Lin-Manuel Miranda is not in the movie adaptation of Wicked, but he wanted to be.
On a recent episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Miranda clarified the Wicked casting rumors and explained how they’ve been “blown out of proportion.” However, Miranda did want a small role at the beginning of the movie.
Why was Lin-Manuel Miranda not cast in Wicked?
Miranda is friends with Wicked director Jon M. Chu. The two collaborated on 2021’s In the Heights, the feature film adaptation of Miranda’s Tony Award-winning musical. Miranda told Chu to keep him in mind if there’s a part for him, and the Hamilton creator actually had his eye on one specific role.
“In the opening number of the show, this one munchkin runs out and goes, ‘Is it true you were her friend?’” Miranda said to Colbert. “Because, man, I don’t know if you’ve seen a live production of Wicked, but sometimes they really put some sauce on the ball when they deliver that line.”
It’s Miranda’s favorite line in the show, and he wanted to do it for the movie. Unfortunately, Miranda did not get his wish.
“I was not cast,” Miranda explained to Colbert. “It would’ve been distracting.”
Miranda complimented the woman who did it in the movie, citing how she recited the line very “earnestly.” If Miranda did it, he joked that his line reading would have been similar to something Regina George would say in Mean Girls.
In Wicked, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande star as Elphaba and Galinda. The movie is an origin story of their friendship and how the two witches eventually set out on different paths — Elphaba as the Wicked Witch of the West and Galinda as Glinda the Good.
Directed by Chu, Wicked became one of the highest-grossing movies of 2024 at $722.3 million worldwide. The sequel, Wicked: For Good, arrives in theaters on November 21, 2025.
