#facecasting

Just like many other authors, Gregory Maguire used celebrity facecasts in his mind when he wrote Wicked!

Elphaba he imagined looking like k.d. lang (only greener, of course):

Glinda like Melanie Griffith:

And Fiyero like Antonio Banderas:

I've been rereading UTB and catching up on the rest of the updates for the rainbow series I've missed, and realised after all this time I've never got a solid picture of Temsen in my mind? Looked for ages for fanart of Underline the Rainbow him but couldn't find any 💔 (my looking skills might also be terrible.) Do you have like a lookalike of real people you could compare him to who's even kind of similar? Or any fanart you've seen anywhere? He's kind of just a blob who wears knitted jumpers all the time in my head and I love trying to actually play the story in my head while reading!

I love the blob temsen I imagine, but unfortunatelt picturing a blob performing minor surgery and killing Crielle has made me unable to continue taking my imagination seriously. 😅

Hi anon,

I don't do / actively hate facecasting, so I don't have any references for Temsen. I don't think of him as looking like any real people I've seen, which is how I am for all of my characters, I don't like to pigeonhole them into a pre-existing person, but I'm totally cool with other people doing that for themselves!

Unfortunately there's also been very little fanart for him in the Underline series. We know he's black/African-Australian with medium-brown skin, we know he has very well kept short hair that is dark brown, and has brown eyes with a gold patch, and is otherwise quite tall / imposing physically because he's a peak alpha (the musculature comes with the territory). And we know he dresses to disarm the omegas (i.e. pretty cozily).

This class is for people who want to learn about body casting and is designed for beginners or for advanced students. An important step in successful mold making is being familiar with mold making materials.

In this article, Gregory Maguire reveals that when he was writing the novel of Wicked, he used celebrities as his mental images for the characters, as so many authors do. So here's a photo comparison: Maguire's celebrity facecasts with their original Broadway cast and movie cast counterparts.

Elphaba

k.d. lang (just imagine her green), Idina Menzel, Cynthia Erivo

Glinda

Melanie Griffith, Kristin Chenoweth, Ariana Grande

Fiyero

Antonio Banderas, Norbert Leo Butz, Jonathan Bailey

Madame Morrible

Angela Lansbury, Carole Shelley, Michelle Yeoh

In the novel of Wicked, there is no Elphaba/Fiyero/Glinda love triangle. Fiyero and Glinda are never a couple.

But...

Gregory Marguire used celebrities as facecasts for the characters as he wrote the book. He imagined Glinda as looking like Melanie Griffith and Fiyero as looking like Antonio Banderas. (As they looked in the early '90s, of course.)

By sheer coincidence, Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith got married (and later divorced) AFTER Wicked was published!

This is what Daine looks like (Trini Alvarado, as she appeared in the early '90s, most notably as Meg in the 1994 Little Women):

This is what Numair looks like (Jeff Goldblum in his late 20s/early 30s):

And this is Emperor Ozorne around the time of Emperor Mage (Ozzy Osbourne, circa 1980):

Antonio Banderas went on to play Che in the film version of Evita.

The stage musical of Wicked draws parallels between Glinda and Eva Perón as political figureheads: in "Thank Goodness", Glinda wears a 1940s-inspired dress suit and strikes the same pose at a microphone that Eva does in Evita during "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina."

I don't know if the movie Wicked: For Good will highlight Glinda's Eva Perón parallels in the same way. We've already seen photos and a clip from "Thank Goodness," at any rate, and unlike in the stage version, she's not dressed or posed like Eva there.