‘Wicked’ almost starred Lady Gaga and Shawn Mendes instead of Cynthia Erivo and Jonathan Bailey, and I don’t know what to think

Wicked is gearing up to become a critical and commercial smash. The adaptation of the beloved Broadway musical stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in the leading roles, with Bridgerton darling Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero but we now know this adaptation could have been entirely different.

Grande and Erivo have been at the center of an incredible press tour, adopting method dressing to promote the film and their characters. Their friendship is also precious, the kind of love and support you want to see from women all around the world. This isn’t all because the movie apparently checks all the boxes as the hype and chatter around the film is getting so loud after making history with a nearly perfect Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 99% and an amazing Certified Fresh 91% from the critics.

Lady Gaga almost chose a different musical and Shawn Mendes was ready for his big picture debut

Lady Gaga is a powerhouse — she’s an internationally beloved superstar, she’s an Oscar winner for Best Original Song and nominee for Best Actress, and a successful businesswoman with a high-quality cosmetics brand, Haus Labs. This year, she made her musical debut in Joker: Folie a Deux, one of 2024’s biggest disappointments. But she almost chose a different musical.

Per Page Six, Lady Gaga was supposed to star in Wicked alongside Canadian superstar Shawn Mendes. Jon M. Chu was not attached to the project, instead The Crown executive producer Stephen Daldry was supposed to helm the adaptation. This isn’t exactly a bad thing, he has won three Tony Awards for his Broadway work and an Olivier for his work in the West End. However, the Wicked cast was wickedly well chosen, as per people’s early reviews.

Lady Gaga is a fantastic singer and decent actor, but even she couldn’t save Joker from drowning. “They had meetings, the two of them, about the character and who she would be. [Gaga] was essentially cast in his version, and then it fell through,” a source said about Gaga and Daldry, who wanted her to play Elphaba. At the same time, he considered Mendes as Fiyero for the movie, a role that eventually went to Jonathan Bailey.

Given Wicked‘s worldwide popularity, the project has been in talks for a long time. Daldry was announced as director in 2016 and tried to make it work but departed the project in 2020 due to scheduling conflicts. Gaga went on to star in Joker 2, and Jon M. Chu cast the magical Cynthia Erivo for the role, with Grande as Glinda, and Jurassic World‘s Bailey.

All’s well that ends well because, as charming as Mendes is, and despite Lady Gaga’s chameleonic skills, the magic Jon M. Chu put on the big screen with the current cast proves everything happened for a reason and Erivo and Bailey were born for this.