Oz has never lacked spectacle. But turning Wicked into a one-night television extravaganza meant thinking bigger than both the stage musical and the films.
NBC’s Wicked: One Wonderful Night united stars Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba), Ariana Grande (Glinda) and Michelle Yeoh (Madame Morrible) with other fellow cast members from the Wicked films, a company of dancers and singers, and special guests for a celebration worthy of the Emerald City. The special, which earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded), challenged every creative department to rethink how Wicked should look and move for a live audience.
For choreographer Christopher Scott and department head hairstylist Edward Morrison, that challenge became an exercise in collaboration. Scott choreographed every movement audiences would follow across the stage, while Morrison carefully styled the moments where hair shouldn’t move at all during every beat and turn.
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“It was like, what if Wicked did the halftime show at the Super Bowl?” Scott told Deadline’s The Process. Fans had been clamoring online at the idea of Erivo and Grande taking center stage at the sports blowout initially, so Scott had thought “let’s give the fans that moment” in regard to the NBC special.
Coming off his work on the Wicked films, Scott said his earliest conversations with producers Ben Winston and Raj Kapoor had one golden rule to follow: that this event wouldn’t be about re-creating what audiences had already seen.
“This is not a re-creation of the movie. This is not a re-creation of the stage show,” Scott recalled. “This is a celebration of Wicked.” That philosophy gave the creative team permission to build something uniquely suited for television while honoring the story fans already loved.
Morrison approached the assignment with a similar mind-set. Rather than treating the special like another film shoot, he leaned into the immediacy of live performance, where hairstyles had to survive demanding choreography, costume changes, and the pressure of performing in front of an audience.
“I felt like the costumes were moving around so much that I wanted to contain the hair,” Morrison said, explaining that structured styles would allow the choreography and not loose strands to command viewers’ attention. Scott embraced the idea.
With little time to reset dancers between musical numbers, Morrison’s team relied on hairspray, stitched hairstyles into place, and sculpted every look to hold its shape from performance to performance.
For Scott, it was all about rhythm. “If there’s too much movement in the hair, sometimes it’ll be on a different beat,” he said. “So it’s like they go here and the hair is like two feet behind.”
Watching rehearsals made the choreography’s precision immediately clear to Morrison. “Most of the dancing was above the shoulders,” he said. “It was very intricate. It was very precise.”
That philosophy extended to every performance, including Erivo’s rendition of “The Wizard and I.” Rather than re-creating the emotional staging from the film, Scott envisioned the dancers as manifestations of Elphaba’s inner thoughts, giving the song a new visual language designed specifically for live television.
Elsewhere, he took on the scale of a stadium concert, crafting bold, contemporary staging inspired by a “halftime show” idea. At the same time, Morrison’s sleek, structured hairstyles made sure every movement remained crisp on camera.
One of Scott’s favorite collaborations came with Yeoh. Drawing from work they’d done together on the upcoming second Wicked film, he incorporated movement inspired by the Oscar winner’s martial arts background, leaving room for her own instincts to shape the performance.
“It was really this collaboration with costume, hair, music, dance,” Scott said, recalling how every department worked together to build the sequence. Despite limited rehearsal time, Yeoh delivered the elaborate choreography in front of the live audience before punctuating the performance with an impromptu wink to the camera.
Towards the end of the convo, both craftsmen reflected less on individual accomplishments than on the trust that developed between their departments.
“I wanted to thank you for giving me direction,” Morrison told Scott. “You isolated your ideas, and you gave them to me, and I was able to run with them.”
Scott admitted choreographers don’t always think about how movement affects every other department, making Morrison’s partnership all the more meaningful to him. “I’m very grateful to you and how you collaborated with us,” Scott said.
To learn more about the behind-the-scenes magic of Wicked: One Wonderful Night, watch the video above.