Inside “Wicked’s” Iconic Costumes With Oscar Winner Paul Tazewell

Both instalments of Wicked have now been released, but let’s take it back a little bit: one of the first productions you worked on was The Wiz, so does this feel like a full circle moment?

The culture of The Wizard of Oz has actually been in my life since I was maybe four years old; our family would watch the movie every year. Then, when The Wiz came out, when I was aware of it as a Broadway show, and then it came out as a film with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, it is indeed a full circle moment that’s very moving.

As a designer, you’ve spent years working with Black and brown voices on some huge productions –  from Hamilton to West Side Story. So when Wicked came around, and you found out that Elphaba was going to be played by a Black woman, especially with your history, how did that feel?

I felt right at home with that idea because it was how I was experiencing the story before Cynthia Erivo was cast. With every character, I work to find myself in the character so that I can make decisions about what they might wear and how their character shifts and changes through time, what will be poignant as I represent emotions through colour and texture and most specifically Elphaba’s story spoke to me because Elphaba as a person of colour, albeit green skin, I understand what that is, what that struggle is and the struggle to be seen really for who you truly are, not based on what you look like from the outside.

So to make choices that are very dear to me, it just created a closeness in that character. Having Cynthia be cast in that role then, because I had worked with Cynthia on Harriet, it was that much more just beautiful because I knew her character, her sensibility and our conversation could be an intimate one of how do we create the best and truest Elphaba possible.