What Next | Why You Can't Avoid Wicked

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News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With the release of Wicked: For Good, spectacle is back in theaters and back on the press circuit: Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are again “holding space” along with each other’s individual fingers and other quirks they picked up along the way. This is, apparently, how movies are promoted now. Guest: Michael Schulman, staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Michael, I feel like a lot of people, I have tickets to Wicked the day after Thanksgiving.
0:12.9	I'm sorry, is there a Wicked movie out? I haven't heard about it.
0:18.3	Michael Schulman writes about movies over at The New Yorker.
0:22.0	And if you cannot tell, he is being a little facetious.
0:26.5	There were two press tours, two years in a row.
0:29.1	And it's almost like the last one ended and then this one began.
0:32.5	And I don't know even when it began.
0:34.3	But it seems like it's just been going on for two years.
0:36.6	It's like elections.
0:37.3	Like as soon as we have an election, the next election is happening. Right. when it began, but it seems like it's just been going on for two years. It's like elections.
0:42.5	Like as soon as we have an election, the next election is happening. Yeah, it's just all wicked all the time. Everything's green and pink and green and pink and green and pink and green and pink.
0:48.1	And, you know, it's continuous. It's just the air we breathe.
0:52.9	It's in the air we breathe, but it's also been
0:55.3	in the TikToks we watch, the gossip we read, even the booze we drink. There are green and pink
1:02.6	absolute vodka bottles with which you can make such cocktails as ospreso martini or the
1:09.2	osmopolitan.
1:14.9	You can get bewitching Bonion forest candles from Voluspa.
1:21.6	There are scrunchy, socks, robes, jerseys, a Lego set of the dorm at Shiz University,
1:23.9	Elphaba Green Crocs.
1:27.9	And then this is, I think, the worst one.
1:35.3	You can get mystery color, wicked macaroni, and cheese where you open it up and you are surprised to either get green or pink.
1:37.9	It's like a gender reveal.
	...

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