When Wicked star Cynthia Erivo set about bringing the stage character of Elphaba Thropp, a.k.a. the future Wicked Witch of the West, to life for the film, she had a few ideas for her character — including a few very important beauty details.
Recently, Cynthia Erivo shared that she made specific requests regarding Elphaba's hair and nails. Typically, the Broadway Elphaba wears her hair in long waves, but Erivo wanted “something more connected to the person underneath, me.” She asked if the team could reimagine Elphaba's hair as micro braids instead, as a nod to Black women.
"I knew you’d still have the movement, and you could still have the length, but there was a texture that was slightly different to what you would normally see on stage, and it was a direct connection between me as a Black woman and Elphaba as a green lady,” Erivo explained.
According to Frances Hannon, a hair, makeup, and prosthetic designer in the movie, Erivo wore four custom-made wigs as Elphaba, and each one was hand-braided by a team of four braiders. “It's a really long, slow process, so hugely expensive, but more than worth the end result," Hannon told Allure.
The nails were also a key indicator of Elphaba's growth throughout the first film. According to Erivo, she saw a photo of actor Margaret Hamilton, who played the witch in the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie, and that inspired her to stick with her own signature long nails.
“I looked closely, and she has a full set of long nails," Erivo shared. If you keep an eye on Elphaba's nails during the movie, they change and get darker. "I wanted a progression. How she grows as a witch and a woman. Some people wear makeup, I always have my nails done. It’s like another extended way of expressing myself," Erivo previously shared of Elphaba's nails.
As for Elphaba's green skin, Erivo wanted to wear green skin while filming and not be digitally transformed later via CGI. Hannon worked with Erivo's makeup artist, as well as special effects artist David Stoneman, and they eventually landed on “a discontinued eyeshadow base mixed with neon yellow” to craft the perfect green for Erivo's Elphaba. All of these things together made Elphaba truly Erivo's own — and made her completely unforgettable to audiences worldwide.
