Wicked: Ariana Grande Reveals “Best Line in the Movie” Was Cut Out

Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba and Ariana Grande’s Glinda may be unlimited — but Wicked was not. At two hours and 40 minutes, Part One of the two-part film adaptation limited itself to the first act of the Broadway musical and the movie-ending rendition of “Defying Gravity.” Now that Wicked: Part One is streaming with nearly 20 minutes of deleted and extended scenes — including a heart-to-heart between Elphaba and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), and an exchange between the green-skinned witch and the Munchkin Boq (Ethan Slater) — Erivo and Grande are revealing their favorite scenes left on the cutting room floor.

“I love them all. They all have a cozy spot in my heart,” Grande told Variety ahead of Sunday’s Golden Globes. “I love the train station scene with Boq and Elphaba Erivo. That’s one of my favorite lines.”

RELATED: Wicked Deleted Scenes Breakdown: Everything You Didn’t See in Part One

The deleted scene, titled “Boq & Elphaba Talk,” takes place just after Governor Thropp (Andy Nyman) tells Boq to take good care of his “very precious” daughter — Elphaba’s sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode). Before she departs on the train to the Emerald City to meet the wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum), Elphaba speaks to a dejected Boq.

“I still have hope,” Boq tells Elphaba of his unrequited crush on Galinda. When Elphaba gently tells him “you shouldn’t,” he responds, “Why not? Look at what hope did for you. Your dreams are coming true — why not mine?”

“Why can’t you just tell my sister the truth?” she asks. Boq doesn’t want to hurt Nessa, but to that, Elphaba says, “You’re going to end up hurting her anyway.”

“I can’t just change my feelings,” Boq says. “Could you change yours for Fiyero?” Elphaba denies having feelings for the Winkie Country prince admired by Galinda, so Boq tells her, “Oh. I’m sorry I misunderstood. I thought we were being honest.”

“The first time I read the script that line Boq says, ‘Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought we were being honest,’ me and my acting coach Nancy Banks, we put so many hearts around because we were like, ‘That’s the best line in the whole movie,’” Grande told Variety. “I think that scene has a lot of magnificent work in it, so I miss that.”

“I love that scene so much, so I was gutted when it was not there [in the theatrical cut],
Erivo added. “And the scene in the forest [with Fiyero] right before I go and put the lion down… I was like, ‘Why?’ That I missed.”

That 90-second deleted scene, “Elphaba & Fiyero in the Forest,” happens after Elphaba’s anger over a caged lion cub causes poppies to release pollen that puts everyone in class — except for Elphaba and Fiyero — to sleep. Elphaba impresses the prince as she gently calms the wriggling lion cub, and as she sets him free, tells the animal, “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

Erivo also lamented the loss of “Train Platform Farewell,” which sees Galinda and Madame Morrible assure Elphaba after a dismissive comment from Thropp.

“I loved that moment because it felt like people were holding her up,” Erivo explained. “Those are the three scenes that I hate that they’re gone, but they’re there now [on the home release], so you can see them.”

Director Jon M. Chu told Variety that “every” deleted scene was “difficult” to cut, but the hardest was “Elphaba’s Promise,” in which she tells new friend Galinda, “I won’t leave you behind again.”

“The promise was a hard one because Ari and Cynthia are doing such great work,” Chu said, explaining that it “takes a little bit of the tension away from the next scene” when Elphaba receives her invite to the Emerald City.

“But what I found is it takes a little bit of the tension away from the next scene (when Elphaba is invited to the Emerald City.”

“If you know there’s a promise and Elphaba is a woman of her word, then you know she’s going to invite [Glinda]. But if you don’t know where they are at and if you don’t know that Glinda has a sense Fiyero and her having a little thing, it makes her smarter and a little bit of a surprise. So it was very difficult,” Chu said. “And at that point, our movie is at two hours — let’s get to the Emerald City and get to the Wizard.”

Wicked: Part One is now available to watch at home, and Wicked: For Good is scheduled to hit theaters on Nov. 21, 2025.