‘Wicked’ stars Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo never met before they were cast

You’re perfect. You’re perfect. So we’re perfect together… That’s what director Jon M. Chu hoped would be true when he cast Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo as his two leading ladies in the film adaptation of Wicked.

Chu and his casting team conducted an exhaustive search to find the right Glinda and Elphaba, including lengthy weeks-long auditions and chemistry reads to find the best pink and green match. But somehow Grande and Erivo never actually read together despite both landing the coveted roles. They didn’t meet until just a few hours before their casting announcement was to go out. The duo came together at Chu’s house in the run-up to that moment.

“They read with different people, but at the end of the day it very much was obvious that she was Elphaba and she was Glinda,” Chu tells Entertainment Weekly of casting Erivo and Grande without a chemistry read. “I didn’t know that they would work. I didn’t know if they would like each other. I had no idea the actual personalities of that, but I knew that they were right for those roles.”

However, Wicked has a long history of creating a special bond between its two witches, and Chu hoped that magic would apply to his movie. “There’s something in the alchemy of Wicked, you can talk to any cast about this, the Elphabas and Glindas are always very different and yet they share a similar power in a way,” he explains. “So I trusted that that alchemy would work here, and it worked in spades.”

The moment that Chu knew his gamble paid off is, in and of itself, something out of a musical. “They came to my house to meet for the first time,” he details. “[Wicked composer and lyricist] Stephen Schwartz was there, and he started playing ‘For Good’ on the piano. They just went up there and started singing. At that moment, their voices intertwined, and I knew it was right.”

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Anyone who watched Grande and Erivo in interviews can instantly see that alchemy that Chu mentions. While discussing their own experiences with EW, Grande and Erivo say in unison, “I think we both gained a lifelong friend,” illustrating how close the two became since that first meeting.

Early reactions to the film also confirmed Chu’s casting genius, calling Glinda the role that Grande was “born to play” and praising Erivo’s “heavenly vocals” amid other raves.

Wicked premiered on Broadway in 2003. Based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel of the same name, the Wizard of Oz prequel musical traces the two witches’ paths from students at Shiz University to Elphaba becoming the Wicked Witch of the West. The show went on to earn 10 Tony Award nominations in 2004, including one for Best Musical.

The adaptation also features Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey, Bowen Yang, and Marissa Bode. The film will be split into two parts, and the first half flies into theaters this weekend.