WickedStar Marissa Bode Teases HowPart 2Will Depart Dramatically from Stage Musical: 'Less Like a Fixing Moment'

Mar. 15, 2025

Marissa Bode on Nov. 9; in ‘Wicked: Part One’.Photo:Steve Granitz/FilmMagic; Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

Steve Granitz/FilmMagic; Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

WickedstarMarissa Bodeis teasing a big moment audiences still have to look forward to.

Bode, 24, plays Nessarose in theJon M. Chu-directed stage-to-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical. Sister toCynthia Erivo’s would-be villainess Elphaba, the character uses a wheelchair and,inWicked: Part Two(in theaters Nov. 26, 2025), becomes the Wicked Witch of the East who terrorizes Munchkinland.

“One of the first conversations I had with Jon,” Bode tells PEOPLE, was about a pivotal scene in the show’s second act. Spoiler alert: the jeweledsilver slippersNessarose inherited from her mother are enchanted with a magic that enables their wearer to stand and walk. When the character realizes Elphaba and her Grimmerie spellbook can affect her disability, she begs her sister to do so.

“I wasn’t there for the actual script change,” the actress teases, but Chu told her, “‘Hey, we changed this part in this way just so that it felt less like a fixing moment.’”

Rather than Nessarose “pleading for a disability to be fixed,” she says, Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox’s script is instead “just focusing on the magic in general and the magic of the story.”

Bode adds, “And that’s all I can say, I think!”

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“I know there’s a way to make, maybe not everything, but a hell of a lot of things accessible if you really want to, and if you really actually ask the right questions to disabled people,” Bode says. “Representation is not the only thing that will save us as disabled people. We need community. We need non-disabled people to make their spaces accessible.”

(Left-right:) Jonathan Bailey, Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode, Ethan Slater and Jon M. Chu at the NYC premiere of ‘Wicked: Part One’ on Nov. 14.Taylor Hill/FilmMagic

Taylor Hill/FilmMagic

“If Part 1 is about choices, Part 2 is about consequences,” Chu toldEntertainment Weeklyin a recent interview teasing the next installment. Characters — presumably including Nessarose and Elphaba — will be “asking, ‘Is this the right decision that you made?'"

Wicked: Part Oneis in theaters now, withPart Twoslated for Nov. 26, 2025. Go behind the scenes ofWickedwith PEOPLE’s new special issue, availablehere.

source: people.com