Jonathan Bailey has revealed that he found he’d landed the role of Fiyero in Wicked when his co-stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo gate-crashed a Zoom call.

The Bridgerton actor hopped on a Zoom with the filmmaking team – including director Jon M. Chu – and the stars made a surprise appearance to tell him he was going to play Fiyero.

“I just had a chat with Jon and then had quite an awkward – my Britishness of Zooms generally, it’s kind of unbearable – but they wanted to know if I could dance and stuff like that,” he recalled on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “And then Ari and Cynthia popped up and gate-crashed the Zoom and were like, ‘Come to Shiz University.’ That’s how I found out. But I assume the fact that that video hasn’t been shown is because I was like (adopts stiff posh voice), ‘OK, yes, that sounds lovely, when do we start?'”

Wicked, the two-part movie adaptation of the popular stage musical, tells the story of witches Elphaba and Galinda, who are roommates and friends at Shiz University. After an encounter with the Wizard of Oz, their lives begin to take very different paths.

Remembering the shoot, Bailey noted that he had “a natural facelift” watching the “vocal prowess” of his co-stars during their musical numbers. He also praised Grande for being “so generous” and “incredibly supportive” when they shot the Dancing Through Life sequence early in his shooting schedule.

The Fellow Travelers star also shared that he sang Dancing Through Life for his self-tape but he “didn’t have (his) top range” as he was in a play at the time. He recorded his tape in the theatre’s dressing room and was interrupted midway through by being called to the stage for showtime.

The first part of Wicked will be released in cinemas on 22 November.

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