That romantic tension you felt between Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo? Well, the ‘Wicked’ author has one thing to say about it

One thing as sure as death and taxes is the fanciful tendency for gay people to view any onscreen same-sex friendship as queer (I will die on the hill that Fight Club is a gay romcom), but in the case of Wicked, this belief might just be the actual reality. 

Indeed, beyond the chatter of “holding space” and NSFW Barbie doll links, much of the discussion of Wicked among gay audiences has been the seeming sexual tension between the two protagonists, Glinda and Elphaba. The fact that those characters are played by beauties Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo might seem like a sapphic dream that’s just too good to be true, but Gregory Maguire — author of the novel upon which the Wicked musical is based — has suggested that perhaps all our queer fan theories aren’t too much of a stretch. 

The author — who wrote the original novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West in 1995 — addressed the speculation about the characters’ possible romantic connection in a recent interview with Them. Maguire, who is himself a gay man, said the sapphic undertones between Glinda and Elphaba were “intentional,” at least in the novel version of Wicked. “That was intentional, and it was modest and restrained and refined in such a way that one could imagine that one of those two young women had felt more than the other and had not wanted to say it,” Maguire said. 

The author explained, “because a novelist can’t write every scene,” he wanted to give readers the impression that perhaps the pair were getting up to something when the author wasn’t looking. “Perhaps when the lights were out and the novelist was out having a smoke in the back alley, the girls had sex in the bed on the way to the Emerald City,” Gregory said, bringing to life the very same scenes that likely feature in a gay woman’s fan-fic drafts. “I wanted to propose this possibility,” Gregory added of the two witches’ potential romance, “but I did not want to make a declarative statement.” 

Of course, Gregory’s comments give validity to a theory that’s been circulating for about as long as the road to the Emerald City, with Grande herself even addressing the speculation during Wicked’s extremely bizarre yet utterly wholesome press tour. “Whether it’s romantic or platonic, Glinda might be a little in the closet,” the singer/actress told Gay Times last month, “you never know. Give it a little time.” Meanwhile, Kristin Chenoweth, who originated the role of Glinda in the Wicked musical, echoed Grande’s sentiment around Glinda’s sexuality, saying she “thought so too way back when.”

All of it is given an extra layer of queer glory when you account for the fact that Erivo is bisexual in real life, while Jonathan Bailey (who plays Prince Fiyero) and Bowen Yang (who plays the hilariously named ​Pfannee) are both gay. While he is not gay, The Wizard of Oz actor Jeff Goldblum is a gay icon because c’mon, he’s Jeff Goldblum.

Petition for Glinda, Elphaba,​ Pfannee, and Fiyero to star in a gay romcom Wicked spinoff starts now. Since it’ll inevitably be for kids, it won’t get to the kind of romance that’s mistakenly linked on the back of a Barbie doll, but you can save that for your fan-fics.