Jonathan Bailey’s Charisma Defies Gravity in ‘Wicked’
Like many a romantic lead before him, when Jonathan Bailey first appears as Prince Fiyero in “Wicked” it’s on a horse, ready to be a savior to some damsel. For story purposes, it’s a good thing that Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) isn’t immediately impressed. But right from his “Hello,” no one would have blamed Elphaba if she ran off with him right then and there.
“[Jonathan’s] the most charming man I’ve ever met,” “Wicked” director Jon M. Chu told IndieWire. “The fact [is] that everybody — we didn’t even intentionally do it — but all the extras, all the background people, all the students were in love with him, and you could see it in their eyes.”
More from IndieWire
Fans likely aren’t too surprised: The worldwide blockbuster may have introduced Bailey to an even larger audience, but he’s been building a strong relationship with viewers for a while. The Olivier winner has been acting since he was a kid, but it is in recent smash television projects like Netflix’s “Bridgerton” and his Emmy-nominated turn in Showtime’s “Fellow Travelers” in which he’s deployed a singular charm that lets people both connect with and lust after whomever he is playing; the kind of audience bond where viewers miss him when he isn’t onscreen.
He’s got chemistry with everyone, and his playful take on bad boy Fiyero — well, “bad boy” for Oz — makes it a hat trick. We had to know: What’s the secret to portraying onscreen yearning in a way that sizzles?
“It’s one of the pleasures of acting, isn’t it?,” Bailey said of his crackling-energy connection. “I remember when I was on stage, I was doing ‘King John’ for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I was still going to school. It was a life-changing thing to be doing that at that age. But I just remember on stage [realizing], ‘You can use these words, and they have an effect on not just the people [in the scene], but the people in the room.’ And that was the moment I thought, ‘I actually really love this.'”
He continued, “I think ‘Wicked,’ because it’s based on a stage musical, the scenes are very lean. Fiyero doesn’t feature much at all. I’ve always thought this about musicals, but it’s even more evident in the film of ‘Wicked’: the silences in a musical are just as important as the big belts. And I think that is exactly where chemistry lies.”
He may be (duh) charmingly modest — “I do not feel like that in my day-to-day life at all!” — but showcasing that kind of seductive energy is a skill, one he navigates successfully in the film, particularly during his big number, “Dancing Through Life.” In addition to being plot-heavy for the greater arc of the story, the song also calls for him to basically tempt the whole student body via dancing into breaking the rules for a night of clubbing.
“I think musicals and dance numbers, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, John Travolta, Patrick Swayze, there’s always something crucial going on, and it’s always high stakes,” Bailey said, calling out the dancing in “West Side Story” as a lifelong favorite. “Usually the tradition is that men are using their bodies to try and process things in a way that they haven’t learned or haven’t been equipped to be able to do. And I thought that’s really interesting.”
Joking that he’s now “psychoanalyzing Fiyero,” what appealed about the role was that there is more to him than appears at first blush. “There’s a chaos and a speed to the way that Fiyero thinks that I think gives him access to be able to sort of maneuver instinctively through any sort of pain or any sort of real emotion,” he said. “And I think that’s what dancing through life is. … I think he feels dormant, and I think he sort of instinctively knows that there’s more to life, and that’s why he’s disruptive, and that’s why he creates this chaos that matches his inner world.”
“He brings a depth that is very truthful, but does not weigh it down,” Chu explained about Bailey’s take on the musical’s leading man. “[There’s that] yearning to find something more than the life that he’s living, and I think people can feel that.”
Some of the film’s many highlights soar when the main trio (Erivo, Bailey, and Ariana Grande as Galinda) key into a heightened theatrical energy — think Bailey walking through a wall of students or Grande’s over-the-top reactions to minor slights — which isn’t a surprise, given all three’s respective stage backgrounds.
As we get to talking, Bailey is eager to speak about his theater roots, of which he’ll return to in London in a few months to take on “Richard II.” Viewers may think of Netflix’s regency romance as his breakout, but Bailey puts it at something smaller: getting the stage part of Cassio in “Othello” (directed by Nicholas Hytner, who will also direct “Richard II”) 10 years ago.
“That, to me, is my career break,” he said. “It was that moment because I didn’t go to drama school. … The transition from acting as a child to an adult, everyone says, ‘Oh, it’s impossible. You can’t do that.’ And then people go, ‘Oh, the National Theater, you can really only perform in [that] space if you’ve gone to drama school, and you won’t be able to do Shakespeare.’ And so it’s so funny now that, obviously, there’s groundbreaking experiences of being a gay man and playing multiple parts in these sorts of films. But there’s so many other things that I was up against! So [when I got that part] I just remember being like, ‘Fucking hell, anything’s possible if that’s possible.’ That was huge for me.”
Fiyero has him thinking about his childhood a lot, and it’s with a full-circle appreciation that he now is able to analyze his career thus far.
“I was very lucky,” he said of growing up around the arts. “Going to see ‘Wicked’ with friends and family and my Nana the day after it came out here, it’s just really struck me that it is all about local community projects [and classes]. …There’s so many moments in your life where you can be inspired by art and passions can be awakened, but the biggest travesty is to allow them to remain dormant when you know they’re there. And so I’m always grateful for Fiyero and ‘Wicked’ because it really has brought my dancing back in [to my life], which is amazing.”
It’s a new experience to have a choice of projects, and along with more “Bridgerton” and “Wicked,” Bailey is now taking all kinds of big swings.
“The thing that I think actually is really important is having someone who’s got the singular idea, either a director or auteur who sees something in you that you haven’t yet discovered,” he explained. “I’ve worked 30 years, and the idea that these sorts of opportunities, being at a point now where you can be selective, it’s wild to me, but it’s just so thrilling.”
The coming year will find him tackling both Shakespeare and dinosaurs (he’ll lead “Jurassic World Rebirth” opposite Scarlett Johansson next summer). When asked about other career goals, he noted he’d love to film underwater at some point. It feels inevitable that’ll eventually happen, though one dream may remain unrealized.
Recalling seeing “Wicked” onstage years ago when it came to London, “I remember going, ‘I really want to play the monkey!,” he said. “But that may have just been because I’ve always been called a cheeky monkey.”
See? Charming.
A Universal Studios release, “Wicked” is in theaters now. “Wicked: Part Two” will arrive in theaters on November 21, 2025.
Best of IndieWire
Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
