didn't. I didn't know. That's that little scene and the return toward the end. Now I'm looking at the. At the clock. As I said, I talked too much.

[Kevin]

We got to wrap up.

[Gloria Estefan]

I have a 10 o'clock that I need to get ready for.

[Quincy]

Okay.

[Gloria Estefan]

So is there any final question? And I'm sorry for having, you know, as I said, spilled over.

[Quincy]

I would love to ask you, I guess, this character, the role of Elphaba. Our podcast started kind of devoted to breaking Elphaba down scene by scene from the music musical. And this character has been with you for more than half your career at this point. So what is it about her that is. That stays exciting to keep exploring and keep expanding her life, her presence in your. In this, in your work?

[Gloria Estefan]

Well, you know that scene. It's a good question, Kevin. You know that scene in the movie at the bridge of the wizard and I, when she walks into that outdoor area and there's mirrors and colored glass and she looks at herself in the mirror and it's the line about if I should degreenify you. And for a minute she's actually de grenified and she's Cynthia Erivo in her natural skin tone. And then it comes back to her. You can hardly. I had to see that scene like three times before I was sure I.

[Kevin]

Will see what I. I'm colorblind. So I'm still just trusting that that's what happens because I.

[Quincy]

It's very cool.

[Gloria Estefan]

It's very cool and it's very subtle. I wasn't sure I. I wasn't sure I was perceiving it right. Or if it's just. I thought that would be cool. But. But my point is that that scene about Elphaba looking at herself in the mirror, well, that's. That's really me. I look at myself in the mirror and I see Elphaba. I see her complexity. I see her moral hesitations. I see her stubborn and slightly blinkered opinions and her simplifications. I see her power and her passion and her. And the moral challenge she has, despite her shortcomings, to try to do something for the world. I see that in Alphabet and I see it in myself. So since I never fail, even to this day, to try to understand who I am today as opposed to who I was yesterday. Every time I look at Elphaba, I feel she's evolving too. And so that's why I could go back and see her. And she has shown up in glimpses that are on unexplained in some of the following books after Wicked, even, even. Even in the pages of the Grimory, at some point when her granddaughter is looking through it in one of the. I think it's the Oracle of Maricor, maybe the Witch of Maragor, that she's. She's still there. She's. She's still in the world. She may not be in a trap door. She may not even be alive. She may be in memory, but she's potent and she has. And she has agency. And therefore anybody who has agency, you have to keep tracking, you know, whether it's yourself or somebody else. Keep tracking the people with agency, because it matters. It matters to figure out what you should do next and what somebody else is going to do next. And that includes people with agency who are not elected officials. Yeah. On that note, I have just enough time to go brush my teeth and get a second coffee.

[Kevin]

Thank you so much for joining us.

[Gloria Estefan]

This was really incredible, much fun. I'm really come true. I'm really grateful and I'm. I'm sorry for having gone, but you can probably scale this down. It's like take out 7 to 10% of.

[Kevin]

I'll channel you.

[Quincy]

Yeah, we'll cut the parts you talked about your childhood.

[Gloria Estefan]

Slap it on the wall of a castle and see if any notices.

[Kevin]

Thank you, Gregory. It was such a pleasure meeting you.

[Gloria Estefan]

Take care. Take care. Good luck.

[Quincy]

Thank you.

[Kevin]

Thank you. Bye. You've been listening to Sentimental Men.

[Quincy]

We'd like to say a big thank you to everyone at the Broadway Podcast.

[Kevin]

Network and a special thanks to Mikayla Reynolds and Julia DiMarzo, our photographer and logo designer. You can find Sentimental men on Instagram, TikTok and Xentmenpod, or you can email.

[Quincy]

[e-mail] till next time.

[Kevin]

I'm Quincy.

[Quincy]

And I'm Kevin.