Hi, this is Jon M. Cho and I’m the director of “Wicked.” “And Elfie. May I call you Elfie?” “Well, that’s a little cheeky.” So we’re about the midpoint in the movie. And these two roommates, who are very different from each other, have moved into this semi-small dorm room. And it’s Glinda and Elphaba, played by Ariana Grande and Cynthia Ario, and they just bond over sharing stories with each other. So this is the beginning of their true friendship, their first date, shall I say. It is a very wonderful scene. “Popular” is one of those songs that everyone knows from “Wicked.” It’s probably the most used in talent shows, and there was a lot of pressure to get it right and find its way into cinema. But of course, it all revolves around Ariana Grande’s performance of showboating and showing off her power to transform Elphaba into someone who can be popular. “Exactly what they need.” And Arie is just a master of comedy. You can see it in all her movements, how she interacts with Cynthia Ario. When you actually listen to it too, it’s his beats and his pauses are just masterful. Our costume designer Paul Tazeville designed this beautiful, new word I learned, Pagnoir, for what’s now become famous on all the dolls and stuff, and this giant chandelier that she swings on. It sounds simple, but there’s actually a lot of manpower running this thing. There’s actually a guy at the top who’s spinning it and helping it, and that was a lot of play for us. We had to really allow the song to come in and take our time to come in. We had a pianist in the corner because everything is live, so she could use her own tempo. “Popular, you’re going to be popular.” And the concept for that was instead of going into a big closet because it’s a dorm room, that closet was all the bags that we saw in the previous scenes. I love the moment where she grabs the ruby slipper and taps it three times as the Wizard of Oz was pointed out to us. But each of these devices, although again, they seem simple, big men in small spaces opening and closing it, and each one takes months and months to get the engineering right. One of the biggest things Cynthia really wanted was that she didn’t just want to be a passenger on it, she really wanted to be a part of it. She’s not resisting it as much as it’s actually shown, she’s actually enjoying the attention and the friendship. “Not when it comes to popular” that lone mirror. It is very heavy and has a lot of engineering. It’s actually very, very dangerous. Later she would actually step on it. And so it took many, many months to design alone, including this thing that goes back and forth. And I love this moment where she laughs all around her. We did this about 18 times. We had to grease the floor. His peignoir couldn’t hold on to that hanger. But then again, Arie is a master of physical comedy and she does it like she was born to do it. “What?”